Love Pictures

Climbing a giant termite mound. They are huge and get a lot bigger than that

We go exploring a bit on pdays and we found just an old car that we climbed in

Just a cute abo girl named Serafina

At our christmas party. One is Pres Dawes and the other Janusz

Christmas 2011

Hello family,

It was great to be able to see you all on Skype. you are all looking good and fit.  It would have been nicer to have a bit longer but it is all good.  I hope you enjoyed it. Definitely a good Christmas present.  After I talked to you we had a little party with our branch presidency. We ate some food and had a couple presents to open.  Then we basically went around picking up food from people that day because a lot of people told us to come on Christmas and they would feed us. Our fridge is full now. yes! ha.

We found out just last night that we got another transfer here in Tennant creek, very exciting.  This area gets shut down and open up a lot so it is good to still have some time to be here.

I think Derek may have experienced torrential rain in Peru also.  We had some this week. We were riding our bikes down the main road when all of the sudden it started to bucket down rain. We got under some shelter before we were completely soaked but the rain lasted a long time and we were already pretty wet so we decided we would go back to the flat in the rain. I know we aren’t supposed to swim as missionary's but we might as well have. We were soaked. We are in the rainy season so it rains quite a bit which makes it humid and hotter.

The library that we usually email at is closed till after the New Year so we are just using our presidents computer, so this is just a quick letter.

Well I love you. I’m glad you had a good Christmas.

Happy New Year!

love elder Hyde

AUSSIE TERM OF THE WEEK:

Have a yarn = sit down and talk with them, we ask them if they want to have a yarn with us about Christ.

Christmas Party, Training and a Camel

g'day family,

My week started out in Alice. We had our p day there. The elders that we stay with there are basically all islanders and they love rugby, so we play that every p day. They are trying to teach me how to get good at it but I think it is a lost cause. ha.  It is fun anyway though.  We stopped p day early to have our Christmas party.  We had it at the senior couple house.  They are from America and are way funny, the Nordfelts.  For the party we opened our packages, yours was the best. I wasn’t going to open them but I got pressured into it. ha.  We watched a Christmas movie, had a prime rib roast.  It was a good night.

We did another training while we were in Alice and as part of the training they were teaching us how to cook, because they don’t think we are eating very good or healthily. Sister Poulton showed us that we can cook pretty much anything in the microwave, like potato, egg, anything. We don’t cook a lot because we don’t really have that much time too. So that is why they were showing us quick ways to cook things.

On our way back from Alice, we saw a guy walking his camel in the middle of the desert.  He had it all packed up with luggage. That’s not something that you see everyday.

Well I am out of time. I love you and look forward to talking to you for Christmas.

love Elder Hyde

AUSSIE TERM OF THE WEEK:

fluke = lucky if you make a lucky shot in basketball than they call it a fluke.

Did I say it is HOT? Christmas service

Hey family,

Glad to hear that you had a good trip to Hawaii. It looks like I did get the packages, I took a peek at the senior couples house and I think they were there. Thanks

This may sound like a broken record but it is hot here. There is nothing like getting out of a cold shower and drying off, then 5 seconds later having to dry off again because of the sweat.

The people are a little bit hard to understand but not too bad.  They speak kind of like a pigeon English. It is pretty quick but for the most part you can understand. They also mix a few words of their language with English, so you have to learn them. For example they would say "look at that goonaba" which is dog. They just mix so you have to learn some of their words.

The Aborigine people are quite a bit different, they are hilarious. They like to relax in the shade and just enjoy life and the outdoors. They dress semi normal, very plain clothes, nothing fancy.

We do listen to music, just EFY and Mormon Tabernacle. The five hour car rides would be hard to make without being able to listen to something.

We have firesides each week where we invite people and we try and focus on getting the kids there and involved. So what we did for this last one was taught about faith and then had the kids stand up backwards on a chair and had them tip over. So they had to trust that whoever was behind them would catch them. It was pretty funny.  Then we have games for the kids after the lesson.

We did a service in Tennant on Saturday, and they had us cook a barbie.  We cooked over 1000 sausages, it was crazy. We cooked the barbie for a children’s Christmas party at the park and they had Santa there.  Santa came in on a sleigh with kangaroo pulling him instead of reindeer.

We sang for a local choir as well, that was interesting.

Well time is up.

Have a great week. Love you heaps.

love Elder Hyde

AUSSIE TERM OF THE WEEK:

mob = group of 2 or more people. We get called a mob a lot.  You could call a family a mob, its just a group.

More About Our Area, Visiting and Camping in Elliot

G'day family,

One of the biggest differences in our area is the amount of people.  In the city it is kind of just like put the pedal to the metal.  You are just rushing everywhere teaching and stuff, while up here we have to take a ready aim fire approach.  We have to prepare for the work, like do a lot of activities to get the aboriginals interested and its not quite as fast paced. The food is mostly the same. the aboriginals like to catch goanna which is a big lizard, and bush turkey. I haven't had the chance to eat either of them yet but sometime.

My bike works good. We actually leave the bikes that they gave us in the city, and just use some that they have up here. I hope it gets me back in shape. I guess we will see.

It is bleeding hot here, but it has been alright so far, the sweat keeps me cool. ha. I didn’t bring the camel back up but that’s alright, I have been able to handle it.  There are some people that give us drinks.  We keep a lot of water in the fridge.  They actually had e coli in the water up here, so they put out a warning to boil the water while they clean it up, but we never boiled and we didn’t get it, so we were protected. We actually didn’t hear about it until about a week after they sent the warning out and we figured it was too late to start boiling because if we were going to get it we would have got it already. This is the hottest place I have ever been though

I have had a great week. For p day we went to this old open cut mine called Nobles Nob. There is a little lake at the bottom of it now and so we decided that we would hit a golf ball into the mine. The goal was to get it all the way across the mine but we weren’t good enough. We are just in a little town so we have to make our own fun on p day.

This weekend we did our Elliot trip. Elliot is about 250 kilometers away from Tennant. We have a lot of members up there. So we go up there and visit them and put on a sacrament meeting for them.  It is a town of only about 600 people.  So we went up on Saturday morning and visited the members that day.  There are a lot of cheeky dogs up there. Then as it was getting dark we decided we better go set up camp.  We went along the highway until we found a little place where we could set up our tent. Once we found it, we set up the tent, our cots and made some dinner.  Guess what was for dinner? Ramen noodles. yeah! Then we told ghost stories, just kidding.  It rained heaps on the drive up so we were scared that we were going to have to sleep in the car for the night but it dried up so we were able to set up the tent.  The tent is tiny so our cots like stretch it out.  It is funny to see.

The best part of the trip was sacrament meeting though. We ended up not having very many people there, and we just held it in under a tree, but the spirit was as strong there as I have ever felt, especially when we turned the time over to them to share their testimonies. You could feel their humility and love for the gospel. it was awesome.

Well time is up but love yalls. Have a great week.

love Elder Hyde

AUSSIE TERM OF THE WEEK:

yo yo = aboriginal way of saying yep.