Ice, animals that kill and ironing

Max claims that ice is one of his favourite things - that are see through - I'd like to know what the others are.

Max asked me what my favourite animal that can kill people is - I said an elephant - he looked nonplussed and said that his is an Eastern Brown Snake. So there you go.

Max also ironed his own clothes for church this morning - dressed himself -and tied his own tie. It was an interesting look.

Mt Warning

After much toing and froing over where to go we finally settled on Mt Warning. It seemed to have most of the requirements - somewhere we hadn't been before, fresh water to swim in, campfires allowed at the campsite, toilets, and not too hot.

And the camp grounds advertising banner said 'tranquility and beauty'. I can't vouch for the tranquil part - it may have been before we arrived - but it was beautiful. There was a stream running right near our campsite. We suspect that most of the time it would be more of a rocky gully but with all the recent rains it was running beautifully and sounded like it was raining all night.

Max was so pumped up by the whole idea of camping that he got stuck into all the setting up straight away.

As soon as we were set up the three little ones went swimming in the creek - which was cold. Max's swim didn't last long.

We went on a little bushwalk and settled in for the night with a campfire.

The campground had a snake show - which I think was designed to scare everyone away from bushwalking. It sounds like snakes are everywhere and ready to leap out and attack you and kill you. Jesse didn't want to go to the toilet without a compression bandage from then on - just in case.

Everyone except Jesse and Alec held the snake - they claim they weren't scared - they had just held so many snakes they didn't see the point.

The snake - Janey - loved Max and coiled itself right around him. Louisa was the first to try - very brave I think.

We drove into Byron Bay for lunch - where a butterfly took a particular liking to Louisa and was happy to just sit on her face while she walked around - Max had a go too. Sadly, but hilariously, when they let it go a minor bird swooped down in front of them and ate it.

We also had a swim, and a walk to the eastern most point of Australia - which is at the Lighthouse.

Since we mucked around so long we were late getting back to the campsite - so dinner was very late. While we waited for it to cook Roger gave rope tying lessons to Louisa, Max, Peet and Jesse. Then Louisa gave a lesson to Alec.

We left on Thursday - Australia Day was on Saturday - and apparently the campground- which was not that big - was expecting 400 -500 people for the weekend. Mt Warning is the first place to see the sunrise in Australia, which is cool I'm sure, but we were glad to leave early.

We had a lovely time -and this was the first time that it was pretty easy for me. Though we all noticed that we didn't really have a very little kid anymore - and that was a bit sad. We also missed Tom - he wrote not so long ago that he missed and appreciated camping trips. Funny that it's still so much fun even though we have no one living near us and have all the peace and quiet at home - and even have a campfire very often. There's just something extra nice about sleeping in tents - we always remember Nephi writing about his father Lehi in the Book of Mormon saying 'my father dwelt in a tent' and think about how calming it is to be in a tent - albeit a lightweight, weatherproof tent.

Thomas News

Yes, I now have gloves and a hat. I got them last week and am now very warm. But really, it's not even below 0 degrees at the moment (positive 1 to be exact). And really, not cold at all, considering the fact that there is snow around. It's actually the warmest winter on record. It's really somewhat surreal.

To make things even stranger, a couple of days ago, Elder Rasmussen and I are getting ready to leave the apartment, and we see a light in the kitchen. Presuming that we left a light on, we proceeded to fiddle with the light switch to try and turn the light off. We later found out that this light was actually... the sun. Yep, we've had so much cloud cover the last few days that even natural sunlight seems alien to us.

I should clarify last week's analogy, the man we were teaching spoke in English. I agree it would have been really cool to have done that in Russian. But to me, the fact that I pretty much pulled that one out of the air was enough for me. I still believe the spirit lead me in that incident. The sad part is, we had him saying he was going to come to church but on that day his mother went into hospital. He came after church and we had a talk to him, but since then it has been difficult to get in contact with him.

Well, a couple of good experiences this week. To answer your question about seeing President Watterson, he even joined us on a teaching appointment. That man is a spiritual giant. Every zone conference I see him give the same teaching example. More than once I admit, I have found myself thinking "can that example actually work? I'm not so sure." Then in our appointment, he uses that exact model. The spirit was strong in that lesson, one of the two people we were teaching- a teenage girl who just happened to be there that night- was staunch in her atheism. After everything said, she replied with "I don't believe". What was strange, though, was that as we went through the lesson, she seemed to become more desperate in that claim. Something was penetrating. Something was breaking down the so-called "invincible" barrier of atheism. I think something very potent was planted in her heart.

That night I learned so much about teaching with the spirit and inviting it into the lesson than I ever had.

Second highlight of this week was zone conference. The whole day was focused on the one word: Vision. What do we want to bring to the Baltics? The answer being: Stakes and Wards. But something that I found really interesting was to do with perspective. Particularly when it comes to contacting and tracting. Asking yourself "is this person going to change his life with my help? Or the help I can give him with the spirit?" It really helps me to think hard on what I am going to do, and helps me to pick my street contacts better.

Third highlight: We now have a flat. It's lacking an Ironing board amongst other things at the moment, but it is our home, and Elder Rasmussen and I love it. We're very close to a couple of Tram stops which is convenient as trams are one of the major forms of transport here (along with buses and trolleybuses, a sort of bus/tram hybrid, which I will have to show you in a picture one day).

Final highlight: English class. Elder Rasmussen has been feeling VERY sick lately. So last night, he bunked up with a sick Latvian missionary while the other Latvian and I took care of English. It was a good class, and the spiritual thought was amazing. Only one woman, Irena, early 30s, stayed back, but the spirit there was incredible. She asked many questions (sign of one who wants to understand) and in the end she said that she thought our religion was really good. A good start, considering that she isn't technically an investigator.

Floods at Clermont

Clermont is flooded-in a big way. Properties are flooded in and needing airlifts of food etc. Helicopters are doing runs with graziers to cut fences to let stock through to dry ground. Alinya (which was my grandparents property) has knee deep water through the house- and they have no way out. Sam & Ross are fine though Ross's sorghum paddock looks like a river. Matt & Floss had water right through their paddock and under the house, but it's receding now.

The old Alinya homestead was close to the Belyando River so it flooded often and Grandma Thomas would just keep cooking on the wood stove - wading about in the flood waters.

These photos are from friends of Sam & Ross:

This one is Glenmore (Sam & Ross's place). Their house is the smaller of the two homesteads.

Power of Positive Thinking

Jesse had an engagement party to go to on Saturday night -flattered as she was by the invitation she was a bit nervous about going since she didn't think she'd know anyone. So she spent the day at Cedar Creek wishing she could hurt herself. She should have wished more specifically - when she and Peet were at the top waterfall Peet asked for a push and Jesse obliged - and broke her toe. Not badly enough to stay home from the party - but pretty sore.

Toothless

Max lost his third tooth today - in the middle of sacrament meeting. He was practically cheering and caused quite a stir.

Note the blood on the collar.

Before we left for church we were reading 1 Nephi 3 - 5 for Louisa's Primary Class- when we got to the bit where Lehi discovers he is descended from Joseph and that Laban is too, Louisa was aghast - 'you mean Nephi killed his own relative!' Max sagely answered 'Louisa, he was really wicked and he was going to die sometime anyway.'

Cedar Creek Falls - again

Since Jesse did my school working bee for me on Thursday we had time to go somewhere on Saturday - so after much deliberation (which seems to be our family specialty) we decided to go the Cedar Creek Falls again.

This time we all walked up the creek together - which was a bad idea. Peet was determined to lead the way - which would have been fine - except that he is a bit more nimble than me and kept telling me the way was easy - when it was not. The kids, of course, are like little mountain goats and go up and over anything, while the more mature members of the family lag behind. We made it to the falls exhausted and hot which was lucky because the water was like ice - so you needed to be desperate to cool down to get in at all.

Peet and Jesse went straight into the waterfall - Jesse reckons it felt like Everest! They were both gasping for breath when they came out.

The rest of us made it in - eventually - and it was truly crisp and refreshing. Max got out pretty quickly - he feels the cold more than anyone else.

Louisa saw an eel - apparently it was a beautiful one - if there is such a thing.

Roger and the kids climbed up to the next level where they saw dragonflies..

tadpoles...

and another waterfall to slide down - Max wouldn't go down because he didn't want to get cold again.

There were idiot teenage boys jumping off enormous cliffs - entertaining for us even if they were risking death. I was thinking they were stupid when it occurred to me that in all likelihood both my husband and my brother had done the same thing - Roger later said that yes he had done it. And I suppose that if Alec was with us he would have been up there too.

Alec went 4 wheel driving on the forestry tracks at Kenilworth. In spite of Rogers warnings that his universal joints needed replacing soon he went up and down 30 degree slopes, through heaps of mud and over creek crossings - and went to bed that night a very happy boy.