![\"On](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2018\/11\/Palm_Cove_sunny_Queensland.jpg\")
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Early this morning, we flew northward to Cairns, and then drove from Cairns to Port Douglas. \u00a0We are, now, much closer to New Guinea than we are to Sydney or even to Brisbane. \u00a0This is an area of Australia that I\u2019ve never seen before. \u00a0It\u2019s tropical, and ot reminds us quite a bit of Hawaii. \u00a0Along the drive up, we stopped off at a place called Palm Cove for a bite to eat. \u00a0Absolutely gorgeous. \u00a0And a good place to look out over the Great Barrier Reef, about which I\u2019ve heard all my life.<\/p>\n
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Incidentally, my anonymous Malevolent Stalker, who has devoted much of his life over the past fifteen years to inventing and then lamenting my many depravities, is now suggesting that my trip here may have been paid for by innocent donors to the Interpreter Foundation.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s a serious enough (and plausible enough) charge that I judge it to merit a flat denial: \u00a0My travels here are not in any way underwritten or supported \u2014 not even slightly \u2014 by the Interpreter Foundation.<\/p>\n
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My finances are none of his business, of course, but I\u2019ll say this: \u00a0I\u2019m delivering an invited lecture at a university in Sydney<\/a> on 27 November. \u00a0That explains my being here in Australia, and partially pays for it. \u00a0My travel here also does not come at the expense of tithe payers. \u00a0My wife is paying her own way, and we\u2019re both paying our own way for the goofing-off portions of this trip. \u00a0(We like to travel.) \u00a0Some of my expenses have been covered by a fund set up at BYU by a specific donor (whom I know very well) for the express purpose of developing and maintaining relationships between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> and the Islamic world. \u00a0My remarks in Sydney will be directed to the question of Islam in Australia and the West, and she explicitly endorsed drawing on her fund in partial support of my coming here.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n As always, my Malevolent Stalker\u2019s suggestions of unethical or mercenary behavior on my part are malicious but wholly without merit. \u00a0This is what he does: \u00a0His online pseudonym is adopted from a character in a television crime show \u2014 a vengeance-obsessed sociopathic hacker, stalker, and serial killer who plays mind games in order to manipulate proxies into carrying out murders for him. \u00a0(My stalker can dream, can\u2019t he?) \u00a0But I want people to understand very clearly that their donations of time, effort, and money to the Interpreter Foundation are not, in any way, supporting me, let alone supporting my wife. \u00a0Not so much as a cent. \u00a0My wife and I are ourselves donors to Interpreter \u2014 of money, labor, and time. \u00a0We don\u2019t profit from it. \u00a0Quite the opposite.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Interpreter Foundation\u2019s expenses<\/a> are visible, accessible to anybody who wants to look, online:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n