Aussie Adventures: Day 5

After a couple long days we wanted something nice and relaxing while we can still see a lot of different things. 

To start off the day we went to go to the Gardens right by the opera house, surrounding the governors home. These were absolutely beautiful. It overlooks the entire Sydney harbor and it is full of interesting things like weird trees, flowers, and sculptures.  

Brittany and I had split off the group and were walking around together. We were captivated by the chandeliers that were in the governors home. There were some cleaners there and he let us inside! It was pretty sweet. That home is absolutely incredible. It was built in the early 1800’s and had most of its original furnishings. It was so lush and posh.

After we finished walking around the gardens we took a ferry out to Darling Harbor. It was a really fun environment. It had a battle ship museum, art museums, titanic museum, malls, shops, and other shops. 

After that we headed straight for the temple! That’s right we went and did baptisms in the Sydney, Australia Temple. This was such a pleasant experience. Getting there, not so much, but everything else about the temple was absolutely wonderful. I truly think that it is one of the most beautiful temples. It is so small but absolutely beautiful. It sits on the top of the hill in a dark area and it literally glows with all of the lights on it.

We had gotten lost and asked the people walking on the streets if they knew where the LDS temple was and a lady we asked said that if we just walk up the hill we will see a pretty white building with a big gold ball on it and that was it! I couldn’t help but laugh when she called the angel Moroni a big gold ball.

I had been in contact with the President Barr, the temple president, for about the last month of New Zealand working something out so we could come and do baptisms. He had told me that they don’t usually do baptisms during the week, but he wanted us to have this experience and so he called in special priesthood holders just for us. When we had gotten there we realized that all the priesthood holders were from their YSA and the YSA couple. That just made me laugh.

After we did baptisms the YSA couple and the YSA men took us girls out to dinner. These guys that we met really are hilarious. They were so sweet and kind. They were so much fun to be around. It was so kind of them to take us out to dinner.

Not only were we not expecting them to take us to dinner but they also took us back to the hotel. On the way home from the hotel they decided, “Oh hey, we will just give you a private tour throughout Sydney too! That would be fun!" And it was. 

They took us down to the Olympic stadium! We were really excited about that because we were planning on going down there by ourselves just to look about it. The YSA leader told us so many interesting things about it that I had no idea. For example, did you know that they build pretty awesome apartments for each individual athlete? The outside of the arena also has all of these poles sticking up out of the ground. You would think that they were just for an artistic touch, but they actually are covered in carved names of all of the athletes.

Going to the temple and meeting these wonderful people was probably the highlight of the entire time in Sydney.