They're everywhere!

After three days we left for Australia. We first flew into Brisbane and then drove down to Coolangatta (part of what is considered the Gold Coast) for a Pacific Area Public Affairs Seminar.  We met with our counterparts that are serving in Sydney and Melbourne, the Merrills and the Lloyds, and the Assistant Director of Public Affairs, Elder Robert J. Dudfield, for a few days.

Traveling for most of three weeks from Apia (Samoa) and Pago Pago (American Samoa) to Wellington (New Zealand) and Coolangatta and Sydney (Australia) was both exhilarating and exhausting. We felt like we were everywhere. As we entered the airport at Coolangatta a man looked at our missionary badges and told another close by, "They're everywhere!"

Beautiful Gold Coast in Coolangatta

The shrimp were huge.  Took up the whole plate. Tasted a little like lobster! Notice the eyes!

Kookaburra just outside our window.

Australian Outback Spectacular: We enjoyed a great evening with the group attending a a great show. We enjoyed outback food while donning our cowboy/girl hats. 

Love these hardworking, devoted missionaries and PA leader, Rob Dudfield.  Unfortunately Rich Hunter was home sick with a kidney stone.

For the three days we were there, names were drawn from a bowl determining who would present their previously prepared book report on a book that is applicable to Public Affairs. Books shared were Organize Tomorrow Today - Selk, The Color Code - Hartman, The Four Agreements - Ruiz, Crucial Conversations - Patterson, The Resilient Farmer - Avery,  212 Degrees - Parker  ,  When Helping Hurts - Fikkert & Corbett, The Outward Mindset - The Arbinger Institute,  I Will Lead You Along, The Life of Henry B. Eyring -  Eyring and Eaton, and Thank You for Being Late - Friedman.

As part of the seminar we discussed area outreach and now plan to arrange one Area Presidency member contact with a government leader each month.  Not an easy task because of their time limitations while they are traveling each weekend.

JM -  For two full days we were taught by Elder Robert Dudfield, an Area Seventy (center of back row with yellow shirt). Elder Dudfield is the Assistant Director of Public Affairs in the Pacific Area.
Suffering from a kidney stone, our Director, Rich Hunter, wasn't able to be with us. We missed him and his wisdom terribly, but we learned a great deal and got to meet and interact with our counterparts in Australia. That was a real blessing!

We stayed in a Crowne Plaza hotel a few blocks from the beach. Our room had a view of the ocean so there weren't many times (only when we were asleep) that we were in our room when we weren't gazing out at the beach.

Gold Coast sunrise

Three amigos enjoy a beach walk. Jim, Elder Pinson and Elder Thomsen

One morning we got up early and went for a walk on the beach. It is a beautiful white sand beach that stretches for miles in both directions. What a great way to start the day.

The Australian Outback Spectacular was really quite fun. Using horses, they told some of the history (mostly 20th century) of Australia. If you go, don't think you are going for the food, though.

We were saddened to leave beautiful Coolangatta and our new friends, but Wednesday afternoon it was time to catch a flight to Sydney. Paying our own way we spent two days and three nights in Sydney. Our room at the Sydney Marriott Harbor Hotel in Circle Quay had an opera house and partial harbor view. It was spectacular!

View outside our hotel window

We toured the opera house and purchased tickets for that night to a one person show there. That evening we walked to the opera house for the show. The atmosphere was wonderful as we walked along the harbor, passing sidewalk restaurants along the way.

Sydney Opera House

Harbour Bridge near Opera House

Bernadette Robinson performed impressions of many female singers like Judy Garland, Barbra Streisant, Patsy Kline, etc.  She had a wonderful voice and it was a very enjoyable evening.

Electronic Kiosk in the plaza walking towards the Opera House. Wonderful conversion stories are coming out of this production.

While in Sydney we took a ferry to Darling Harbour and walked to the market. The walk was interesting as we passed many very modern and architecturally interesting buildings. We bought a few things for the grand kids, but the market was mostly disappointing (poor quality of the merchandise).

Another day we took a ferry to Manly Beach while some of the others with whom we were traveling went to the zoo or Bondi Beach. Although it was a nice beach, the weather was chilly so we just walked along the sidewalk and enjoyed the view.

One day we walked through the Royal Botanic Gardens to Macquarie's chair. It was a lovely (but long) walk that would have been much shorter if we had found the shortcut on the way rather than on the way back.

It was nice to stay at the Marriott because we ran into several Americans. One family was headed to Hamilton, NZ, to pick up their daughter who had been serving in the visitors center. We learned that he is a dentist and had purchased his practice in Delta that had been owned by a friend of ours in Draper. He also knew Roger and Kay Stowell. Roger was my first boss when I worked at Salt Lake City Corporation. 

After enjoying Sydney for two days we headed home to a hoped-for recovery from our travels.

I am now referred to as "The lady that's married to the man with the striped socks". Jim may or may not take a little liberty in his sock selections.  Teehee!

As we are about to enter the fourth quarter of 2017, we are beginning to assess what we have accomplished in 2017 and establish plans and goals for 2018. We began that process with some internal discussions with our co-workers the Pinsons under the direction of Rich Hunter.

Among many other things, we decided we want to increase the number of unique visitors to our websites and increase the number of articles the media picks up from Mormon Newsroom NZ.
We also want to fight a bill introduced into Parliament in NZ to legalize assisted suicide. We are involved in declaring to the Parliament the Church's position on this.

Last Saturday in Hamilton we met with Tim MacIndoe, an Anglican and a member of Parliament, to discuss having LDS and Catholic youth present a bill to Parliament opposing euthanasia. Tim has agreed to lead the opposition.

We learned what is entailed in a bill going through Parliament and how we can have input into the process, including from first reading, public submissions, whole house committee, and so on.  As we met with him, we were impressed that Tim MacIndoe is a good friend of the Church and he shares many of the same values we do.

Traditional marriage is under attack in Australia. The Church has combined with several other faiths to oppose the legalization legalizing same sex marriage and Public Affairs is involved in that opposition as well.

We want to annually invite and then arrange for two members of the media from the Pacific to be hosted by the Church Public Affairs dept. to visit SLC, BYU, etc.

Our Public Affairs team in Samoa is still working hard on developing better relationships with Samoan villages that are not allowing religious freedom.  We're targeting 5 specific villages for 2018 and think we will make some progress there. All in all, when we left we felt that our time was put to good use there. We were all ears as we heard Elder Haleck speak at General Conference and shared an experience of a village chief in Samoa that had developed a good relationship with the Church recently.  It's exciting to see these relationships develop in the smaller islands.

Many of you know who  Brother James Hamula is.  He is a well-loved person here in the Pacific, having served here as Area President for three years. Something he said recently was so very applicable to each of us. "I want to be remembered as one who returned through grace." I echo those words.  So do I.