G'Day!
Thanks
so much for another
wonderful e-mail this week! I loved reading it and hearing about all
the exciting things happening lately. Sorry again for being a day late. On Saturday it was 'Australia Day' (which is like the 4th of July
for the U.S.) and since it fell on a weekend they made the following
Monday (yesterday) the actual public holiday. And on Australia Day
nobody works, so the banks were closed, almost every shop was closed,
and most importantly the library was closed, so none of the missionaries
were able to e-mail their families. So we get the opportunity to e-mail
today instead. It certainly has been an interesting transfer missing 2
e-mailing days already. The past week was excellent though other than
that, and we accomplished heaps of things. Elder Rua and I have really
been working hard in this Geelong area and have been seeing so much
success and so many blessings. On Thursday
we had an exchange with our Zone Leaders for the day but since they
live a bit of a
distance away from us they just stayed in our area so because of that
we were able to accomplish double the work on that day with 4
missionaries instead of just 2. The past week as a whole we saw so
many blessings with finding good new people to teach. Total for the week
we had 25 new people to go and teach which was only 1 off of 26 new
people in a week which was the last week when I was with Elder Rafferty.
Not that it's a contest of numbers but I just thought it was awesome
that we were able to find so many prepared people to go and teach, and
they were all very genuinely interested in learning more. So we
certainly are getting heaps of work to do in Geelong! This past week we
also finally had the chance to meet with the bishop of the Geelong ward,
Bishop Sandford. He and his family had been away for 2 weeks on holiday
so we hadn't been able to catch him until just recently. But we were
able to have a good meeting with him to discuss all
the progress that we hope can be made in the coming little while. He
gave us several names that we can pursue of less-active members and also
of unbaptized children and teenagers that we hope to be able to visit
and teach soon. Our area is one of the biggest this side of the mission
so it's definitely difficult for us to get to everyone we want to see
just on bikes. However, the ward has just implimented a plan for the
members to go on splits with us and the other Elders every Wednesday night,
so hopefully we'll be able to contact some of the people that live a
bit farther out on those days. We also have been trying to go around and
visit all of the members in our area of Geelong to get to know them and
also share the Family Mission Plan with them. We've only been able to
see a few thus far but one of the families we went to see, the McCoy
family, have only been here a month or two and just moved from Pheonix,
Arizona! So quite a big move! Bro. McCoy
actually served in this mission about 17 years ago and that helped them
make their decision when they were thinking about where they wanted to
move. So that's certainly nice to have some fellow Americans in the
area. Last week we were also able to have another lesson with one of the
investigators we found in the 1st week of the transfer named Joel. He's
Australian and hasn't had too much of a religious background but is
very nice and open to hearing about all different beliefs. We were able
to teach him about the Plan of Salvation with a focus on how living the
main principles of the Gospel are what help us to get there. It went
really well and you could feel that the Spirit was there. At the end he
committed to pray on his own about the message we shared and also to
know if Heavenly Father is there. It's nice because he works with one of
the members in the ward, Bro. Ceff, so it hasn't been hard for us to
think of who the fellowship can be. We
hope to be able to teach him about the Restoration this week. Joel and
Camilla (confusing with your two main investigators being named Joel,
isn't it?) are doing really well as well. They met with Bishop on Sunday
and finalized everything for their wedding on the 23rd of March, so
that'll be great! The ward seems like a really great one because there
were so many people and families that came up after Sacrament meeting
and after church to talk with them and fellowship them which really
helped them, especially Joel, to feel welcome and have a good
experience. We'll be seeing them this coming Thursday night which is
where we'll begin teaching them officially, which will be wonderful!
Yesterday we also had some service scheduled with a new contact we met
on Sunday named Paulo (an Australian born Italian). He'd met some
missionaries several years ago who helped him put up his fence so he
knew that he could ask us for some help when we met him on Sunday. We
went over there at 12 noon and helped him to strip some of the paint
off of the side of his house, clean his backyard fence with a water
pressure shooter thing (I don't know what it's called haha), and oil his
back deck. So we helped him accomplish a lot and it ended up taking us 5
hours to do. He has a rare spinal condition where some of the nerves
between his spine were lost and his back vertebrae began fusing
together and cause him agonizing pain. I don't remember what the name
was for it though. It prevents him from doing hard labor though so he
greatly appreciated the help and said that we are welcome in his home
anytime so hopefully we'll have the opportunity to share the Gospel with
him and his family. We're excited for another busy week here in Geelong
and are really loving the work right now and hope that we can continue
to really build up the area! I'm grateful for all of your continued love
and support and hope that you
have a great week ahead as well! I'll talk to you again soon!
Love,
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