Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

What a joyous holiday season we have had in Australia! We have had a great experience of attending a Christmas concert at the Sydney Opera House; having a special Christmas Eve program with other senior missionaries and the LDS Church Area President Sybrowsky and his family; being involved in Christmas celebrations with a distant relative with the same name (Paul Warby) (Clint's first name is Paul as well as his father); playing with more distant relatives including the cute, adorable Page triplet boys; and experiencing first hand the world famous fireworks celebration on New Years Eve in the Sydney Harbor and Bridge. Though we miss our families so much back in the States, we have met many wonderful people here in Australia that makes us feel like we are really home here in the land down under. May the Lord bless us all in 2008!

Its Beginning To Look A Lot Like An Aussie Christmas

Instead of snow, we have been having lots of rain these past few weeks. So instead of hot, humid weather, we have cool, humid weather so far this Aussie Christmas season. We have been busy doing our regular Public Affairs duties as well as doing some family history research, going to libraries and historic cemeteries. We succeeded in finding the graveyard of three small Warby children who died in a two week period in 1853. Less than a year later, their parents and two siblings left for America after joining the Mormon Church. Clint is a desendent of them. We did not find their specific gravesites but hope to do so in the future. We also found the gravesite of Clint's Uncle Thomas Warby, a brother to James Warby Jr. who came to America. We also are getting involved with Australian Scouts, being scout leaders ourselves in the States. Our activities also involve Relief Society, with a real diversity of female church members here in Sydney from many cultures. We also have a periodic assignment to show Church videos outdoors in the evening as part of the Temple Hill Christmas Lighting activities. We are staying very busy and enjoying this Christmas season, Aussie style. Love to All, Peace on Earth and Goodwill toward Men....

Visits and Christmas

The spring is beautiful in Sydney and we are finally able to get out and see some of the beautiful sights. One stop was the Maritime Museum in downtown Sydney where Clint's distant cousin's speedboat is on display, The Spirit of Australia, built by Ken Warby. It is the still the fastest boat in the world, the record set back in the 1970's (317 mph). There were lots of other displays that we will need to explore further. We also visited the Barrenjoey Lighthouse which is north of Sydney. We have a picture of ourselves with the younger missionaries we work with with. We also have a picture of the LDS Sydney Temple whose grounds are decorated with many Christmas lights and a nativity display. We are preparing for Christmas, (Aussie Style) our first with spring like conditions, pretty flowers and lots of green grass.

Love to all and a very Merry Christmas.......

Springtime - Office Work - Family Visits - Walkabouts

It's now springtime in Australia with many flowers and trees blooming. One of the pictures is of the beautiful purple Jacaranda trees that are on the Sydney Temple grounds where we work. These trees are most striking as you travel. We also have included a photo of our office inside the Public Affairs building. As you can see, we are rather close to each other both at the office and in real life. We have made some visits to some distant family members with a Warby connection. One family is the Sharna Warby family. She is a member but her estranged husband is not. She has three delightful children who we are setting up e-mails addresses to communicate with our grandchildren who are of the same age. We also made more visits to Meagen Warby Neifui's family who is more closely related. After attending Church with them, we had a great visit at their home with Meagen's mother Helen who was there. They are all Church members. We also spent a Saturday back in the Blue Mountain with our friends the Bartholomews who are also senior missionaries. We hiked down into a rain forest at Wentworth Falls which was flowing quite rapidly since there had been some recent rainfall. We are staying busy and getting ready for the holiday's, Australian style.

Back Home In Sydney

The last few weeks we have been back in Sydney, working in the Public Affairs Office and doing our various tasks and assignments. We are enjoying the beautiful spring weather with some occasional thundershowers now and then. We attended a viewing of General Conference of the Church here in Sydney with our good friends and relatives through marriage, the Newtons and their daughter and husband. We were able to visit the Blue Mountains last Saturday afternoon (Oct. 27) which are located west of Sydney. We are enclosing some photos of that visit plus earlier ones from Tasmania. This is a great country, full of beauty and a diverse culture of people from all over the world.

The second leg of our journey in Eastern Australia began on Oct. 6 as we traveled to Canberra, the capitol, with Rex Barrington of BYU. We visited with Church leaders and later visited Parliament, the seat of government. Next stop was in Albury, a beautiful town on the Murray River, the border between the states of New South Wales and Victoria. Again, checking performance venues and meetings. From there, we stopped in Wangarrata where the Warby Mountain Range is to the west with a state park and even a Best Western Warby Inn. On to Geelong and then down to The Great Ocean Road, one of the famous scenic spots featuring an unusual rock formation just off shore called the Twelve Apostles. Back to Geelong, more visits and then to Melbourne for even more venue checks and meetings. That evening (Oct. 9) we traveled on the Spirit of Tasmania, the overnight ferry to Tasmania. It was more like a cruise ship and we did sleep comfortably in our cabin with two berths along with our own private but small bathroom. We rented another car and traveled to the city of Launceston where we met more contacts and visited even more venues. We stayed overnight in the "posh" Grand Chancellor Hotel. Then about a two hour drive south to Hobart where we wound our way up Mt. Wellington, a large mountain that provides a spectacular overlook over Hobart. More venues that evening followed by a delicious barbecue with the Watson family. More venues and meetings the next day along with shopping for good deals on clothing and souvenirs. We visited the tourist town of Richmond and then flew back that evening to Melbourne where we stayed in the Airport Holiday Inn. The next morning, we said goodbye to the Barringtons and then traveled by bus to downtown Melbourne where we did more shopping in the famous Queen Victoria Markets, did some more sightseeing and then back to the airport to catch our flight back to Sydney and home. Quite a trip for the past two weeks. Hopefully, we will be able to do more traveling and seeing this beautiful country and continue to meet such wonderful people.

Meeting Family and On The Road Again

After coming back from Adelaide, we had the great opportunity to meet a wonderful family on Sept. 27. We were connected with Meagan Warby Neifui who is a desendent of Thomas Warby, the brother to Clint's great, great grandfather who joined the LDS Church in 1853. Meagan joined about 15 years ago with her mother and brother but did not realize that she had a Warby connection to the Church until a few weeks ago. We were both thrilled to meet her and her husband Fred and daughters Kian and Huntley. On Sept. 29, we flew to Brisbane to visit the beautiful LDS Temple there, dedicated in 2003. We were there on official Church business to help plan the BYU Young Ambassadors Tour starting there and then other places throughout eastern Australia. We met many wonderful people and enjoyed our stay. From there, we traveled to Newcastle where Clint's ancestors left from to emigrate to the United States and Southern Utah.

Off to Adelaide

On Sept. 20, 2007, we flew to Adelaide to conduct some public affairs training for LDS Church members in that part of Australia. These individuals have been called (asked) to volunteer their time and talents to do a variety of tasks, mainly to establish relationships with important opinion leaders in this part of the world. While there, we visited a conservation park devoted to Australia wildlife including a friendly Koala; attended a session at the Adelaide LDS Temple; walked downtown to the South Australia Scout Shop and bought some scout stuff; contacted an LDS family whose father (Andy West) grew up in our West Jordan Utah LDS Ward. We went with them to Victor Harbor and walked around Granite Island and saw the Southern Ocean which is on the south side of Australia. We also attended Church with the West family at the Onkaparinga Ward. We enjoyed our visit to Adelaide and grew to love this beautiful part of the country. Sister Warby said the place reminded her of Salt Lake City with a great grid system where it's not that difficult to get lost.

Back To Our Roots

On Saturday, September 15, 2007, we traveled with a distant relative, Janice Brooks to the Hunter River region of Australia in New South Wales. Janice joined the LDS Church sometime ago with her husband Ray and discovered through family history research that her great, great grandmother was a sister to Clint's great, great, grandmother (Mary Blanch Warby) in the Hunter River area. Our first stop was to St. James Church in Morpeth where the Warby's were married in 1846. It was wonderful to visit and realize that those two dear ancestors were actually in this building on that wonderful day. They later joined the LDS Church and immigrated to the United States. We went to the Campbell Hill Cemetery in Maitland to search for the grave site of Clint's great, great, great grandmother (Mary Wood Warby) who died at the age of 99 in 1885. We were not successful in finding the site but did find her husband James's gravesite in the East Maitland Cemetery. He died in 1858 at the age of 73. We stayed overnight nearby in a beautiful home in rural Australia near Clarence Town with church member Graham Clark and his wife. We attended and spoke in church at the LDS Salt Ash Branch in Medowie on Sunday. It was a great weekend to experience being at the beginning of church membership of the Warby family. We know there are lots of family members still living there and we plan to come back as often as we can.

Old Government House

We had some free time on Saturday, 8 September so we went with some fellow LDS missionaries to a nearby museum called the Old Government House which is located in Parramatta, a western suburb of Sydney. The Old Government House is Australia's oldest surviving public building. It was built between 1799 and 1818. It is very probable that Clint's distant cousin, John Warby was there to perhaps help build or visit. He was a convict sent to Australia from England who later became an important guide and received a lot a property from Governor-General Macquarie after serving his sentence for stealing two donkeys.

We are staying very busy with office work and meetings. We are enjoying our experiences and have some travel plans in the next month which will take us to many parts of eastern Australia.

Computer Training

It's now September 2007 and we have been here one month. Lots of new friends and experiences we have enjoyed. Last Tuesday, August 28 there was a lunar eclipse that was seen in its entirety here in Australia. Quite the view with the moon totally changing to a red color and then back. Our focus is now learning our responsibilities and duties with our title of Area/National Directors of Public Affairs for Australia. Many great projects have been carried out already with more planned. In order to better ourselves, we have been going to Computer School the last two Saturdays at the Macquarie Community College which has a branch in our area. We have had a great instructor Maureen Christe who has taught us important skills in word processing.