Post mission report No 2

 Friday 24 November 2023

The past week we have been on the road again.

The floors at Archimedes Ave are being sanded and refinished, so we can’t be there while all that work is being done. We moved everything from the rest of the house in to our bedroom so the floors in all the other rooms can be worked on, and then when we move everything back in to the house from the shipping container, and out of our bedroom, we can get the floors done in our bedroom, so that they match the rest of our house.

So, last Monday and Tuesday nights we stayed with Miriam and Taylor at The Gurdies, the we stayed Wednesday night with Stephanie Woodford back in Geelong, and last night and tonight we are staying with Josie Whalebone at her new house in Bacchus Marsh.

Today we had lunch with Ros Richardson, and old friend of Margot’s whom she served with as a Stake Missionary way back in Normanhurst Ward when they were both young and single. We had a nice lunch and a good chat. Ros’s husband, Craig, passed away while we were in Cairns, so we had a lot of news to catch up on with her.

Saturday 25th November

We did a bit of work around the house for Josie this morning. While we were away, Josie sold her house in in Darley (a suburb of Bacchus Marsh) and bought a unit closer in to the main Bacchus Marsh shopping centre. Lots of people in the Melton First Ward help Josie, but it has been good for us to be here with here.

Margot and I have enjoyed our morning walks here in Bacchus Marsh, with the area that Josie lives in being quite hilly. We usually listen to a Come Follow Me podcast or General Conference talks while we walk, so we are learning something while we exercise. I remember reading some report on some research a while ago that said that you actually remember more if you listen to something like that while you are exercising rather than just sitting and listening.

Tonight we went to the Saturday evening session of Stake Conference with President  Peter F Meurs  presiding. He was accompanied by Elder Paul Whippy, an Area Authority Seventy. I think the major thing we learned about was an initiative from the First Presidency to inspire us to be more reverent on Sundays, with better preparation for sacrament, greetings in the foyer rather than the Chapel, and more focus on the ordinance of the Sacrament.

On Saturday evening we returned to sleep at Stephanie’s the night. We stopped in at our house to check the progress of the floor sanding and refinishing, and it’s not finished yet, so it looks like we’ll be spending a few more days at Stephanie’s.

Sunday 26th November 2023

We arrived at Conference early this morning, hoping to get a seat close to the front.

It was a really wonderful conference session, with the Primary choir singing at the start and at the end of the meeting. The highlight for me though, was Elder Meurs telling the conversion story of his parents (whom I knew years ago in Blackburn/Doncaster ward) in Warrnambool.

Fred and Lois Meurs met in the UK and married there, or in the Netherlands, where he was from (can’t remember that detail). When they came to Australia to live, they moved to Warrnambool, where Lois was from. He was raised a catholic and she a methodist, so they decided to study the New Testament together and try to work out which Church they should go to. They came up with a  list of questions and wanted answers to the questions. They visited a Catholic priest and couldn’t get the answers to their questions and they visited a Methodist minister and he couldn’t answer them either. So they prayed for help and then some LDS missionaries knocked on their door and answered all their questions. Lois and Fred were the first members of the Church in Warrnambool. I don’t know all their kids, but one son is a General Authority and one is currently a mission president in Pakistan.  The ironic part of the story is that just in the previous week, the missionaries,  Elders Jones and Eriksonn, had asked the mission president if he could transfer them to some place where they might have some success, but he felt impressed to leave them there as he knew that he had sent them there for a reason.

Maybe I didn’t get all the details, but the basics of the story are right.

After conference we went back to Steph’s place, and Jane Harper was visiting her, so we had wonderful afternoon talking, and having a game of Scrabble, which Margot won of course. (Margot has a daily game of Scrabble on an app on her phone, and she plays at the highest level and usually wins).