Week 7 already?

It honestly feels like I blinked, and already I'm 2 months into my mission. I was thinking today about what that means for me, and what I want to accomplish while I'm here. To me, being a successful missionary means I put so much into the work, that I have no regrets by the time I go home (which I don't even want to think about right now). Work work work is the way to do it, and that's how I can be happiest as well.

So Sister Craig was transferred, she's going up to Alice Springs! Everyone always talks about how pretty it is, and it's right smack in the middle of the outback. Fun stuff :) She had a limit on what she could take, and so she left me heaps of new clothes, which was really nice. My new companion is Sister Goisisi, and she is from Sydney. She is such an awesome missionary, and great at talking to people everywhere.

We had stake conference this week, and that's basically a conference for all the members in the surrounding area to come to and be taught by the leaders. There was a big focus on knowing your family history, and I would encourage everyone to look on FamilySearch.org, it is a wonderful resource that the Church provides for free. It definitely got me thinking more about my ancestors, and where I came from.

Have a great week everyone, I love you!

Week 6

This week I taught Sister Craig some American Sign Language, and she loved it. Now I can't get her to stop! She keeps spelling things, no matter where we are. But we just found out today that she's leaving, so I'll have a brand new companion next week! Or brand new to me :)

Catarina's baptism was wonderful. She was able to invite her mom, and they both really felt the Spirit. Sorry they just told us that we have to leave the library, I'll have a better email next week!

 

Some answers to our family questions this week...

 

Pretty weird week, being so close to the office we see the assistants and president more often than other missionaries, and since they were planning transfers, they were all weird and secretive, so we just had to ignore all that weird stuff and go to work :)

We get $120 every fortnight, or every 2 weeks. That covers food and whatever supplies we need to get. Don't have to worry about the rent :) and we have a separate card to pay for petrol.

We don't get a whole lot of time to cook, so pretty awful. We love Chinese cabbage and chicken, and just eating that like a lettuce wrap. Funny story from this week: we were supposed to have dinner with Brother Hann and his family, but they called us after church and said that their kids all had the flu, so we should just come by around 5:30 to pick it up. That sounded good to us :) then Sister Sparkes, who fed me my first kangaroo meat, texted and asked if we were going anywhere for dinner. Opportunity to be fed twice? We took it haha. So now we have lunch waiting for us at home.

I miss Mexican food here, we got told of this really good place that's close to us, and it was referred by someone from Mexico, so we know it's legit.

Sister Craig has 2 transfers left, so she's hopefully starting BYU-Hawaii in February, but we just found out today that she's getting transferred! I won't find out til tomorrow who my new companion will be, but it will definitely not be someone who's been here before. So, the burden's on me to lead the area. AAAHHHHHHHHH PRESSURE.

I am getting emails, it keeps me busy the 2 hours we're here, but I would love to receive letters. They are extra special, make me feel loved ;)

On Canadian Thanksgiving we had a zone activity, going to this trampoline place. It was so funny to see 20 missionaries walk up in our bball shorts, and there were mainly just little kids there.

It is getting pretty warm, 30 degrees Celsius has started to feel cool.

I love my hour in the morning for personal study. It helps me feel more relaxed, and it's a great place for revelation.

 

Week 5

I am enjoying this work, and the potential we have to bring to pass blessings for God's children is wonderful. This week, during our planning, we felt so strongly that we should challenge our investigator Catarina to baptism. She has been putting it off until after her cruise, but we felt that the push to do it this week would help her overcome her anxiety about it. She has been so prepared by so many missionaries, and when we challenged her last week, she hesitated and hesitated, then prayed about it, and when she prayed she spoke of how this would help her, and she could feel God was speaking to her through us. Her baptism date is set for this Saturday :)

Sometimes, when knocking doors, you meet people who don't want to hear anything we have to say. Other times, they just put up signs, saying, "All other religions. We are Catholic. Please do not knock." I thought it was so funny. We also saw a massive cactus this week.

I loved being able to watch General Conference this weekend. The prophets and apostles that spoke truly reaffirmed in my mind the truth of Amos 3:7 - God will do nothing, but he reavealeth his secrets unto his servants the prophets. This same attitude can be found in Doctrine and Covenants 1:38 - whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same. President Russell M Nelson gave a particularly powerful address on the importance of women in the church, and the value they have to the world. I loved it.

October 7

Funny story from this week. We were meeting with an Italian lady named Maria, who had invited us in before and wanted to learn more about what we teach. As we sat down at her table, her husband comes in and says he has lots of questions for us. He went on and on about everything that he sees that's wrong in the world, as well as asking us questions about religion, and what God's plan is for all of us. Every time we tried to answer him, he would start talking louder and didn't let us say anything. Finally after almost 45 minutes of this, he slows down and basically says no one has the answers to this, no one can help, and you're wasting your time as missionaries. We told him straight up, "We do! You haven't let us answer anything you've asked." After a bit of this, he softened up and we're going back today. The lesson I got from this is that there are people all around us who want to know the basic answers that the gospel of Jesus Christ contains. Because I've grown up in the church, I've taken for granted some of the knowledge that has been revealed by modern prophets. We really are blessed to be able to take this message to people like Dominic. Even if they don't accept the Gospel, we've given them the opportunity to and increased their knowledge of Heavenly Father's plan for us.

Some of the service we were able to do was out in the hills, and there was a koala on their property! So cool, and it was the first one I've seen :) Honestly I've been a little disappointed with the lack of wildlife that I've seen, but I'm in the city. Fun fact for anyone who wants to know about my mission: I could be transferred to Darwin or Alice Springs, my companion Sister Craig was in Darwin for 7.5 months before she came here. That's the really tropical part on the north coast of Australia, they just have wet and dry seasons.

One other really cool thing from this week was a man named Martin. He walked into church on Sunday on his own, none of the missionaries had ever seen him before. When he came to Sunday School the next hour, he spoke in class how he had researched our church and knew all about what we believed, and he said he'd been led here to find out whatever more he could. It was awesome, and a true miracle. As the lesson that day, the missionaries taught a basic history of our Church and what we believe, and he knew most of it. Anyway, he said he wants to be baptized!

There's been a big emphasis in the mission lately of being "exactly obedient", and of the blessings we can receive when we show God our desire to completely align our wills to His. Martin coming to church like he did is definitely one of those blessings. I know that God has many blessings He wants to give us, we just need to open our eyes to the miracles around us. Jesus Christ is the key to that, and as we come to know Him, we can truly know why we're here on earth, and what our purpose is (John 17:3).