Ceff Mission Blog

Monday, March 6 – Sunday, March 12, 2023 After about 50 reports—this is number 51—I’m starting to get a bit tired of writing, to be honest. You might have noticed they’ve been getting shorter. Between the blog, podcast, YouTube, and social media, I’m already spending a lot of time behind a computer. So I figured I’d try talking it through instead. Not sure if it’s better, but we’ll see how it goes. (Note: Since going back and editing this blog, in preparation for getting it printed, I copied the transcript of the above video report, then Margot edited this one manually. I tried to do one but it was way too slow, so subsequent ones I ran through ChatGPT, which saved an enormous amount of time) Monday, March 6 On Monday, we had our seniors’ council meeting over Zoom. That’s with all the senior missionaries in the mission, along with the mission president and the senior zone leaders—who are based down in Brisbane, about 1,700 kilometres away. It’s always a good meeting—really enjoyab...

Here we are with Elder Harry Roberts and his comp for the day, whose name slips my mind,  but I remember he is from Tonga. I've done my third mission video report, so you should be able to click the link and see it.  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqDJ8xqpcIM1JQPfR4cUsquRAs1ylHO0DJ0ss00/    Getting way less views on my new reports than I did with my old written reports. Is that because people just don't like taking 10-20 minutes to watch a video, but can scan through a written report in 5 minutes? This weeks video report is only 10 minutes! Our first night at the Temple  in about 12 months Monday, March 13 Monday was Emma’s birthday—she’s a member here in Cairns Second Branch. We dropped by with a small pack of homemade chocolate chip cookies. I say “we,” but really my wife made them. Other than that, it was a fairly quiet day. I think I might have gone kiting, but I’d have to check the calendar to be sure. I’ve been getting better with the hydrofoiling—able to ...

Early last week we had 5" of rain in a 24 hour period.  It caused a minor landslide on the other side of our creek,  where we keep our bins. This is Sister Kimi'ia with the brekky  she made for us Monday, March 6, 2023 This week we had the real estate agent come and do an inspection of our unit. I think they’re supposed to happen quarterly, but this is the first one we’ve had in about a year. When we first moved up here, the place was actually up for sale, so the real estate salesman—Nikolai, who’s the son of the lady who manages the rentals—was here almost every week running open houses. It was a bit of a pain at the time, but he’s a really nice guy, and the whole family that runs the agency is lovely. Apparently, he’d already told his mum, Kathy, that she didn’t need to worry because we keep the place spotless. Even so, we spent the whole day cleaning—probably went a bit overboard, to be honest. Kathy arrived later in the afternoon, around 4:30. She had a quick wande...

After doing 48 reports I'm getting tired of writing. You might have noticed that I'm getting briefer. I'm just looking back over the last week. On Monday the 27th we had a seniors Council and that was a Zoom meeting with all the other senior missionaries in the mission and our Mission president and his wife. There is a pair of senior Zone leaders and they're based down in Brisbane so they are only 1700 kilometers away which is why we have a Zoom meeting. In the evening we went to our friend Tara's place for dinner and if you've been reading my blog you would have heard me talk about Tara. She is the most amazing member missionary. She ministers to so many people and usually by having them over for a meal. She does that regularly and oftentimes with another family and elders so she can have over twenty people in her small living room. On Tuesday we had a district council meeting. It is led by the District leader and at the moment it is Elder Hamilton. He is a...