Week 11: A Great Week

What a great week!

I got transferred and got a new companion. Well sort of new. I have been companions with Elder Eyring before, and I am back with him again. We do very well together. And I know someone is going to ask me this, so I will just say yes, he is Elder Henry B Eyring's grandson. Since we are both newer missionaries, we are studying the language super hard and doing tons of role plays to practice teaching.

We switch off a lot more since neither of us are . . . well . . . fluent. But speaking of the language, I feel my Chinese improved a ton with Elder Bassett. The biggest problem is still vocabulary, but I am much more comfortable street contacting and making phone calls in Chinese. Some missionaries from the Chinese zone went home during transfers.

Zhan Jie Mae and Hsu Jie Mae went home. They were really funny sisters from Taiwan. Everyone misses them. Also, the Lins went home. They were a senior couple from China. Apparently they were the first senior missionaries from China to serve a mission. They were so kind, and they always helped us with the language, and accompanied us for some of our lessons.

Our zone is a little smaller now, but we did get a couple more elders, including my MTC companion Elder Padilla! He had to visa wait for a little, but he is here now! We still laugh about things that happened at the MTC.

That member that I baptized moved into our area. She is opening up a small business, so she is going to be super busy with that and taking care of her daughter. We are going to visit her tomorrow and mow her lawn.

We had dinner with Niel a couple of days ago. He is a recent convert that got baptized right about the time that I came to Australia. He moved back to China. Last week he visited Australia for a few days. We had dinner with him at Dominoes Pizza. He just left back to China today, probably forever.

Since we got "doubled in" to a new area, we are calling all of the investigators and trying to set up times to meet with them. This week we only got to meet with one investigator twice. Her name is Bonnie. She is a College student. I remember her because she came to an activity once, and they shared a spiritual thought and asked some questions about the gospel, and she answered all of them like perfectly.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but in a few weeks we are going to have the privilege to hear from Elder Bednar. He is going to speak, and he asked us to prepare some questions to ask him. Super excited! On Thanksgiving, he gave a talk at the MTC. He is still one of my favorite speakers.

Week 10: Getting Transferred

I'm getting transferred! We just got transfer news, and this transfer is going to be crazy. My companion said this is the biggest transfer he's ever seen. It's odd. Some people stay in places for 5 transfers in a row, and some people get transferred very often. We have transfer meeting tomorrow at the mission office, and that is where we find out what part of Melbourne we are being transferred to, and who is our new companion. I really don't know where I'm moving to, but I will miss Footscray, and my companion Elder Bassett.

This morning I was reading in the Book of Mormon, Second Nephi Chapter 2. That chapter explains why we need an atonement, and that chapter in particular talks about agency as well. There is a large Islamic population here. The ones I have talked to while street contacting have said that they believe in Jesus, but not that he was God's son. I had a good conversation with this one Islamic man about Jesus.
He said something like "Why would God sacrifice his son for us? I have a 3 year old son right now, and I would not sacrifice him to save other bad people".
It is intersting to look at the atonement that way. The God sacrificed his first born Son in order for us to be able to be forgiven and return to His presence again some day. What a great sacrifice and huge sacrifice. The cleansing power of the atonement is such a great gift, and I am working on using it more often.

Another thing I am going to do next transfer is to set goals and make plans for as many things as possible. We already set goals for a lot of things. The key is setting goals and making plans to achieve our goals. We set daily goals, weekly, monthly, and revise the goals often. Setting goals and making plans is one thing I have really improved on during my mission.

Oh yeah, last p-day we went to the Shrine of Remebrance and the Botanical Gardens. That was super cool. The Shrine of Remembrance is a large stone building that you can go inside and on top of, and it is to remember all Australians who have served in war. The botanical gardens were good, but they didn't have a bunch of tropical fruits like the botanical gardens in Encinitas (CA).

I apologize for how this letter jumps all over the place, but someone asked me if my tech skills have come in handy during the mission. Other than changing watch batteries, I don't think so. Our mission is very very low tech. We all have very old Nokia cell phones. And if you're a district leader you get a . . . wait for it. . . Fax machine! Wow! They told us we might get iPads soon, but people aren't counting on getting them soon.

Someone asked me if they celebrate Valentine's Day here. They do, but apparently they don't celebrate Halloween.

Until next week.

Week 9: Short entry, but many pictures.

Thanks for the letters...

My email time is almost gone. I will not have the chance to write much today because I actually got a lot of emails this week, so thank you so much!


This member who owns a restaurant fed us this week at his restaurant. He made some amazing Chinese food. We went with senior missionaries. When they tried to give him money, he shook his hand with the money in it. The Chinese member pulled away his hand quickly, and said "Ay Ya" and the money fell to the ground. It reminded me of gong gong (Grandpa Yang).


Elder Jordan Andersen
76 Cathies Lane
Wantirna South VIC 3152
Australia