The Road to Wollongong

The work in the office continues at a brisk pace and we are learning all of our detailed duties.  Each day there are some new challenges.  Elder Feil is becoming an astute bookkeeper/accountant, bill payer and communicator with realtors (for potential leasing of flats for missionaries), medical offices (to pay bills for injured or sick missionaries), mail delivery boy, and occasional irritant to the financial workers next door. Oh, well, I will get better as I repent and learn all the ropes.  Sister Feil is becoming a crack shot at letter writing and tracking arriving and departing missionaries.  She always welcomes missionaries to the office when they arrive for meetings or other business and has only lost track of one missionary who barely spoke english and whose flight was re-routed through Brisbane due to heavy fog in Sydney. But, he finally arrived safe and sound, even though tired.  The mission president and his wife travel hundreds of miles throughout the mission in order to visit the missionaries, teach at Zone Conferences, address issues with wards, stakes, branches and districts.  Then there's the time required to deal with the mission being split starting July 1st.  We see their itinerary and  throughout their travels  we become acquainted with the magical, entertaining and unique names of places in New South Wales like Ulladulla, Katoomba, Narooma, Leura, Wooloomooloo.  And with that in mind we decided to visit Wollongong for our weekly adventure.  The photos above show the beautiful sights that we saw, including a visit along the beaches of the Tasman Sea.  Though it's winter here, the water is not as cold as the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans.

Not only did we think it's a beautiful area, there were three wedding parties that agreed and were capturing their wedding memories as the sun set on the harbour at Wollongong.  The beaches and harbour are surrounded by unusual evergreen trees and pelicans abound.  We ended our visit at Wollongong with an excellent dinner at a local restaurant overlooking the harbor and it only set us back $ 50 AUD.
If anyone's interested, Molly still feeds the missionaries-last Sunday 3 hungry missionaries followed by 3 more today.  It's very enjoyable to have the missionaries in our home.  They bring a great spirit with them and remind us why we are here.  We are now ready to begin another busy week in the office.  We are ready to welcome new missionaries to the area who will help advance the work of the Lord.  And we are ready to say farewell to those who have faithfully served for the past two years.  The cycle of missionary life goes on.