1 Polynesian companion just wasn't enough for me...

What a great week, but I'll start off by exlaining the subject. So we had Zone Conference this week and we got to the chapel a bit early and we were waiting for the AP's to get there to unlock it. When they pulled up, a missionary that I've never met before jumped out of the back of their car. During Zone Conference President Maurer had him stand up to introduce himself and then he had Elder Richards and myself stand up and he told us that Elder Tou (toe-oo) would be our new companion. I guess his story is that he came into the mission in January 09 but had to go home for 6 months because of an injury and he just came back this past week. He's from NZ just like Elder Richards, but has lived in Brisbane the past 5 years. He's such an awesome missionary and brings so much to our companionship. He's just a good "people person", something that I'm still working on. Hopefully I'll learn a lot from him, even though I'll probably be getting transferred out of here in two weeks. Which is also something that makes me pretty happy. I can't wait to go see what the rest of the mission is like.

Yesterday was such an awesome day. Other than it being a church day, it was just a sweet missionary day. After church we drove down into the city to do some city contacting which is so much fun. There's so many people in the city, and even though most of them are in wayyy too big of a hurry to even stop walking while they talk to you, it's so much just to talk to so many different people and get so many different responses. I was able to have a couple of really good conversations with some people while we walked about the plan of salvation and the true church. I loved it. Something funny that happened was we were driving around looking for somewhere to park we turned the corner onto this street and there was a HUUUUGE line of people and when we got up to the front of the line I saw what it was and it was a line for the Cobra Starship/Owl City concert, haha, and the first thing that went through my head was, "we should go give a pass along card to ever single one of those people" haha. I did have the thought of "OH MAN!! I wanna go!!" for a split second, but then I remembered that I was a missionary lol. City contacting is the best though.

After city contacting we had to go to a Mission President's fireside that was so good. Our 5 man district sang a song (Whre can I turn for peace?) with our Zone Leaders and APs in front everyone that came (all four stakes were invited) and everyone said we sounded great. I wouldn't have been so nervous about it if I hadn't had to sing a solo haha. But it turned out all good. The fireside itself was so good because they showed this video that was put together by my Zone Leaders where they went around and interviewed a lot of recent converts to the church and put the video together a lot like the "From Small and Simple Things" video if you've ever seen that one. Such a spiritual evening last night though. One of the stake presidents talked after the video and it was so quiet while he was speaking you could've heard a pin drop.

I think it was between city contacting and the fireside that I realised how much I really love my mission. I love being out here. I love talking about the gospel. I love learning about the gospel. I love everything about it. I've started reading like 3 different books this week and I'm not even done reading a couple of the other books I've been reading. That's how exciting it is to learn about and live the gospel. I wish I could read faster because there's just so much to read and I want to know as much as I can. This really is the most important thing I could be doing with my life right now because this really is the most important work in the world, other than temple work that is, but I even get to do that out here!

I love you all so much!

Elder Tanner

p.s... I know March Madness is going on right now... and baylor is a 3 seed?? Go Baylor!!

So Much for Summer Being Over

So yeah, this week was so ridiculously hot. I heard that two weeks ago was supposed to be our last really hot week, but this past wednesday or thursday it got up to 109 degrees. It was so hot. It made getting any work done really hard because we didn't have the car for most of the time. But, I guess we still had a decent week. Getting to hear from Elder Nielson twice was so good, especially since the first time it was to just us missionaries. He taught us some really cool things about the organization of the church and about what's called the "revelatory process" as found in the Book of Mormon, I wish I could remember what chapter and verse, but it was really cool. He told us it was a "secret that only the prophets know", but really it's not, because all it takes is scripture study, prayer, and fasting. He said a lot of other stuff, but I don't have my notebook with me. Overall though, It was such a good conference.

The temple on Wednesday was amazing as usual. I love how I can learn something new everytime I go there, even if it's something small. It's such an amazing place. I wish there were more people there though. When we go, our Zone which is 14 guys, and then there's only like 3 other men there. So I can't imagine what they do when there aren't any missionaries there. So sad. Everyone should go to the temple.

It's kinda funny, ever since Elder Richards got into the ward, we've been finding all these less active Moari people and they're awesome. One family, The Hansens, we met this past Friday and now they're having us over for dinner on Wednesday. They're so awesome. We don't really know their whole story on why they're less active and all that, but that doesn't matter. We'll get them to chruch sooner or later. Also the McGaugheys, a family Elder Glover and I got in contact awhile ago are finally coming to church, and their 9 year old son Tayzah re-taught me how to do a Rubik's cube. So I went out and bought a new one. I might have said that in last weeks letter, I don't remember.

I have another physics analogy that I learned this week. This one comes from Elder Nielson, but I'm going to start using it as well. Everyone knows that the law of gravity exists. We can't see gravity, we don't know what it looks like, but we know it's there. So one day there was a guy that wanted to put the law of gravity to the test. He went to the top of a 40 story building and decided to step off. By the time he got to the 30th floor, he was thinking "this isn't so bad, maybe gravity doens't exist", by the time he got to the 20th floor he was thinking "maybe gravity does exist, that ground is getting closer. By the time he got to the 10th floor he starts to regret his decision and wonder why he decided to test the law of gravity. By the 5th floor he's thinking "oh dang. I shouldn't have done that". And then the ground came. The same thing can applied to the gospel. For example, we know that the law of chastity exists. We can't see the law of chastity, we don't know what it looks like, but we know it exists. If we decide to put that law to the test, the ground will always come. Even if at the 30th or even at the 20th floor, we don't think the ground will come, it will come. Always. In other words, there will always be consequences for disobeying a law of the gospel, just like there are consequences for disobeying the law of gravity.

I really love analogies like that. It just puts the gospel into such a good perspective. I bought a notebook just for writing analogies that I hear like that down. Hopefully it's full by the end of my mission.

I love you all, hope you're having a great spring break, while I'm burning up.

Love,

Elder Tanner

Labor Day Week

So yesterday was Labour day, that's why I'm emailing today. This week has been pretty great. Elder Richards, my new companion, is the man. He's Moari, but he's white. His mom is white and his dad is brown and he has 6 white brothers and sisters and 1 brown one lol. But he's such cool. Kinda laid back which isnt all that great for missionary work, but compared to other Moaris I've seen he's not as laid back as he could be. It's kinda weird having a Maori companion, because lemme tell you, he can eat. Hopefully being around him doesn't make me gain weight haha. we did all of our grocery shopping for the month and we bought 50 dollars of meat mince, 20 cans of baked beans, 40 litres of milk, what else.... some pasta packet thingys, seems like there's something else but I can't remember. He says that this will last us the entire month, and we'll save so much money, but we'll see.

Church this week was awesome. We had 3 Less active families come to church and one investigator family. Having those less active families there was almost as exciting as a baptism. Especially because one of them Elder Glover and I tried for 12 weeks to get them to church, and then as soon as he leaves, they show up haha. The investigator family that we had there is getting baptized this Saturday if everything goes right. I'm so pumped because we've been teaching them for sooo long. And I love it when success happens lol. We got an appointment with that less active famiy tonight and since they're from NZ and my companion is from NZ, it should be a fun night.

I talked to Elder Glover the other day and he said it was 50 degrees up in Port Hedland. That would be so bad, because the other day it was 41 here and we just about died. It was so hard to work that day because we were without a car. and just walking down the street made us sweaty, no, just walking outside made us sweaty. I'm SO READY for winter to get here. I want to spend the winter in Albany. So that way it will be a relatively normal winter. COLD.

Not much else to say this week. Zone planning on Friday was good. I can't believe President Maurer only has 3 months left until he goes home. Our new president is from Canada I hear. I hope he's as good as President Maurer.

Love you all,

Elder Tanner