Beautiful Sydney

So Genny asked me to update the blog with stories/pictures from the trip. 

Sydney is a very beautiful city. Our hotel was on the waterfront and overlooked the Sydney Harbor Bridge (outside my window view) and the Sydney Opera House.There was a marathon on Sunday running past the hotel (on the left) that went to the Opera House.

On Saturday, we went for a tour on a double deck bus

And stopped at Bondi Beach. A spectacular beach with amazing surf waves. There is a Olympic size salt water pool to the side of the beach that people swim in where the waves will crash against the pool and pour water into the pool from the ocean.The surf was so great that the waves would go out about 100 ft leaving just wet sand and then crash in a full 100 feet. Very strong currents. Very beautiful beach.

There were some kids on the other side of the beach at a public pool fed also by the Ocean. They were having a ball.

Lots of beautiful sights in Sydney!

The most beautiful sight was attending a local YSA branch of our church in downtown Sydney. The Branch consisted of about 40 some people, several investigators, with six sets of missionaries. What a beautiful sight it was to witness a confirmation of a new member into the church and to hear the testimony of faithful members of this branch. It didn't seem like a YSA branch, several members were much older and attended because it was so close. It was neat to see a couple who had been dating for 3 weeks sitting together, although they both agreed it seemed as if it had been longer. You could tell things were working out great for them. What made it special was to listen to their strong testimonies in the gospel through responses in the Gospel Doctrine class.

I talked later with my traveling companion about BYU and how many couples will date and get married within the same year (Genny and I fit into that category). I explained I thought that this was possible because everyone shares the same religion, the same core values and beliefs. Dating was more of an opportunity to get to know people and see if you clicked. He agreed that much of his years of dating his wife was spent just trying to determine whether or not they saw eye to eye on things we as members of the church have already aligned and that things could have gone much quicker if this was already establish.

Well, it's 9:00pm! Time for bed! The work begins again tomorrow! Hurray for businesses that are closed on the weekend! What a great opportunity we took sight seeing in Sydney.
Genny, you really should have been there :).