M&M Haley Mission

Sunday, 10 Sep 2017

Monday, 4 Sep - Margaret is over at one of the Sister's homes helping de-clutter some more of her house. We took over several glass jars so she can store her food in them instead of plastic containers which are eaten through by mice. I found the e-waste depot and dropped off several DVD players that were being stored at our house. Then I have started laundry and hung up the bed sheets on the clothes line. Time to go do some ironing until it is time to pick up Margaret. Then we will run a few more errands in town. It was a quiet FHE today - Just the two of us. We usually try to watch a video from LDS.org.

Tuesday, 5 Sep - Today at the Prmary/Youth activity day the boys played Cricket and the girls worked upstairs with Margaret on some things, plus they fixed the snacks that we have each week. This was my first time to play Cricket. It is heaps different than US Baseball and was interesting to learn some of the basic rules. I was able to play out in the field to catch the ball if it were hit there, was the bowler (pitcher) and then did a little batting. Sister Norman joined us about half way through the game. No YM tonight as they YM (both of them) were sick with the flu.

Wednesday, 6 Sep - Talked with Mom Haley as usual in the morning - it sure is nice to have such technology things as Skype/Viber/Wechat. This helps us keep in contact with our parents, children & grandchildren while serving our mission - it is quite a blessing. We did not have District Training this week since the young Elders were down south for transfer day. We will be keeping Elder Gibb and getting a new companion for him. Elder Ta'ala has been transferred since he has been here for quite some time - He is a good misisonary. One of the sisters was to have outpatient surgery today, so we went over to see how it went. Miraculously she did not have to have the surgery, so we just chatted for a few minutes and then went on our way - after leaving a small lunch for her. We then went to an auto repair place and paid a bill for one of the members, so they could have their wind screen fixed. While in the area we stopped by another sister's place to meet her family since we will be going over to her place next week for dinner. Then off for our Wednesday afternoon Book of Mormon study with some of the YM; however,they were still under the weather with Flu so we just said "hi" & dropped off a few cookies.

Thursday, 7 Sep - Today we drove down to Dirty Creek to spend a few hours with one of the branch members and have lunch with him. We were able to learn more about his family, drop off some temple/family history cards that we performed the work for last month and keep the cards that we had not been able to work on for the next trip to the Brisbane Temple. Then we drove back towards Grafton and visited with one of the sisters who lives out in the country about half way between Dirty Creek and Grafton. We had a good visit and left a few cookies and a spiritual message with the sister.
Later in the evening we went to YW, but it was cancelled because the YW leader's son was sick and she was not able to make it. The Flu is really getting around the neighborhood in Grafton.

Friday, 8 Sep - This morning Mike went grocery shopping for one of the families in the branch. Then he went back grocery shopping for us. We are stocking up on food as we have a weekend guest coming in and we will have the missionaries over for Sunday dinner. Zizi Xu from the Hyde Park YSA ward is traveling around parts of Australia before she leaves for New Zealand and will be spending the weekend with us. Zizi joined the Church in January, 2017 and is growing quite strong in her testimony of Jesus Christ's Gospel. We picked Zizi up at the Grafton rail station at 5 pm today. It is so good to see her and have her stay with us for a few days. We took her to our home for a quick dinner and then over to the Branch meeting house for Movie Night. We saw "The Cokeville Miracle" which is based upon a real hostage incident in 1986 in Cokeville, Wyoming. Then home and sleep. Tomorrow will be a full day.

Saturday, 9 Sep - The tradesman, Paul, arrived at 8 am to put in the bathroom window screen and then fix the hole that the oven was sitting in. He had made a frame and came to install the frame around the oven. The part of the wall that the oven sits in was open all the way to the rafters in the roof, so we asked him to block off the top so we did not have such an up/down draft which was causing the oven to fluctuate in temperature. He did that and then installed the frame - now it looks finished and we hope the oven will keep a more even temperature. Then the 3 of us (Me, Margaret & Zizi) piled into the car and headed for Brooms Head which is on the ocean. On the way, we saw a sign selling sugar cane mulch and since Margaret had never eaten sugar cane we went up to the farm house to see if we could buy some. I talked with a older man who pointed to the sugar cane field near us and said "There it is, go help yourself". I told him that the field did not belong to me and I did not want to steal any sugar cane. He said the field belonged to his son-in-law and that they were planting sugar cane at the moment, and would we like to go see how that was done - YOU BET WE DID. So we followed Bryan (his name) to field and got to see how sugar cane is planted. We also got to see how sugar cane is harvested and prepared for planting. The farmer uses a machine similar to a corn picker to pick the sugar cane and cut the stalk into 1 foot lengths. The cane has "eyes" on it similar to potatoes. The stalk is planted into the ground and and new stalks of sugar cane grow from the eyes. It takes 2 years for the sugar cane to grow to maturity and be ready for harvest. We were given a full stalk of sugar cane and also one of the cuttings that would be planted. We met several of the farm hands and spent 45-60 minutes with them. They were SO NICE AND FRIENDLY to us USA yokels. We learned a lot and met some nice people. They asked what we were doing out in the middle of no where and we explained about our serving a mission for the Church in Grafton.
Bryan then took us into Lawrence so we could catch the ferry across the Clarence River and continue on our journey to Brooms Head. We stopped in Maclean for lunch at the Fishing coop and then on to Brooms Head. At Brooms Head we took a detour to the Brooms Head Lookout where we were able to see some beautiful ocean/beach scenery. We also were able to "almost" shake hands with a kangaroo that was moving around one of the camp sites. Then we meandered on over to the Brooms Head beach and walked on the rocky part of the beach for awhile. Then we headed home for dinner and sleep.

Sunday, 10 Sep - We got up early. Mike had a 0730 Branch Presidency meeting and then Margaret/Mike attended the Branch Council meeting. Zizi came with Margaret at 0830 and she met a number of the members and talked up a storm. Sacrament meeting talks were good - one sister talked about being of the world, but not in it, and the other sister talked about honesty and gave a great story about being honest with her tithing. The Lord will take care of you if you will keep your covenants and promises. After Church we went home and finished preparing dinner. Most of dinner was already done as Margaret made a pork loin/pumpkin crockpot meal - it was good and was a recipe that she had gotten from our daughter, Brea. The Elders (Gibb & Corpany) arrived around 4:30 pm and we made quick work on the pork loin. The Elders left us with a message and then headed on their way. Zizi spent the evening packing and getting ready to go on to Byron Bay then next morning. Margaret and I watched two of the Face2Face videos by the Piano Guys and Lindsey Stirling. We gave the web link to Zizi as she did not know about the Face2Face firesides.