And Thus Begins Weeks 37-42 In Baldivis Ward

Well transfer calls came this weekend, and I'm continuing my stint in Baldivis Ward. I told Bishop Chessel that Elder Lowe was getting transferred but I wasn't and he just laughed. I don't think he actually believed us at first. This will be my 7th consecutive transfer in this ward. By the end of it, I'll be 10 days short of spending 10 months in it. I love it though. There's probably not another ward out there in WA that I would love spending nearly half of my mission in. The people here are great. It's getting to that point where people really can't believe that I'm still here. Because last year, Elder Nymeyer spent 6 transfers in the ward, and they all say that was a long time. But I'm going on 7. NEW RECORD! But yeah, I love the people in this ward. If I ever do come back for a holiday or what have you, I know which ward I'll be visiting, that's for sure.

This week has been busy as! I forgot to bring my planner today for some reason, so I probably won't be able to remember all of the details from the week, but I'll be able to give you a pretty good idea of how hectic it has been. The first exciting thing that we did this week was go on an exchange with the APs. That was Tuesday night til Wednesday night. I got to go with Elder Semu, who is a great missionary. I've been on an exchange with him before, but a lot has changed since then, that was nearly a year ago, when I was in Noranda. We had a really good day together. Did lots of driving too. In the morning we went to Kwinana to do morning exercise with them. Then for companionship study at 9 we went down to Mandurah to do comp study with them. And then he had to go to the Halls Head flat to have a look at it and make sure that it was ready for some missionaries to move in. There hasn't been missionaries there since I was a district leader 3 months ago or so. So I'm assuming that with the upcoming transfer they're going to be putting some missionaries back in there. They also used it as a temporary home for some missionaries that came out of country areas for transfer meeting this week. So yeah, that took up most of our morning, except for this awesome lesson that we had with a new investigator named Tutu. He's from Africa, and he goes to church up in Balga, which is in my first area, which makes sense because of the large amount of Africans in that area. He told us that he had a basketball scholarship to play at a university in California, (he couldn't remember which one, probably just a small college), but he gave it up because he had a girlfriend at the time that make him choose her or the scholarship. He fully regrets it now and wishes he could be in America playing ball. He's only 20, so he says he's going to work really hard to get that scholarship back. I hope that goes well for him. What a great opportunity that would be for him. Coming out of Uganda to Australia, learning about the sport of basketball, and then becoming good enough to play in America. The lesson that we had with him was great too. We taught him the restoration in it's entirety. We asked him if he had a Bible around to read along with us, and he left the room for a good 5 minutes and you could tell he was looking for it. When he came back he was holding an old dusty Book of Mormon. Haha surprise! He didn't have any idea where it came from or what it even was. What a great teaching opportunity! At the end of the lesson we got him to offer a kneeling prayer which he did beautifully. He thanked God "for sending two men of God to teach me the truth", he prayed that he would be able to know the same things that Joseph Smith knew, and he said "I hope that I can know the truth". It was a terrific prayer from a new investigator. And he told us that he was going to start reading the Book of Mormon that night. We're seeing him again on Wednesday, with my new companion, whoever that may be. Pray that he kept his commitment to read and pray about the Book of Mormon!

The rest of the week has involved a lot of running around as well. On Thursday, we went to the Hamilton Hill area to go tracting with them and to give them some supplies that they needed. They were out of Book of Mormons. That took up a pretty big chunk of the day, but it was worth while. I love serving anyone I can, and that goes under serving the missionaries in the zone. We did the same thing on Friday with the Elders that were temporarily staying in Halls Head. Turned out that Elder Neibaur was actually one of the Elders temporarily staying down there, so I got to go tracting with him. He was my MTC companion for those who don't remember. It took us 17 months, but we finally got to work together, for about 2 hours haha. It was good though. He's become a great missionary. He has served the last nine months down in Albany, so he's been kind of exiled. I think he's happy to be back in the city.

Saturday was a busy-ish day. In the morning we went to go do some service with the Rockingham Elders helping out with tearing a rock wall down with sledgies! Good fun. Then we had lunch with one of my favourite families, the Thomas'. They're less active, which is sad, but they're awesome. Hopefully my new companion can motivate them enough to come back to church. They were coming when I first got in the ward 8 months ago, he even received the Melchizedek Priesthood in September, but since then became less active. We had a good time with them though. We shared the story with them about the gardener and the currant bush and how sometimes we go through trials so that we can realise our full potential. Saturday evening we had a ward activity, which wasn't too bad, it was in a park and there was food, but no investigators came. We weren't too bummed about that, because it was more for kids anyways. It was like an Easter activity. After the activity was pretty sad though because we went to go visit Angela. She lost her son this week to a biking accident. She's going through a really hard time, not only with the loss of her son, but her son's father won't put aside their differences for one day in memory of their son, so he's holding a separate funeral for him, and that's taken a pretty big hit on Angela. So we just went over to let her talk to us and took some time to read some comforting scriptures to her. Namely D&C 137. So we did all we could to help her out. She said she's just holding on at the moment. But she was definitely in a better mood when we left. So that was good.

Well that's about it for this week. I'll be sure to tell you all about my new companion next week. I'll be going to transfer meeting on Wednesday to find out who it is. I'm praying for Elder Tou! That would make my life.

Well talk to you all soon! Less than a month until Mother's Day!

Much love,

Elder Tanner

Spiritual Boosters!

What an amazing week this has been. Of course the main reason being because of General Conference and the spiritual feast that we had over the weekend. But other reasons being because of Specialised Training meeting on Tuesday AND interviews with President Cahoon. Well actually, that's really the only other reason. Between that meeting on Tuesday, and conference on Saturday and Sunday, I feel spiritually full. And I hope that I don't lose that feeling of being spiritually filled for at least 6 months until we have our next conference.

The meeting on Tuesday was good mainly because of my interview with President. We chatted for about 20 minutes. My past interviews with him haven't been near as good as this one. We first talked about all the different branches in WA and how much responsibility he has with those and we got on the topic of how I've been in the city for my entire mission (which is 17 months as of today, for those that didn't know). He asked me how I would feel serving in a particular area and I told him I would love it, mainly because of the opportunity to get out of the city. It would be so nice to not have my p-days controlled by 6 other companionships of missionaries, which is how it is as a zone leader. P-days are in no way at all a break for me. But I'm going to wait until the actual transfer comes (either this weekend or next transfer 6 weeks from this weekend) to give you any more information, because I don't want to spoil the surprise or jinx it haha. We also talked about discouragement in my interview with President. How Satan uses discouragement as one of his major tools on missionaries. Discouragement leads to a loss of faith which allows Satan to work hard on us. We just got talking about that because of some of the events of the past couple of weeks with some of our investigators. But basically he just told me to keep on keeping on. Which, after conference, that became even easier to do.

It's amazing how much we look forward to conference as missionaries. It was like we were counting down to Christmas. I've learned so much over the past two days. I still can't believe that I never watched all 5 sessions before my mission. I was missing out on so much! I'm hoping that this time next year I can go see it in person. I actually didn't realise how much I had learnt until Elder Bednar gave his talk speaking about revelation. It was then that I realised that my whole life I have been receiving revelation. Line upon line, precept on precept, that is how he teaches His children. I loved how he said that we've all received revelation at some point in our lives without even noticing it at times. All the revelation that I received over the past two days was like the sun rising over the horizon. Although, I do remember one thing that the Prophet said that was like the "light switch" revelation. When he said that a firm testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ can help us overcome any trial that we face in life, I instantly knew that that was true. I felt the spirit testify that to me. I didn't even have to think about it for a second, I just knew. Like a light switch getting turned on in my head. Every talk that was given over the past two days was just amazing. I really like the one about "be"ing and "do"ing. "To be? or not to be? That is actually a really good question" haha that was funny. That talk put a lot into perspective for me though. I can't wait until the conference edition of The Ensign comes out though. I'm sure that when I re-read those talks it will be like the sun continuing to rise as I continue to learn more from each talk.

Sunday was an absolutely fantastic day of conference. In the morning (6:30) we went to Kwinana and had breakfast with them and the Rockingham elders and then left for conference at 8. I don't know if you all remember the Erwee family that Elder Shobbrook and I found when we were companions, but they came to the Sunday morning session! It was so good to see them again. And they told me that I had better come over for dinner again before I get transferred farther away. I think they really enjoyed conference as well. Hopefully the spirit was able to work on them and help them understand a bit more about the gospel. But they're still probably one of the nicest nonmember families I've ever met my whole mission. So that was great. What a great session for them to see as well with the prophet speaking and everything. Maybe they'll be inspired to come to church now.

One cool experience this week was tracting on Wednesday. We knocked on the door, this lady answered but she didn't say much, so when we introduced ourselves, all she said was "oh we're Jehovah's Witnesses", and right away I could pick up on her American accent. So that lead to me asking where she was from (Seattle), then she invited us in, we met her husband and son, and we got to actually have a pretty good chat with them. She said she couldn't really pick up on my American accent until I said I was from Oklahoma. Then it was easier for her to pick up on it. She wasn't interested in talking about religion but they were still nice to us.

Well that's about it for this week. Love you all! Talk to you soon!

Love yas!

Elder Tanner

Busiest week ever!

So let me just run you through what my schedule was like for this past week, then I'll tell you about it. So Monday was p-day, and in the evening we went over to a less-active/part member family's house and also got a haircut over there. Tuesday we had leadership meeting from 9-3 and at 3 we exchanged with the Jandakot Elders so I got to spend 24 hours in their area working with Elder Narhwold. After the unexchange on Wednesday, elder Lowe and I spent a couple of hours trying to visit people, but then spent the rest of the evening planning our training for our Zone Meeting on Friday. On Thursday we had Zone Leader council from 9-3 again, and afterwards we did some tracting and then finished planning our meeting for friday. The meeting on Friday went from 9:30-11:30 and afterwards we went to Kwinana to help with a service project that ended up going until about 4, including the time for the barbecue afterwards. After that we exchanged with Kwinana and Elder Shobbrook and I got to work together again but this time it was in Waikiki. On Saturday after our unexchange we drove up to Shelley to do a blitz in their area with 14 other missionaries (which yielded 31 potential investigators for them). Then from then on, it was back to normal proselyting schedule. So as you can see, this week has been absolutely hectic. Pretty much nonstop for 6 days straight. So it's nice to finally have a bit of a break today, it's much needed. But even today I think we're going to be running all over the place.

So the leadership meeting on Tuesday was really good. The majority of the time was spent talking about how to run an effective meeting. Each of the Zone Leaders gave a training on a different aspect of an effective meeting. Ours was on setting goals and leaving/following up on commitments. Our training wasn't too long but basically we talked about how following up is the absolute most important part of the commitment pattern. It was kind of funny when we were talking about it I felt like I should ask "what is the commitment patter?" You would think that a meeting full of district leaders and zone leaders, someone would be able to answer that pretty quickly. Maybe the people that knew the answer were just holding back so they could let somebody else answer it. But it was pretty surprising when it wasn't answered straight away. So hopefully everyone was able to get something from our training. I know that I was able to get something from it, as well as from every body elses training. The Southern River ZLs gave a training on how to include games or just participation into your meetings and I think I took the most from that one. I'm usually not very good at thinking of good creative games for meetings and stuff, but I was able to do it for our zone meeting on Friday, but we'll get to that. Leadership meetings are always good because we get to see a lot of missionaries that usually we all know, so it's good. I got to see Elder Jorgensen which is always a good reunion. Sister Cahoon gave a really good training on the difference between a leader and a manager and the different leadership qualities we should strive to develop as leaders in the mission. I really liked that training. I took heaps of notes. I love taking notes, aye. I always learn so much more when I do.

My exchange with Elder Narhwold in Jandakot was way fun. I love being around Americans that like to talk about sports and stuff like that. He was a speed skater back home. He even qualified for the Olympic trials, but he decided to come on a mission. He's a really good guy. I think we spent the whole exchange just talking to each other (when we weren't teaching of course). We had some really good teaching appointments too. One was a member present lesson with this guy named Rudy from El Salvador. We had him kneel and pray with us then and there to ask God if the Book of Mormon was true. He said the most sincere prayer that I've ever heard an investigator give. Hepleaded with Heavenly Father to know the truth. It was a great experience. I want more spiritual experiences with investigators like that. They can be hard to come by sometimes though. Apparently Rudy even came to church yesterday as well which is awesome. He's been an investigator for a really long time and has never come before. The member that was with us in the lesson was amazing as well. He bore a powerful testimony which was more powerful than any testimony Elder Narhwold or I could have born because he was a convert. So yeah, it was a great exchange.

Zone Leader Council was good as always on Thursday. We spent a bulk of the time counseling on different missionaries in the mission and the pros and cons of staying in an area longer than normal and with staying with a companion for a long time. There were a lot of cons surprisingly enough. I think that means that this upcoming transfer in two weeks there will be a lot of people getting transferred. We'll just have to wait and see what happens. President Cahoon gave us some training on BIF BAM! Which means "Bring in families, baptise a man". It was a focus that his mission president had on his mission back in the day and he feels like it will be a good focus for us to have as well. Even though we're meant to be baptising families, there hasn't been enough focus on it lately. And there definitely hasn't been enough focusing on teaching the man of the house. A lot of times missionaries will just teach the wife and kids because the man isn't interested. But President Cahoon told us that we just basically need to man up and lay it down for him. Of course we'll do it in the nicest way possible, but we need to let the potential priesthood holders know just that, their potential. If we focus more on the head of the household, we feel like that will bring more families into the church. Over the last year we only had 7 full families brought into the church. The rest of our baptisms were just individuals. So hopefully with our new focus on kneeling prayers and BIF BAM we start to see more success in missionary work in the near future.

So the Zone Meeting on Friday was pretty good. I feel like it could have been better though. We spent a lot of time planning it out on Wednesday but then after the training we received at ZLC, we wanted to take all of that training to the Zone. So it wasn't as planned out as it could have been. We mainly spoke about different things that we could do to focus on finding and teaching families. One thing that we implemented was a new number to correlate on at the end of each week and that is "hours finding". That's something that's not really recorded and when performance is recorded, it improves. so we're hoping that it leaves a good impression on those in our zone. At the end we played a game to help missionaries open their mouths to anyone. It was kind of like charades in a way. Elder Lowe and I wrote 20 different people and then 20 different actions on little slips of paper and so someone had to come up, pick a person that they were going to be and then an action. We got a lot of different funny combinations. A blind man dancing, Mario sleeping, Barack Obama talking to his neighbor, a hippie walking a dog, etc. Then the other missionary had to contact the person who was acting. There were a lot of good laughs. I wish I could have recorded some of it for you. It was great. I just hope people enjoyed it as much as we though they would.

Our service in Kwinana included going over to this nonmember couples house and cleaning the backyard. The house they were in previously belonged to a hoarder, so there's was HEAPS of junk everywhere. We were working for about 3 and a half hours and we had a pile of rubbish about a metre and a half tall and a couple of metres long. They're going to need to get a Bobcat in there or something to get rid of all the rubbish. I couldn't believe how much junk there was. And apparently the lady who used to live there wanted to come and go through the pile of rubbish to see if there was anything she wanted to take. that's when you know there's a problem. there was no way that there was anything in that pile of junk worth keeping. Afterward Angela cooked us up a Barby which was nice, but the Barby caught on fire and the food wasn't all that great haha. Oh well. It was good fun to be on exchange with Elder Shobbrook. He's changed for the better since I trained him. I think it's just that he has adjusted to mission life finally. We had some good fun together. Haha funny story real quick, we went to this less active's house, one who I had never met before, and knocked on the door (it was a pretty new house) and when he came to the door he said "holy cow.... how the heck did you guys get my address? come in" Then after talking for about 5 minutes he stopped and then said "but seriously, how did you get my address?" Hahaha, we think his dad who is active in rockingham ward gave his address to our ward clerk or something. It was a funny experience though. He was cool with us, but not really with church. His wife is a nonmember, so he's just not too keen on having us come and teach or anything. But it was still good to meet him.

Sunday was a bit of an off day. We had FOUR appointment cancel on us. One with the Coromandels (again) which I was most disappointed about, because now it just feels like they're dodging us. But I'm not going to give up hope. Not now, not ever. I think once I get a new companion, if he's the right person, maybe we'll be able to get back in there with them. It was pretty sad about the other 3 appointments as well, but oh well. We have a fresh week ahead of us. It HAS to be better this week. We probably only had like 10 hours total of proselyting this past week, so it should be better.

Well that's about it from down under this week. Hope you all are enjoying life. It's still uber hot down here, but there's hope for this weekend, it's supposed to get down to 25 degrees Celsius! That will be a nice day :)

Love you all!

Elder Tanner

Grunt Day :D

So Elder Lowe and I had a grunt day this past Friday, and for those that don't know what exactly a grunt day is, well, I'm sure that you can imagine in your mind just from the name of it. But basically, we tracted from 10:00 when we left the flat until sun down around 7:00ish. We didn't go home for lunch either so that we could be out among the people. It was terrific. On paper, it sounds really hard doing a grunt day, but I actually quite love it. You never go thirsty or anything, and as long as you take a lunch break later in the day so that it splits it up evenly, it's good fun. We met some really great people that day. We got let inside to 3 houses, which for tracting, that is really good. Only one of those three houses invited us back, and we only got to teach one lesson of those three house and it wasn't the same one that invited us back that we got to teach. The one that we got to teach was a Fijian lady and her housemate who was an Aussie guy. He wasn't really interested in sitting in on the lesson with us, but the Fijian lady was so nice. Her name was Bee. We knocked on the door, she opened it up and before we could even tell her about why we were knocking on her door, (all we said was that we were representative of Jesus Christ), she just said "Come in!" She sat down with us, gave us some water and some biscuits and cake and we had a great chat with her. She told us that she has heaps of family that are actually members of the church and she lived with some of them in California, but she never went to church with them because she's too staunch in her Pentecost Churches. She had a nephew that served a mission in Hawaii. She lived 15 minutes away from the Fiji Temple, and yet she had never heard the message of the restoration. We taught it quite powerfully I thought, bore strong testimony of the Book of Mormon, the whole 9 yards, and she wouldn't accept the invitation to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. I think a lot of times people just hear what they want to hear when we teach them. Otherwise, it would only make sense that there would need to be a restoration. But all we can do is invite, the rest is up to them. I just hope Bee chooses to accept the invitation somewhere down the road. So that was the only lesson we taught all day, but another house that we got let in to was a Kiwi family, who actually knows a family in our ward, the Hitas, and they were way nice. They were the ones that invited us back next week, but we didn't get to teach them then and there because it was just bad timing, they were really busy. I think we found a total of 8 different potential investigators that day, which is great. We just need to keep building up that potential pool so that we can build up our actual teaching pool from there.

We had another appointment this week with the Coromandels fall through. We went over on Wednesday to set up the appointment for Sunday, and when we went over on Sunday he told us that he had forgotten about some things that he needed to do that day so there wasn't going to be any time for us to teach them. He did want to reschedule for next week though, so that's good. It's easy to feel like people are trying to dodge you when you have 3 appointments fall through and they never answer your calls. But we keep praying for them and keep working with them. We can't be too quick to give up on people. Unless they straight up tell us that they don't want us around anymore, I'll never give up on the Coromandels. They're great.

We've been trying to focus on teaching more investigators and less actives in a day rather than active members. Usually we teach about 24 lessons in a week but about 15-18 of those are to active members and I feel like I'm just home teaching when that happens. The ideal situation would be to teach 24 lessons in a week and only 5 or 6 of them be to active members helping them with their missionary work. We had a lesson with one active family this week and we introduced this new family missionary plan that we're trying to get happening with all of the families in the ward, but they told us that they couldn't trust missionaries in the APM because of things they saw happening in the mission nearly 9 years ago and that reputation has apparently stuck with the mission over the years. I felt pretty bummed out after leaving that lesson. It just seemed like that was a pretty poor reason for not wanting to do missionary work. "I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men." I think that scripture applies in so many different ways in this situation. I'm sure the rest of the ward will have a good response to this family missionary plan. I'm looking forward to doing it with every family.

We had our ward activity on Saturday night. It was the one that was supposed to be Iron Chef, but it ended up just being a Potluck dinner. There aren't enough hours in a day of missionary life to have to plan a ward activity on top of all other responsibilities that we have. It turned out to be a great activity though. Lots of people complimented us on it. When I say lots though I mean about 3 or 4 of the families that came out of about 10 lol. It was good though. They came, we blessed the food, they ate, we shared a spiritual thought, (a quote about missionary work from M. Russel Ballard from the 2003 General conference), a closing prayer was said, we all cleaned up and went home. Simple but sweet.

So this week has been a great improvement over last week. And the coming week looks to be even better. We have a leadership training meeting this week as well as a Zone Leader council AS WELL as a Zone Meeting. So it's going to be one of those weeks. I'm looking forward to it though. I love those meetings and the spiritual experiences that they bring. Meetings are the best.

Not much else to say about this week. All is well in the Australia Perth [Rockingham] Mission. Hope yous have a great week! I'll talk to you all soon!

Much Love,

Elder Tanner

Overcoming Adversity

So the theme for this week seems to be overcoming adversity, and the emails that I got today really helped with that, so thanks for those. Not that this week has been full of adversity, but it's definitely had it's ups and downs. For example, we were only able to teach one investigator the whole week, that was one of the downs. One of the ups would be that we got to go to the temple on Wednesday and that's always a great experience. The thing that I learned in the temple this week comes from Ether 2:15. Not really anything about overcoming adversity, but about repentance and forgiveness. But it was good.

So I think that the biggest adversity that I've felt this week just comes from me feeling like I can be doing better. There's so many different aspects of the work that I just feel like I need to improve in. We had a Stake Correlation meeting this week with the Mission President, Stake President, 2 of the High Councilmen, us, and the Bunbury ZLs. After that meeting I just felt this overwhelming desire to do everything better. I know that I'm trying my hardest in everything I do, but I just feel like I can be doing so much better. I have the desire to baptise monthly, I'm just trying to figure out what more can I possibly do to achieve my goals. We had a massive weekly planning session on Friday and we discussed some goals that we want to work on. Goals for our area and for our zone. We really want to set the example for our zone in everything including helping our investigators progress. We haven't really had any progressing investigators in awhile, they're all just kind of at a stand still or have just dropped us. We have had some good progress with the Coromandels, but that's about it. We're really hoping to see even more with them in the weeks coming. We went around to visit them on Thursday to see if we could reschedule an appointment. Jerome wasn't home, but we were able to talk to his wife Jamie. She talked to us about how she has kind of been pressured into the church in the past and been put off a bit as well. Apparently Jerome has an auntie that told her she couldn't come to the church because they weren't married, and then when they did get married, she told her that she can come now. So that put her off for awhile. We invited her to church and she didn't say no, but she said that she wants to learn more before she makes any big changes or jumps or anything and she wants to learn at her own pace. Basically, we had a really good chat with her and found out that she is learning and interested in continuing her learning. She even said that they read a couple of chapters of the Book of Mormon together! We haven't been able to reschedule our appointment with them yet, but we're hopefully going to get that done tonight. And hopefully also plan a Family Home Evening with them and the Katoas. Sister Katoa said that her mum was a Coromandel, so there's a chance they might be related. But she also said that Coromandel is one of the most popular surnames in NZ, so we'll see.

We had a service opportunity at the Hoey's house this Thursday that involved working with heaps of concrete. Brother Hoey, (Jim), isn't a member but the rest of the family is. His son is actually on a mission in the Adelaide mission and his other son is married in the temple. The rest of the family was baptised 3 years ago or so, but he's just too staunch of a Catholic to want to change. Very stuck in his ways. It's had a pretty big effect on the rest of the family as well, I think the two sons are going to carry that family in the gospel for sure. Well anyways, I learned on Thursday that I never want a job that involves working with concrete. I was pretty shocking at it. Hopefully he still has us around to help him with other jobs that he has. He's a workaholic. When he's not up in the mines, he's always doing something around the yard or house, just always renovating. It was good fun though. Then he bought us some KFC afterwards so it was all goods.

We have another specialised training meeting tomorrow and I'm actually feeling healthy this week which means I won't have to miss out on giving training again! I'm not sure what we're giving training on though, the APs just called us a couple of hours ago to let us know and I haven't had a chance to listen to the message yet. But it should be good. We have to prepare a 3 minute talk as well and the topic is "a funny story from the mission or life that teaches a gospel principle". And it's been a lot harder for me to think of my funny story than I thought it would be. Hopefully I gain some kind of inspiration tonight though when we're planning.

Sorry this email isn't heaps long this week. I hope we're all preparing for General Conference. Less than 3 weeks away now! It's bound to be a good one with all the things happening in the world right now. I can't wait to hear the words of the prophet.

Love you all!

Elder Tanner