Mission Life In The New Area

Well the first few days in this area Elder Padilla and I were struggling, but now we are doing pretty well. We still struggle with Chinese, but our teaching skills are getting better.

The first week we were here, we had 4 total lessons, then 6, then 12. So we did a lot of finding the first week, and now we have found some people who are interested, and are teaching them. The biggest problem is still that the church is pretty far away. So we are telling people that we will take the train with them to church. We will see if that works.

I am not sure why President put us together as companions, but my companion read this talk, and it answered my question:

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2015/06/young-adults/no-transfer?lang=eng

Our area is huge. Yesterday we drove to an area an hour away to visit some less actives. 

My dad asked about what activities we have. This was my answer:

Our usual activities are FHE and English class. For FHE, someone usually shares a short message, then they play a group game, and then we have some snack. We almost never go to English class because it is taught by senior missionaries, but it has 3 levels, and it helps people prepare for this standardized English test.  

Our apartment right now is one of the better ones, though we have to use a wrench to turn the sink on and off, and the concrete walls are always moist when we wake up for some reason.

Sorry that this letter does not follow an organized train of thought.

My old companion Elder LeCates wrote me this week and told me about BYU and all of the movies he has watched since he has been home. That made me a little "trunky" haha.

A Great Week

This was a great week. We had a lot more working hours this week compared to last week.

Yesterday we decided to go knocking on doors. We almost never do this. At the third door we knocked, the man let us in and we had a good talk with him. The guy was named Chen. He is here studying his PhD at the local college, and unlike most college students, he has a wife, and a small daughter. I can't wait to visit him.

I found out at church yesterday that Jessica, a woman I contacted in a train station in my old area, just got baptized. I am supper happy for her, but I feel a little bad because I doubted her at first. The first time we met with her, she was telling us how fun drinking and parties are. But I believe in the Atonement, and the atonement gives us the ability to change for the better.

Elder Padilla and I got some new tags that are super cool. The church does not let missionaries get these tags anymore here, so we used some connections to get them.

I still want a Taiwan pocket one though.  They can not make pocket ones here.

Things are a little hectic for college students right now because they are starting classes, and for some reason a lot of them are moving. (almost all of our investigators are college students that go to Monash University)There is this one investigator we have that says she will believe in God if we help her move. We will help her move this week, but we want her to believe in God for the right reasons.

Thanks for the birthday wishes. I can't believe I am 19 and I feel like I may forget sometimes, when I tell people my age.

Anyway,

Until next week.

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.

An Eventful Week

Wow. A lot happened this week. Our chapel got broken into a couple of weeks ago. They damaged all of the doors that had locks on them to try to look for valuables but there are literally no valuables kept in the building. A carpenter who was a church member came to fix all of the doors. The guy has been working on the doors for a couple of days and he is still working on them. He lives far away so he has to sleep in his car, and he got very sick after the first couple days of work. So he asked for a blessing and I gave my first priesthood blessing. I did my best to have the spirit direct the prayer and it did because it was a good prayer, and I myself am not very eloquent. Hope he gets better.

This morning we went hiking near the Dandenong Mountains. A member went with us to show us where the best trail is. It was super beautiful. It reminded me of the rain-forests in Thailand. It is super green, and lots of different parrot looking birds. Then on the way down, we ran into everyone from the city branch. They were having their zone p-day. What are the odds. So we talked to them and hiked back down with them, and then  we joined their BBQ. 

After all of this fun we were late to our own zone's zone p-day. So we went to the chapel and did a lot of minute to win it games. Unfortunately we did not win any of them. But it was fun.

Since we did all of these activities today, we won't have much time to get groceries, but at least we get to email, which is probably my favorite part of p-day! Thanks for your letters!

A few days ago we taught our investigators from Box High. We shared a parable from the Book of Mormon. We had them read it and try to draw it on the board. This is how it turned out:

And here is how an artist interpreted it:

http://averroes2.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/lehis-vision-and-jerusalem-600-bce.html

SO basically, The iron rod represents following Jesus, and the tree represents the love of God. The building represents the pride of the world. There are a lot of other meanings, but I don't have much time.

So I invite anyone reading this to read it for themselves and I know you will get something out of it.

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/1-ne/8

Don't have much time left. Someone asked me some good questions that I will try to answer.

• What us your favorite aspect of being a missionary? It is hard to say. It is nice having a solid purpose to everything you do. And that purpose is a good purpose. It's super cool to see the people you teach change and grow for the better.
• What do you do on P-day? We shop. We try to plan a hoke or something but we end up running out of time or wanting to rest in the apartment. I know. Sad. But last week we did that hike which was super cool.
• Do you feel there is one area your testimony has grown? I think every aspect of it has grown.
• Is being on a mission easier or tougher than you expected? It is about as tough as I expected. Maybe a little easier. Like anything in life, you get out of it what you put into it. You can be more diligent and get more out of it. That is my goal but it is hard sometimes. 
• Do you have an American accent when speaking Chinese? Yes.
• Will you remain friends with your companions after the mission? Yeah but I will have to use WeChat for some of the Chinese people haha.

Until next week!

Happy Mothers Day

This was a good week. The highlight of my week was Skyping my family!

Mothers Day Skype

It seems like things back home are good! Happy Mother's day mom! 

Right now we have 5 investigators that go to the local high school here, Box Hill High. I first contacted Bella in a train station, and she brought two friends, and this week one of her friends brought another friend. So we have a good amount of people we are teaching right now. 

Since Elder Nielson left, I am the new teacher of the English class. English class is really small right now, and the issue is that the 3 or 4 people that come are all at different levels. So I want to get more flyers and get the word out, so the class can be bigger, and maybe eventually we can split it up into levels. Last week we practiced speaking at a supermarket. I gave them items that they had to describe to a "worker". It was fun!

A couple of weeks ago, we helped a member disassemble a trampoline. This was my first time going to the countryside. It was so beautiful. It reminded me of Julian, California. There were lots of hills, trees, horses, and farms. We were in a rush so I did not take pictures, but I want to go back there on one of our p-days and hike around. Maybe I will get to see a kangaroo since I still haven't caught a glimpse of one. 

My Chinese is still improving. I try to read the scriptures in pinyin now. Pinyin is phonetic, unlike characters, so it is helpful if you don't know Chinese characters.

Until next week.

Random Pictures:

Kangaroo Burger