Birthday Week for Me. Turning 19.

Crazy news. I am now back with my MTC companion Elder Padilla. We get along super well but the main issue is 

that both of our Chinese sucks. Even though we came out at the same time, he got reassigned to the US for a couple 

of transfers, so I am the senior companion which is a little scary. We are also teaching a lesson during our Family 

Home Evening activity at the church tonight so I am a little stressed right now. 

Anyway, a couple of days ago, it was about 8:00pm, and we have to start planning at 9:00. We usually do not go 

out at that time, but we decided to drive to the train station and go contacting during that hour. We had already 

spent most of the day finding aka talking to people on the street. Within that one hour, we had more success than 

we had the whole rest of the day. We set up to have lessons with 3 people. The day after that, we had a lesson, 

and they are pretty good investigators. 

The biggest highlight of my week though was getting letters from my family. Thank you! The mission president and 

his wife also called me and sang happy birthday. It feels really weird being 19. I feel like if someone asks me how 

old I am, I will still say 18. That would be bad. 

Our area right now is the "car" area. There are a lot of nice cars, and modded cars. Our apartment is right next to 

a highway, and every Saturday night at 3am we hear people street racing. I woke up last time this happened, and 

I saw some Subarus racing, and some motorcycles.

I can see a good, but difficult transfer ahead. I hope the Lord helps me to teach people and learn the language.

Kangaroos, Kangaroos and more Kangaroos!

Wow, so much happened this week! I saw my first Kangaroo!

So I got transferred to my new area, which is called Clayton. All of our investigators are college students and right now is finals, so most of them say they don't have enough time to meet with us. There are a few that we have been meeting with though, and they are progressing ok. Almost all of the contacting we do is at this huge bus station next to the university. It is convenient since we can walk to it from our house.

It feels interesting to be back in the city. Back to the branch, no more getting fed. haha. But I missed the city and I was super happy to see the missionaries and that a few new people had been baptized.

I am writing on Tuesday because yesterday was the Queen's Birthday, so all of the libraries were closed.

Yesterday was the best p-day ever. One of the members from my old area took me and another companionship to a place called Phillips Island. You can drive to there by bridge. So I did a companion split and was with another missionary for the whole day. We saw some super beautiful beaches. They were all next to cliffs, so they reminded me of the beaches in California. Unfortunately we were not allowed to go onto the beach. But there were stairs going down to the beach and we went to the very last stair step. It's been too long since I've seen the beach. Then he took us to these tide pools/rocks. The waves would hit the rocks and shoot up and spray water all over the place. We had a lot of fun.

Then we went to this open range zoo, which was probably the best part. I saw my first kangaroo! Not only that, I got to feed them, pet them, and shake hands with them. There were also a lot of Wallabies, which are like mini kangaroos. And Emus, which were scary. Sometimes they would fight for food. Apparently they make uggs out of Emus. We also saw porcupines and a Tasmanian devil, which looks like a distorted mini pig. The kangaroos were the best. A few of them had babies in their pouch. Most of them were shy. Some would hop towards you, and abruptly stop a foot away from you, which is scary. Some of them would use their paws to push your hand towards their mouth when you try to feed them. Super fun. I am so grateful to Sherman for taking us there.

And my companion is going home soon. This is his last week. So we will probably get to go to a lot of members' houses and go to a few other famous places. I am guessing next transfer I will stay here.

Until next week.

Another Transfer...

I got some bad news a couple of days ago. I will be transferred out of my favorite area. President called us a couple of days ago and said that I will get emergency transferred to the city. He said it is because "another missionary needs help". So that sucks, but I will get to serve in probably the next best area, with Elder LeCates, who will go home at the end of the transfer. 

I will especially miss serving with Elder Lan. He is one of my favorite companions. We have similar thoughts and sense of humor. He is really good at teaching and finding. He taught me a lot. I will also miss our investigators. The two investigators who go to Box Hill High, Ella and Jessica, are coming to church every week and keeping commitments to read scriptures, follow commandments, etc. And we have other investigators that are on their way, but they are farther away. I have had by far the most investigators in this area than any other area. 

This week we got to do a lot of service. We helped a lady do some gardening. We weeded her flowerbed, and pruned a peach tree for her neighbor. That was fun. And then we went to a Mormon Helping Hands Project, which was planting trees in a park. They gave us this tool to make holes in the ground. Then we put some fertilizer in the hole, and then put the pre-planted tree in there. After that they had a sausage sizzle. Those are really popular in Australia. They have these sausages that taste better than hot dogs, sandwich bread, and onions. It is super simple, and tastes super good. 

For Sunday School, I was assigned to tell a story about service. So I told the story in John about Jesus washing his apostles' feet (https://www.lds.org/scriptures/nt/john/13?lang=eng). It went ok. My Chinese is still bad. I have to use a lot of pictures and scriptures because I can't speak very well. 

President wants us to move tonight, so I will probably spend the rest of p-day packing. meh.