Mission Report No 11

A few weeks ago, we were invited to dinner with a friend of Miriam's, Latrelle Balmes, and his wife Lael. They cooked a beautiful dinner for us and I'm pretty sure I forgot to mention it. Here's a picture of us all.

In contrast to last week, when we had Miriam and Taylor staying with us, this weeks report will probably have no pictures and no definitely no kitesurfing. It's probably been our busiest week doing real missionary work so far. And I think the busier we are like this, the less I will be able to write.

Monday 30th May 2022

We had the pleasure of visiting our District President's mother, Sister Delilah Fa'Aoso and her mum, Mary Harris, today. It happened to be Sister Harris's 90th birthday, so it was a good day to visit. Unfortunately, because of the Sister Harris's health condition, neither are able to attend Church, but they were both very pleased to receive a visit.

Tuesday 31 May 2022

One of our favourite members in Cairns, Brett Marr, was able to come and have lunch with us today. We are starting to use our very nice unit here, as a place to invite people to, both to feed, socialize and teach.

Later in the afternoon, we were able to take the young elders (who had used up their kilometre allowance) to a teaching appointment down in Gordonvale. They were teaching young Gregory Dick, whose siblings are already Church members, and he is nearly ready for baptism. There is a good chance that his mum and dad might also decide to become members of the Church.

Later in the afternoon, we drove to Kewarra Beach to pick up Elder Walker to bring him to our  Temple Preparation class. Last week, Tammuz Fa'Aoso had driven for nearly an hour to go and pick up Chris for the class, so we thought it would be much more efficient for us to go and do that, seeing that we are only a 20 minute drive from Kewarra Beach.

Wednesday 1 June 2022

Our friends Gareth and Polly came to our place today for lunch and a lesson. Gareth is a relatively new Church member and Polly has not been an active member for a while, so we are really reviewing what they already know and building upon that. It was good to have them visit.

We made an impromptu visit to the Gardner family tonight, with my now famous Resurrection Rolls, which were a big hit, and a short lesson on the 10 Commandments for the kids.                

Thursday 2 June

I know this is not really interesting reading for most people now. This is as much for my future memory as it is for anyone to read now, and as I said at the start of this report, the busier we are, the less I will write, mainly because I don't won't to go in to details too much, writing about someone's personal life, and much of what we do is helping with very personal difficulties that some people face.

Elders to another teaching appointment in Gordonvale with young Gregory Dick

Then to  Cairns Branch 2 Elders Quorum Presidency meeting

Then to Cairns Branch 1 Ward Council meeting

Then we drove Elders home. 

Phew. Busy afternoon. Not too much detail.

Friday 3rd June 

Early walk down to the Botanic Gardens - bumped in to Iamin, Marcella and Manny on the way back. Iamin is buying some more kitesurf gear from the local kite guy up here, and once the wind starts blowing I'll help him learn to kite surf. Not the standard missionary work, but Iamin misses the buzz of surfing, and being able to go kiting occasionally will help him get his life back in balance a bit. He's the first to admit that he suffers from overworking.

Tonight we had the best attendance at our activity night yet with about 14 there. Our previous best would have been 8 people. The youth organized the night and we played board games. I won the only game of Exploding Kittens! We also played Sequence and the Sheriff, so it was a bit of fun.

Saturday 4th June

Yet another inspection this morning of our "up for sale" townhouse that we are living in. It will be good when it's sold! We've had open houses here most Saturday mornings for the last month at least.

Tonight we had the Lawrence family visit - the mother, Serena and her three kids, Jordan, Jacob and Joseph. We had dinner and then played some board games, which was a lot of fun!

Sunday 5th June

Fast Sunday today. At least with the weather being a bit milder now, I can cope with fasting. In the warmer weather I just had to have fluids, otherwise I felt like I was going to die!

Missionary correlation meeting with Br Gosney at 8.15am, then sacrament meeting at 9.00am and Sunday School at 10.10am Greg and Deidre Dick arrived near the start of Sunday school. Young Gregory motivated them to come and take in what they could. We need to set up a class for non-members to attend as the Adult Gospel Doctrine class is not suitable for non-members.