The Helland's Down Under

2026 – The Year of the Horse

February 9-15

The last couple weeks have been super busy and I haven’t been able to post our weekly update by Sunday – oopsie!! We’ll try to get back in the groove this next week! 🤩This week the Lunar New Year celebrations started here in Sydney. The Lunar New Year is celebrated in many Asian countries, including China, Vietnam and Korea. While often used interchangeably, “Lunar New Year” is a broader term than the culturally specific “Chinese New Year.” There is a very large Asian population here in Sydney AND we live a block away from China town so you can guess, gearing up for the festivities was super fun to watch! There were free classes for kids to learn the Lion dance, lessons on writing your name in Chinese calligraphy, performances all around town, and tons of booths where you could buy clothing and decorations for the celebration. Since our local church group was holding a Lunar New Year Celebration – we decided that Eric and I needed matching outfits to wear! It was a new adventure to walk the streets and see the decorations going up and excitement building! We are definitely going to add the “Lunar New Year celebration” to the list of parties we host back at home in AZ! Get your festive attire ready, friends and family! 

Invitation to our upcoming PARTY!

Here’s how our week went: 

2/9 Monday – On Mondays we call our kids and grandkids. We look forward to Facetiming them, seeing them and hearing about their week. Before district council we visited the Australian Museum (founded in 1827 – Australia’s oldest museum) – hoping to learn more about animal life here in Sydney. Good news – I haven’t seen any spiders or snakes since we’ve been here and I don’t actually think about all the poisonous animals like I thought I would (however, I probably won’t go too far out into the ocean or poke around in any bushes…ha ha!). That evening we had our last district council with our DL, Elder McLaren. He completes his mission this week and flies home to Calgary. It was a blessing to have him lead our district for a couple weeks!

Walking around town

Looks like a snake but it’s just a tree branch grown around the fence!

The Australian Museum

Visiting the beautiful St. Mary’s Cathedral

District Council

2/10 Tuesday – Tuesday was another day packed full of back to back lessons with the juniors missionaries – Sister Thompson and Sister Leslie. They are amazing teachers! They bring the spirit to the lessons and use fabulous object lesson and engagement strategies to help our friends to engage and better understand the concepts! 

We were still at the church when it was time for the weekly Book of Mormon class. It seemed that none of the missionaries had been assigned (or volunteered) to teach it so I was able to teach it at the last minute. We read and discussed 3 Nephi chapter 10 and 11 – regarding the appearance of Jesus Christ to the Americas. Even though I had not prepared, I felt the Spirit guide me on what questions to ask as we read through those two chapters. It felt like a tender mercy for me – and for the friends who were attending the class. I am so grateful for the gift of the Holy Ghost! 

2/11 Wednesday – Wednesday afternoon we prepared Creamy Tortellini Tomato soup (Thank you for the awesome recipe, Barb Parnell!) for a senior missionary dinner we had at the mission office. We welcomed two new senior couples and said “good bye” to two couples who are going home soon! It’s always fun to get together with the other senior couples and catch up with them! 🙂 I’m sure leaving your mission is bittersweet – happy to be home to see your family but sad to leave the friends you’ve made and the experience you’ve had!

2/12 Thursday – On Thursday we had Zone Conference with 3 other zones, led by President and Sister Doane. I love zone conferences – where we receive training and are spiritually fed to help each us draw closer to the Savior as well as sharing the Good News of the gospel! It’s also great to see former junior missionaries who once served in our district. Since Eric and I have been teaching 6 zones for the preventative mental health (life skill) lessons, we have met and got to know MANY missionaries throughout the mission so we love to catch up with them at zone conferences! 

Thursday night we helped set up at our church building for the Lunar New Year party AND picked up our niece Kaitlin (Harrison) Holt and her hubby Nate Holt from the airport. It was great to stay up chatting with them before they headed off to Cairns to scuba dive at the Great Barrier Reef. 

Setting up and practicing for Friday!

2/13 Friday – Friday morning we took Kaitlin and Nate down to the harbor to see the Sydney Opera House and have breakfast in The Rocks (by the harbor, where the first people from Europe landed/settled.). We took Nate and Kaitlin back to the airport, knowing we would see them again on Monday. That night was the AMAZING Lunar New Year Celebration! A HUGE shout out to Lyle and Lyka Elisara (our group leaders) for organizing an INCREDIBLE night of games, delicious Asian food, fabulous performances (instrument performance, the Lion dance by the junior elders, and a super cute song/dance by the little girls in our group). The Brillos (Adrian and Rhoda) and the Elisara’s led a few hilarious games! This group REALLY knows to have FUN!!! I was asked to MC, along with Sister Lam, who translated what I said into Chinese. It was one of the most fun nights we’ve had since we’ve been here! The turn out was FANTASTIC – with many group members and their friends attending!!

Breakfast at The Rocks

Best Ever Lunar New Year Party!

2/14 Saturday – This morning Eric and I picked up the young women so we could attend the Stake Youth Activity together at Cronulla beach. Both of our young women are pretty shy but they were great sports to join in the games. They served a yummy lunch then had more games and swimming time in the afternoon. We enjoyed meeting other members of the stake It took us about an hour to get to the event but took us about 2 ½ hours to get home as the Lunar New Year activities were in full swing by our apartment building with closed roads and TONS of people walking around and blocking the streets. Our plan was to walk down the block for the light up the night festivities but instead, I was too tired so I went to bed! Ha!

2/15 Sunday – Today was the Sabbath so we went to church then had two long meetings after – Group Council and Missionary Correlation Meeting with the new ward mission leader from Summer Hill ward. We barely had time to hurry home and make dinner for the missionaries in our district and Summer Hill. We thoroughly enjoyed getting together with these 9 incredible humans! Although they all range from 19 to 21 in age, they are mature and wise beyond their years as they serve as missionaries.

‘Sunday Dinner – Just the guys!

Some things we learned this week:

1. Just as the scriptures in 1 Corinthians 12 talks about the “body of Christ” – and how every body part is needed – every individual with their unique personality, gifts and talents are needed to make up our church unit and to bless the lives of each other and those who are looking to learn more about the Savior, Jesus Christ and His beautiful gospel! We are so blessed to rub shoulders with people who have diverse gifts to offer in order to more fully love, serve, minister and fellowship each member of the body of Christ. It is so beautiful to see and experience everyone’s contributions – from quiet, anonymous ways to overt, public ways. ALL are needed!
2. More effective planning ahead is needed! Running around like a chicken with their head cut off is NOT fun…or sustainable! We both realized that we need to spend more time on Monday planning out the WHOLE week and making sure we include time for preparation, travel, clean up and even time for rest and rejuvenate! A more realistic schedule of what we can get done is needed.
3. Part of the lesson we are teaching the junior missionaries right now is about being aware of our emotional baseline and where our emotional limit is. In between those two lines lies our emotional resilience. We talked about what we can do when we are getting close to or going over our emotional limit (This is when our emotions are more in control of us than we are of our emotions.). What a privilege and blessing it is to study/teach these lessons since the teacher often learns the most! I feel like I am better able to recognize what my own emotional limit is (which varies throughout the day due to being hungry, tired, anxious, etc.) and how I can better regulate my own emotions! I hope the lessons are helping the junior missionaries as much as they are helping me! 🤣

Eric’s Interesting Australian Findings:

This week it’s interesting cars we have seen.