M&M Haley Mission

Sunday, 10 June 2018

Monday, 4 June - Ah yes, it is early morning seminary day again. Sister Haley and Elder Haley will be administering the mid-year assessment on Tuesday & Wednesday, since Sister Kerry Arthur will be having some dental work done those days. We were able to talk with Heather, Simon & Makeda this morning via video chat for a bit. Sister Haley is now over at the Monday declutter project. Sister Haley spent all day running the declutter lady around town for doctor, scripts, etc. Elder Haley is doing ironing, wash and updating the blog. Then more tasks around the flat. We are waiting to hear if Beth Norman has delivered Emma yet. Beth went into hospital Sunday at 3pm to have the birth induced, but we have not heard if Emma is out and still clinging to the insides of her mum 😎😕😝😥 Elder Haley to meet Clive at the bank later this afternoon to make the tithing deposit since we had coins in the tithing receipts and we cannot deposit coins through the ATM. Autumn has really struck here in Grafton - low of 48F and high of 70F. Since we do not have any central heat we do turn on the space heaters in the bedroom and living room.

Tuesday, 5 June Early morning seminary was cancelled due to the illness of our seminary student. Sister Haley spent more time with the declutter lady, running her around town for more doctor meetings, etc. We had a taxi ride cancelled and Primary Presidency meeting cancelled, so we hit the grocery store for food that we will need this Sunday for the branch luncheon. We received word that Beth Norman gave birth to Emma Helen Norman at 3 minutes after midnight today. Hurrah, it is about time Emma decided to come out into the world.

Wed, 6 June - we administered the Seminary mid-year Assessment. The Seminary student, Arielle, did very well on the assessment. We are really proud of her and her teacher, Kerry Arthur. Mike talked with his mum after seminary. Then home for brekky. We headed for hospital after brekky to see Emma. Home for lunch. Then play taxi for one of the sisters. Then to the meetinghouse for the Wednesday Primary activity. Home for dinner and then back for Young Women (YW). The girls are working on Family History tonight. For their personal progress activity they need to log in at least 12 hours on Family History. They are putting Elder Haley to shame - he has to get his act together.

Thur, 7 June - FHC in the morning and then head off for Newcastle (a 5 hour drive). The Zone Conference is scheduled for Friday, 8 June, and we want to attend it as it will be the last Zone Conference we will have with President & Sister Checketts. There will be a change of Mission Presidents on 1 July 2018. We will make a short stop in Coffs Harbour to pick up a collectible Omega watch that belonged to Mike's dad and is being rebuilt by a watch repair person there. It will be nice to have the watch back and working. Then on to Newcastle with a short stop at Heatherbrae's pies - we got a fruit pie and not a meat pie this time. Got to the motel at about 7pm and Mike was glad to stop driving.

Fri, 8 June - We stayed for the entire zone conference this time, as President Checketts was going to give his training last. The Zone leaders and Sister Checketts taught first about the new Chapter 8 in Preach My Gospel. Sister & Elder Haley participated more today than we have in the past. We also received training on sharing our testimonies on Fast & Testimony Sunday - NO MORE than 2 minutes and make sure whatever you talked about was tied back to the 5 main principles of our testimony- Jesus is the Christ, we have a loving Heavenly Father, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saint is His Church, The Book of Mormon is the word of God, Joseph Smith was a prophet and we still have prophets today. I do bear witness that each of these 5 are true. I am so very thankful that we do have a loving Heavenly Father and a Saviour, Jesus Christ, who are loving and patient with us as go through this life trying to be more like them - picking us up and brushing away the dust as we stumble along the way towards them (we must never give up). President Checketts talked about our journey and the 8 steps that we go through as we live, learn and follow the Saviour towards being like Him. We left the Charlestown meetinghouse around 4 pm and headed back to Grafton. We stopped at Heatherbrae's pies and had a meat pie for dinner and a fruit pie for dessert. We also picked up a large fruit pie for the Youth to eat after their video fireside with President Nelson. We finally got home around 10:30 pm ( a short 6 hour drive for those who have a problem with a 20 minute drive to the stake centre).

Sat, 9 June - We spent most of the day cooking and baking for the youth fireside to be held at President Norman's on Sunday and for the potluck at the branch after Church meetings. We made a meatball bake that Margaret found in an Austrlian cooking magazine - it was really tasty, by the way.

Sun, 10 June - We had President & Sister Sadler visit the branch today. President Sadler is one of the District Presidency counselors. Then we had the feed after our meetings. Elder Haley spent the 2nd and 3rd hours with Primary, which has become his normal routine for Sunday. We took Pearce out to the Paewai farm after the youth fireside. The farm is about 30 minutes from our house, and is south of Grafton. It is fairly close to Joyce Wallbank's place on Arora Road. Karl Paewai, one of the sons, gave us a tour of the farm and explained what they were raising or growing. They are trying to become self supporting and it looks like they will do well.