On The Move

Whew! We have done it, we moved closer to the office. In fact we are only two blocks away. We can and have walked to work. We have also walked home for lunch, it is great. It took us several Saturday mornings of looking at apartments to find this one. We found another one equally close to the office that we really liked a lot, but we weren't selected. The rental market here is a bit bizarre. An apartment has a viewing time, usually 10 minutes long. And if you are late too bad, agents don't usually wait around. A whole bunch of people can show up to view it, one we went to had about 20 people to see it. If you like it you put in an application, there can be a lot of people who want it so there can be many applicants. Then the agent who represents the owner in the whole thing gives the applications to the owner and the owner chooses who will live there. If it is a nice place there are more people who want it, some go quickly, others sit. The first one we wanted we didn't understand the process very well and the argent didn't understand renting to a corporation, the church. The agents can sway the owners because they meet the people and the owners don't. 

Our new place is nice. I'm thrilled to tell you it is air conditioned, after last summer it was high on my priority list. We were able to move the king size bed we inherited from the Miles, it just fit. We were so grateful to four strong young missionaries who helped us for a few hours and Elder and Sister Hansen who also helped. Elder and Sister Hansen moved into our place, they were just next door in the apartment we were in when we first came. That location works well for their assignment. 

Sister Hansen bought me the tulip painting you see in the living room or lounge as they say here. It was a thank you gift. I saw it at a store and really liked it, I told her about it and she went and bought it for me, I wish I could bring it home, but I won't, I hope whoever inherites it will like it too. In the picture of the outside of the apt. Building Ken is standing by where you go in to our little patio area. In one picture you can see a sign in the background that says Coles, that is a small grocery store. We call it the big refrigerator. Our fridge is so small we appreciate having a big one across the street.

Winter here is so lovely, day time temps in the seventies, very little humidity, cool nights and mornings, beautiful! Great walking weather and we plan to be doing more of that now we have a much, much shorter commute to work!

Joyful June

Our mission had a goal, 100 baptisms In the month of June. There has been a real can do attitude as the missionaries took this goal to heart. Everyone worked hard, they found, taught and loved 105 people into the waters of baptism. When President Hamula toured the mission in May he told President Henderson we could baptise 100 people a month. This has never been done in this mission, it is usually around sixty. The missionaries experienced many miracles in their finding and the wards and stakes stepped it up. There was a special fast held for missionary work, challenges were made and met. Multiple members of families were baptised on the same day.

We have not been on the front lines but we have been at Command Central, doing what we can to help. One of those things is entering the baptism forms into the CDE program. CDE stands for Convert Data Enrty. We know that behind each of the forms is a person, a child of God. Each form is a story. The form lists the birth place of the person being baptised. They are from everywhere, all around the world, several from China, New Zealand, England, Sri Lanka, Iran, Philippines, even the U.S. As they are entered it is easy to wonder about that particular person and their conversion story. If you have any interest check out the Mission blog, you will find individual stories there. Australiabrisbanemission.com.

Here is a picture. This is what 105 baptism forms looks like. They are usually entered in batches of five to eight. We were blessed with a couple relatively quiet days in the office to complete this task by the deadline. We have dedicated, wonderful missionaries in the Australia Brisbane Mission and 105 new members of the church in Queensland! Hooray for Israel!!!