Mission Report No 35
Monday 28th November 2022
Started the day with an early bike ride to the Cairns Base Hospital and back in 24 minutes at an average speed of 19.3 kmph and an average hearth rate of 122 bpm and a max heart rate of 159 bpm. I started the ride with my next-door neighbor, Aashiq, who was on his way to work at the hospital (he's a doctor) and I had to let him go ahead, as it is hard to keep up with someone on an electric bike! But while we were cruising down Greenslopes St together, a pretty serious bike rider (you know the type, all in lycra, and well hunched over the handlebars) went flying past us. No-one was going to keep up with him!
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| Our departing Elders Taufalele, Pemberton and Misa, just before I did up my top button :) |
Missionary transfers happened today. We said goodbye to Elders Misa, Pemberton and Taufalele, then later in the day we welcomed Elder Hamilton (with Elders Ricks, Black, and Chadburn) for dinner in our home. Elder Hamilton is our new District Leader, and I am sure he will do a great job.
Tuesday 29th November 2022
This morning we went to help Hana, Leila's niece, with her preparations to move house this week. When we arrived, she was a little stressed, as she had organized the removalist to come this week and to be out of her unit by Friday, and the builder had "forgotten" to tell her that things weren't on schedule with the handover. We had a chat for a while about it, to try to understand the situation, and it seemed that there was nothing that we could do, but Margot suggested that we have a prayer, which she offered. After doing some packing, and Hana making some calls to try to confirm everything, a call came back saying that she could pick up the keys at 3.00pm, so that was a very welcome relief and answer to a prayer.
This afternoon we were able to visit Yoriko's friend, Ayako, in hospital. She was surprised and delighted to see us, as she knew that Yoriko had to go back to Okinawa to see her sick father, who is also in hospital. After 3 months in hospital, she is not a lot closer to coming home, but her husband and daughter are away in Japan at the moment anyway, so hospital is possibly the best place for her.
Wednesday 30th November
Elders Ricks and Chadburn came with us to Hana's today to help get the boxes she packed yesterday down three flights of stairs, and into our cars. It certainly speeded things up with two young Elders with plenty of energy to help us get all those boxes down the stairs. We then all drove over to Hana's beautiful new home and unloaded the boxes there. She was most grateful and had plenty of food and water for us to snack on afterwards. The young Elders (Ricks and Chadburn) also shared a spiritual thought and a prayer before they left.
Margot and I went back to Hana's old place with her to check out the television, which she asked if we could hang on the wall. I have enough tools with me to do that sort of job, so it should be relatively easy. While there we had a chat about her situation, being a single mother (her husband left some time back) raising two young children and being able to afford to build a new house. It was really a matter of determination to not be at the mercy of real estate agents and landlords and a degree of discrimination perhaps, that made it difficult to find a unit to rent in the first place. She has worked, and will continue to work two jobs, to be able to afford it, but she knows that in the long term she will be better off.
Hana grew up in the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia, but there is not one here in Cairns for her to attend, but she still faithfully practices her religion at home.
Thursday 1 December 2022
Margot and I went and helped Hana with more moving today.
Tonight, we had our institute class, and no-one showed up - well, when I say no-one that's not entirely true as the young Elders (Hamilton and Schick, Ricks and Spackman) did come, but no YSA came. Anyway, that meant that the Elders got to eat most of the pizza themselves!
Friday 2 December 2022
Off to an early start today, to pick up our friend June in Port Douglas to get her down to Cairns Base Hospital for an appointment at 9.00am - yes that's two hours of driving, but there's no public transport from Port Douglas to Cairns, apart from the tourist shuttle buses that are about $50.00 each way and for someone who is unable to work, that's a lot of money! We always enjoy June's company though, so it was good to spend a couple of hours with here.
Saturday 3rd December
Over to Hana's new place again this morning, where I was hoping to be able to help her hang the TV on the wall, but we gave up on that when we realized that we bought the wrong size bracket. It said on the packing that it suited here size TV, but the bracket only would have been hanging on two screws, instead of four, so we canned that idea. The bracket is going back to Bunnings and the TV will just sit on the table.
Elder Rick and Elder Spackman also came and set up the dining table and also connected up the washing machine. Hint - if you are buying a new washing machine, check the length of the connecting hoses and the distance to the taps. One hose just barely made the distance! The other one didn't, but at least the hose made the distance to the cold tap.
We got to meet Hana's kids today. A very confident and intelligent 12 year old boy and a similar 10 year old girl. Really good kids! Margot invited them all to come to Church and they accepted our invitation to attend Church next week.
A windy day so Nimai and I went for another kite lesson this afternoon, and I had a kite foiling session after Nimai left. Best session ever, staying mostly upwind. If I hadn't crashed, I would have stayed upwind completely. That's a major milestone! Do any of you active people record your activities on Strava? I'm on there if you want to compare notes. Apart from kiting, my walking and bike riding is on there. Just getting used to being back on the bike, so just short rides for now.
Sunday 4th December 2022
As usual for a Sunday, today was the busiest day of the week attending both Cairns branches. The young Elders had their new friend Troyson attend 1st Branch today, and he came to our Temple Preparation class with the YSA, so I taught a slightly modified version of the lesson for him, which was about symbols, so it was an easy lesson to teach.
After Church I drove Brett to an appointment and also drove Troyson home. It was a bit of a fun drive - the rain just bucketed down for the whole drive and then stopped when I got home. Troyson has only just arrived in Cairns and was finding it difficult to navigate me to where he was staying, but it gave us more time to chat. It was a good day!
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