"Call In A Sickie"

Just a couple of photos of Karratha life

I think I mentioned last week how I was feeling a bit sick while emailing. Yeah, it didn't ease up at all. That night we went to a dinner appointment and that's when I realised how sick I really was. I could hardly teach when we were teaching her and her friends that she invited. So we drove home (a very long 30 minutes) and I pretty much just went straight to sleep. I called President Cahoon that night and told him I'd most likely have to take a sickie on Tuesday. I was right too. I think I just got a virus or something that has been going around Karratha, but I was in bed all day on Tuesday, and wanted to be in bed all day Wednesday and Thursday, but pushed myself to work. It's funny how taking a sick day on a mission you feel a lot worse than when you take a sick day from work or school. There's just so much work to be done out here and I felt like I could have been missing opportunities that the Lord had prepared for me on that specific day. I know the Lord understands our weaknesses though. Even though we are his servants, we are only human. Elder Naruo gave me a blessing on Tuesday morning and he was very specific in said blessing. He blessed me with the ability to work on Wednesday after resting on Tuesday. What I really wanted was the ability to work Tuesday afternoon after resting on Tuesday morning, but you know, the Lord knows best. So I had a day of rest on Tuesday and on Wednesday and Thursday we actually took it pretty slow, but we still worked.

By Saturday I had enough strength to get on the bikes for the first time in awhile actually. (I had enough strength to work hard out by Friday, but not quite for the bikes.) Up here in Karratha they just have mission owned bikes rather than having to bring our own up here, (it would cost quite a lot to ship our bike up here), and the one that I get to use is so much nicer than my bike down in Perth. I guess it's just because I've really loaded up the Kilometres on that bike whereas this one here is only 3 months old I think. It was great to get out on the bikes and be able to talk to everyone that we passed by again. Something that I realised and learned this week was that we're given commandments so God can have opportunities to bless us. I've always known that obedience to commandments yields blessings, but I don't think I've ever thought of it as God WANTING to bless us so He gives us commandments and then if we obey then He CAN bless us. He can't just bless us for nothing, he needs to have reason to bless us, hence the commandments. One commandment that we have is to open our mouths. It is not needful for...[us] to be moving swiftly upon the [streets], whilst the inhabitants on either side are perishing in unbelief. We've really seen God bless us this week as we've been obedient to that commandment. Talking to everybody that we pass by on the bikes. You can't do that in the car. It really made me feel a lot better about the work that we're doing. Not that we don't work hard in the car, but it feels like we work a lot harder on the bikes, and we get a lot more opportunities to be seen and to talk with everyone. I love it.

It's pretty warm up here in the Pilbara for winter. We usually drive with the air con on. Nights cool down though, so we usually try to do our tracting around 5-7, anywhere in there. It's "cool" weather for the locals, but I'm still working on acclimatising. I don't know what the exact temperatures have been because we don't have a thermometer in the new car, but I would guesstimate that it's been somewhere around 28-30 degrees on average, and maybe 20-22 on a cool day. Pretty much perfect weather really. I've come to Karratha at the perfect time of year.

Neither of the service opportunities that I told you about last week have turned into anything yet. We taught Lynn this week, but we don't think her questions were very sincere when we were teaching because she would ask a really good question but then change the subject before we could answer completely or at all. We think she's just an old lady in need of service, so we're going to keep offering it to her and trying to teach her until maybe she asks a question with a sincere heart and real intent to know the answer. The other one, Monique, has been out of town this week but gets back this Wednesday, so we're looking forward to her return, she's bringing back some friends with her as well that she wants us to meet. She's still awesome though.

Had a great week in getting to know some more members better. We had dinner at the Seuga's house on Thursday and I really think they're my favourite family in this branch. They live in a caravan, he's just been called to the Branch Presidency, and she just really reminds me of you Carrie. She's crack up. I feel at home when all four of us are crowded into their caravan. Also this week we had a Family Home Evening at the Relief Society President's (Sister Weeks) house and she invited anyone that wanted to come from the branch as well as 7 nonmembers that came along. There were probably about 30 people there. It caused for a great FHE. The nonmembers loved it and we set a return appointment with 3 of them. Sister Weeks is great with her missionary work.

I really feel like I'm blooming where I've been planted, even though not many dandelions or any flower for that matter bloom in Karratha, I feel like I'm doing my best, which is what the Lord asks of us. I'm loving it up here. I love the people, the town, the work, it's just great. This coming week is going to be amazing!

I love you all, have a great week and don't forget to write me (and Elder Price) ;)

Much Love,

Elder Tanner

When You're In the Service of Your Fellow Being, You're Only In the Service of Your God

This week has just been a big build up to our Branch Conference this weekend where President and Sister Cahoon and his counsellors came up and spent the weekend with us. The weekend was great, but I'll get to that.

We only taught a total of 8 lessons this week. I wouldn't say that it was a direct reflection of how hard we have been working though. We've been going through all of the investigators, (former, current, and potential), and trying to see where they were at and if we could start teaching some of the former and potential investigators. Unfortunately, that means a lot of going around and either setting up appointments with people (as this is a very busy town and rarely can you just rock up at somebodies house and teach them then and there), or getting told to get lost because they're not interested. So I guess you could say it's been a rebuilding week, or just a building week for that matter. All of our current investigators, well maybe not all, but most, show no sign of progressing or even desiring to progress anytime soon. It kind of pains me to teach them sometimes, because it's hard to know how to teach them without causing contention. A lot of people just have a desire to cause contention it seems like. It's like they ask questions without any real desire to know the answer, they're just trying to prove uswrong. All we do is bear sincere testimony from the heart and ask them to sincerely read and pray to ask God if the Book of Mormon is true. I told this lady last night that if for no other reason to read the Book of Mormon it is to learn more about Jesus Christ (because she does have a love for the Bible and Jesus), then that should be the reason she reads it. And I know of course that if she reads it for that reason, the testimony of it will come, along with the testimony of the prophet, the church, etc. It's just a matter of if she does it. We think she has probably read one too many anti-Mormon literatures, so her heart and mind are very closed, but we still have faith that the spirit can change her. Along with every other investigator that we have in this area. But we're still trying to focus a lot on finding. I actually took a full hour of personal study this week to go through our area book and see what it had to offer for us, and I was actually quite disappointed. Not only because of the blankness of the records that were in there, but because of the number of records that were in there. Usually there's HEAPS of former investigators, but we were able to go through all of ours in 2 or 3 days this week. I don't know why this one has less, maybe it's because we're still teaching people that were being taught 3 years ago, so they're not former yet, but they soon will be if they don't decide that this is the path they want to take and then stick with it. Working hard also includes working smart, and we can't work smart if we're wasting time visiting people like that.

We had two really amazing experiences with giving service this week that I want to share with you. The Lord really directed us this week, it's been amazing. On Wednesday we were just following up with potential investigators and we had 2 on this one street so we decided to just park the car at the end of the street and walk to both of them (inspired). We knocked on the first door, not home, so then started walking to the second one a few houses down, but before we got to them we came across a lady that was pulling weeds in her front yard and there were heaps of weeds. We offered to help and she gave us the same answer people always give us when we're wearing our white shirts and ties, and that's a no. But we were determined to not let the way we were dressed stop us from giving service to someone, especially since we knew that the day could end up being a dud without that service opportunity. We recognised that that service opportunity came from the Lord. We spent nearly 2 and a half hours pulling weeds with Monique and she was so grateful. She told us that she had just moved to Karratha last week and they had been given this house like this, just weeds everywhere. It was great to get to know her over the 2 hours that we were there, pulling weeds in our white shirts. She was so nice to us, which was probably a direct result of us giving service to her. It's good to have that image of Latter-Day Saints in her head now. We haven't been able to teach her yet, but we've seen her twice since then and met her husband. They're going to have us over for a barbi soon and we're hoping to get them to church with us as well. We're really praying that we can start to teach them soon. The other awesome service opportunity we had, also given to us by divine intervention, was for this elderly lady named Lynn. She had been an investigator before, but on Wednesday when we went to go see her, she came out and handed us the Book of Mormon we left with her along with pamphlets she had been given in the past and just told us that she was going to stay with her church and that the Mormon thing just wasn't for her. So we were pretty disappointed about that, she wouldn't even let us leave her with the Book of Mormon at least. But we told her that if she ever needed a hand with anything or she ever saw us around town to just give us a holler and we're happy to help with anything. So the very next day, while doing service for a different elderly lady, the phone rings and it's Lynn. She says, "I remembered what you said that if I ever needed a hand with anything that I could just call you up, well I was wondering if you could come help me take out this stump, it's too big for me to do by myself." So of course, we jumped straight on that and told her we would be over soon. But then she said "That's not the only reason I called, I talked to my friend last night who is a Mormon over in Sydney and I think I might have been too hasty in getting rid of you guys, I want to set up a time for you guys to come back over and have another talk, is that ok?" "That's more than ok! We'd love too!" So we're seeing her this week, but she was another one that was in awe of the service we gave her, and hopefully we can really be guided by the spirit to know what to say to her when we teach her, as the spirit as already intervened in having us come back. What a blessing.

So Branch Conference. I'm going to make this brief, because it's 12:30 and I'm hungry and feeling a bit sick so I think I'm just going to go home and sleep today. Branch Conference was amazing. The whole weekend. It started with the branch activity on Saturday. The activity started at 11, which was just a fishing competition and a barbi, and President and Sister Cahoon showed up at about 2:30. It was really good to see them again. Being in the city you take for granted getting to see the mission president on a regular basis. There were only 4 fish caught for the whole competition, and President Cahoon caught 2 of those. It was fun being with them in a kind of more relaxed setting. President even climbed a tree, which was just hilarious. Sunday was by far the best part of the conference. He spent Saturday night doing interviews for people in the branch, so we didn't see them after the activity until church on Sunday. Church was a 2 hour meeting and President Cahoon spoke right at the end. I was kind of disappointed that he didn't get to speak for longer, but he still spoke short and powerfully. We had a lunch/birthday party for Sister Cahoon after the meeting and then Branch Council with President Cahoon presiding. It's amazing the power of a presiding authority like that. He brought a very large amount of the spirit with him. During the lunch I got a chance to talk to President and Sister Cahoon about a lot of stuff that's been happening in the mission. I also talked to them about things that had been happening at home, about the tornadoes and things like that. I really love President and Sister Cahoon. I got to have a personal interview with him as well because my temple recommend expires this month. It was sad to see them leave, because chances are that I won't be seeing them again for a couple of months at the least. And they didn't get any time to go teaching with us either, but oh well, maybe next time haha.

Anyways, that's me for the day. I love you all. I hope you all are staying safe. I pray for you!

Much Love,

Elder Tanner

First Full Week in Karratha!

Karratha is awesome. I'm really growing to love the people here as I get to know them better. This week started off pretty slow with a public holiday on Monday and p-day on Tuesday, but it really started to pick up after that. I've met most, if not all, of our investigators that we currently have in this area and we've been able to find a few more people to teach as well. There's a guy in our branch, Taoaso, who served here in 2009, he went home just before I arrived in the mission, and he came back to marry the then Branch President's daughter. I was talking to him the other night when we were at the Otto's house, (brother Otto is the branch mission leader now, but he was branch president when Taoaso was here), and I told him a few of the people that we had taught over the past few days and he knew all of them but one from when he served here. In other words, for some reason, investigators either don't like to progress in this area or all of the past missionaries haven't known how to help them progress properly. I'm going to go with the latter because that gives me more hope for them. One of them is named Fran, she's had missionaries around for 16+ years and she has moved 5 or more times over that 16 years and missionaries always seem to find her. She's never given them her new address, but they always come and knock on her door. She always lets them in, but for some reason, she's not a member. One major stumbling block for her though is that her partner, Roy, is against getting married but they've already been together for at least 16 years. He feels that if they were to get married, then divorce would be imminent, so the best way to avoid divorce in his mind is to not get married in the first place. They would both make great members of the church though. They're very kind, loving, sensible people. I straight up told her yesterday that if missionaries always seem to find you and you're not a member of the church, I think God is trying to tell you something. She just needs to feel the spirit. In our lesson yesterday she just seemed very light about it, which is probably due to how missionaries have been in the past. So our goal for her is to help her feel the spirit and point it out to her and help her realise that the only way to have that feeling with her all the time is to become a member of the church. Our overall goal for all of our investigators is to just evaluate where they're at and decide whether or not we just just drop them. It seems like a lot of them just have us over because they can't say no and because they have had too much fun with missionaries in the past, but we're here to fulfil our purpose, to invite them to come unto Christ by keeping commitments, and we need to let them know that. Elder Naruo and I have a great vision for the future of this area. Proverbs 29:18 - "Where there is no vision, the people perish". We see a lot of good things happening, once we get these investigators headed in the right direction and also replenish our teaching pool with new member referrals.

On Thursday we went for a drive out to Wickham and Roeburne. It was about a 112 km round trip, but we had to go see some members out there that Brother Otto really wanted us to see. It was a nice drive through the dessert at speed limits of 110 km/hr (speeds you usually don't see in Australia, except for in the outback). It was a nice visit in Wickham with a less active lady named Debbie. She told us that the distance has nothing to do with her not coming to church. If she really wanted to come, she could be there. I guess far distances are pretty normal for people to have to drive when they live in the outback. The town of Wickham probably has a population of about 500 people. It took us a total of about 2 minutes and 35 seconds to drive all the way through it, and that's at 60 km/hr, which isn't very fast. Roeburne has a population of about 900, but according to Sister O'Conner, who we visited out there, "they lost a couple this week". Sister O'Conner is semi-active. So visiting those two people out there took up the majority of our day that day because of the distance of driving, and also because it's such a long distance to drive, we felt it appropriate to stay just a bit longer than the normal 15-30 minute visit with members. I wish we could go visit our members out in Pannawonica and Tom Price, but they are just too far away.

I really enjoy working as the Branch Executive Secretary. It's been interesting learning more about how the organisation of the church works. We have Branch Conference this coming Sunday and I've been having to call President Cahoon and call some of the members to arrange interviews with everybody that needs them with President Cahoon. As fun as it is though, I'm looking forward to Branch Conference so an exec sec can actually be called from the branch. Hopefully I'm still able to use this computer though in the Clerk's office for emailing after Elder Naruo and I are released from exec sec and clerk, I think the Library computers up here probably cost money to use. Judging by how much everything else cost around here, I'm sure they wouldn't let us use public computers for free. A McChicken sandwich (on it's own) is 8 bucks, and the $5 foot longs from Subway are actually $9. Petrol is also $1.60/litre, or $6.04/gallon. That's Karratha for you. I'm really loving it though. The weather has actually cooled off a couple of degrees now, so it's perfect weather as well. Trying my best to fit in to this small town. I think sometimes that people can tell I'm a city boy, but I'm OK with that. It's like everybody knows everybody in town and when a newcomer arrives, it's obvious.

That's about it for this week really. I hope yous are all enjoying your summer. Stay safe!

Much Love,

Elder Tanner

Safe Flight to Karratha!

Wow, have I got a lot to talk about this week. As I said last week, my time in Baldivis ward came to an end. Saying goodbyes on Monday and Tuesday made for a busy day, I don't think I even got to see everyone that I wanted to, but it was good. I got pictures with most of the families that I went to see one last time. I think I took about 50 pictures just in those two days. Tuesday night was a late night because of packing. I hadn't started until then because we were simply just too busy. But we headed up to transfer meeting first thing Wednesday morning after having our photos professionally taken for the newspaper article that Elder Hodgkiss and I are going to be in. I'm hopefully going to get those photos emailed to me, and Elder Hodgkiss is going to mail me some copies of the newspaper when they come out, so don't worry, you'll get to see it.

Transfer meeting was great. My name was the first one to get read off for where I was going because they always start with the northern-most district leader when reading out the transfers. I'm no longer a zone leader, which is sad because I really loved it, but I'm OK with that because I'm now in KARRATHA! You may need to get on to Google Earth to learn about where it is. Let's just say... the airplane food tasted great! It was about a 2 hour flight north with my new companion Elder Naruo. He's already been in Karratha for 3 months, but his companion has just gone home so he came down to Perth to get me. We didn't leave until Thursday so we spent Wednesday night with the Warwick Zone Leaders Elder Ziesel and Elder Metekingi. That was a good night. I had to re-pack my bags though because your bag is only allowed to weigh 23 kgs. So I had to leave a lot of stuff down in Perth, but it will be kept at the APs flat so I can grab it when I come back down, or at the end of my mission. It wasn't too big of a deal though because most of the stuff that I left behind was my warm clothes that I won't really need up here, like long shirts, sweaters, jackets, jeans, and rain coats. I had to leave all my pictures and letters that I've saved up over my mission as well, because the stuff that I did need to bring up here just barely made weight, about 22.8 kgs I think. The bag that I left at the APs flat was about 40 kgs haha.

Elder Naruo is a great guy from what I know of him so far from our past 5 days together. He has the most humility and love I've ever seen from a missionary. He's from Guam and he's the only member in his family. He's been a member since 2008. He lived a rough life growing up, grew up on the streets basically, but the church was able to change that all for him. He has a strong, yet simple testimony. His testimony is purely that he knows the Book of Mormon is true and that that means that the church is true. He loves learning. We're going to have a great transfer together. He has a strong desire to be obedient and consecrated. We have a vision to baptise, which hasn't been done in Karratha in over a year and a half I believe.

Anyways, Karratha is great. It is a lot warmer up here. I remember getting off the plane and feeling like I had just stepped back into summer. I don't think I was quite prepared for that. Especially with how cold and rainy it had been getting in Perth, coming up here was a big difference. Overall, it's all a big difference in general. It's a lot different serving in a branch rather than a ward. We had about 35 people at church on Sunday and I had already met them between Thursday and Sunday anyways. The chapel itself is pretty small, but the people here are quite blessed to even have a chapel. Our branch boundaries technically go all the way out to a town called Tom Price and then way over to Exmouth, because we have the records of the members that live in those areas, but the people that come to church are mostly all local. I believe that there is a family in Tom Price though that has their own sacrament meeting get together with just the four of them. That's what I've been told anyways. I'd imagine it would be pretty hard not being able to attend church each week. Or the temple for that matter. I was reminded of President Monson's conference talk where he said that 85% of the church membership lives within 200 miles of a temple, well I am now included in that 15% of church membership that doesn't live within 200 miles of a temple. It must be tough for the active strong members up here to only be able to attend the temple once a year if they're lucky. Most people that live in this town though only live here because of the work. There's lots of money to be made here in Karratha, thus making everything more expensive. Most people either work for one of two companies, Woodside or Rio Tinto. So a lot of them do have the money to go to the temple probably annually or semi-annually, I just don't know if they do. A lot of people even have to fly down to Perth pretty regularly for work and that.

That's going to be one thing that I miss about the city, is all the meetings that we got to go to, especially as zone leaders. It was weird flying up here, I had the same kind of feeling that I had leaving home. Kind of like a homesick feeling, but it was Perth, especially Baldivis ward, that I was missing. That ward became a part of me. It has made it a bit difficult to adjust to everything up here, missing Perth, but I know that I'll grow to love Karratha as well. If this is what it feels like when I leave the mission field, which I imagine it is, then I'm really going to miss my mission when it comes to getting on that plane in 5 months, but until then, I'm going to serve the Lord with all my heart, might, mind, and strength. The one meeting that I will have regularly up here, being church, was really good on Sunday. It looks like I might be the backup branch pianist, because the only person that plays is only semi active, but when she does come, I'm going to make sure she plays the piano so she can feel like she has a purpose in being there. But I'm also the Branch Executive Secretary for the time being. It's hard to not confuse my responsibilities of missionary work and exec. sec. work, but I'm learning. We have a branch conference in two weeks where President Cahoon will be coming up and there will hopefully be somebody to actually be exec sec, but just about everybody that is active right now already has a calling, so it will be interesting to see what happens. We had Family Home Evening with an investigator last night at the Relief Societies President's house and also present were the Branch President, Primary President, and Elder's Quorum President, it was basically like a branch activity! It's going to be really easy to love this branch because of how close everybody is and how often we're going to get to work with them. President Pilkington, the Branch President is a really good guy. He's young, and has a strong testimony and determination to lead this branch. It seems like he and I have a lot in common as well, which is good because he hasn't had a good history of liking the missionaries up here until as of late, so I have to build on that relationship.

Country life is a lot slower than city life, so it takes some getting used to, but I'm going to like it I can tell. We get a lot of service opportunities as there's a lot of people in need as well as lots of community service opportunites. That's going to be our best way to try to find people to teach, through our service.

I've met a lot of really good, humble people out here so far. There's this part member family that lives between Karratha and Roebourne, aka the middle of nowhere outback, that has the most humble living arrangements ever. They live on a generator for electricity and their own dam for water. They live in two shipping containers, one with the kitchen and bathroom, the other with the bedroom. Yet they're content. Another man that I've grown to love already is Brother Alverez. He's going through a really hard divorce right now, uses the chapel bathroom and toilet for showering and stuff when he's not at work, sleeps in his car, but he's got one of the strongest testimonies of anyone I've met on my mission. His family has been in the church for 5 or 6 generations and he's from Tahiti. When he's not working or sleeping, he usually does his home teaching with President Pilkington or goes teaching with us. My heart is filled with compassion towards that man.

I'm loving life right now. For those that want to write to me (which I hope is all of you), notice my new postal address. You could still write to the old PO box, but then the mission office has to forward it through to me up here, so it would probably be quicker to just send it straight to me. And I'll probably be here for the rest of my mission, so no need to worry about me getting transferred and then not getting the mail. And if you've sent anything to the PO Box within the past couple of weeks, I'll still get it, but from now on, just use the new address if you want stuff to get to me quicker.

I love you all! Stay strong! Go to the temple!

Much love,

Elder Tanner
--

Send a letter to:

Elder Clark Tanner

4/170 Withnell Way

Bulgarra, WA 6714

Australia

My 42 Week Stint In Baldivis Ward Comes To A Close

More lamb heart

Some of the Gang

Brother Foott

Prawn Cocktail

New Jumper

Well, all good things can't last forever. I'm finally getting out of Baldivis ward. It was a sad farewell yesterday. It was almost like leaving my home ward. 10 months I've spent in this ward. I've absolutely loved it. I got a couple of photos with some of the youth and stuff after church, but tonight and tomorrow are going to be jammed pack with saying goodbye and getting pictures with everybody. I definitely want to be able to remember everybody in this ward. Having served in both areas in the ward, absolutely everybody in it has touched my heart in one way or another. Bishop asked me to bear my testimony yesterday in Sacrament Meeting and it felt like I was giving a farewell talk. I even nearly got emotional. No ward on my mission can every compare to how I've been treated in Baldivis Ward. I absolutely love it, and can't wait to reconnect with everybody on facebook after my mission haha. It's a very bittersweet transfer to say the least.

I'll find out where I'm going on Wednesday. No word from President Cahoon yet though on if I'm going to still be a Zone Leader, or if I'm going to be going to a country area or anything like that, sometimes he calls to let you know for special assignments. So I guess I just have to wait until Wednesday to learn of my fate for the last 5 months of my mission. Either way, I'm excited. Every area that I've served in on my mission has had an impact on my life and I've learned something different from each area and assignment, so I know that my next area and assignment are going to be no different. I'd like to think that I've been able to have an impact in the people in my areas (especially this ward) as well. The Lord's hand is in this work and it's evident all the time. The big news for this week was that we were able to set a baptismal date with one of our investigators named Ryan! He's dating a less active member (April Gilbert) and we've been teaching both of them (this was actually only the third lesson), and we felt very prompted to invite him to be baptised. He agreed and we were so excited for him! It was no longer than 20 minutes later that I found out I was getting transferred, so I was gutted. But like I said, I know the Lord's hand is in it. Whatever happens is for the best. He knows better than we do.

Never hath a man seen so much good stuff happening in his area right before he gets transferred. We got TWELVE new investigators this week. All thanks to member referrals and finding and teaching families. TWELVE! Our average for that this transfer has been about 3 or 4 a week, so when we ended the week with twelve it was amazing. It just goes to show you that everything that Elder Evans said was true. Finding through the members IS the best way to find. And on top of those 12 new investigators we also had 7 progressing investigators. To be progressing they need to have been taught two or more times and be keeping commitments to read and pray about the Book of Mormon, come to church, pray, etc. We had 0 of those for the first four weeks and then 3 last week and now 7 this week. I don't know what has changed, but all of a sudden, we have just seen this area explode. This area has become a gold mine! WA is very popular for their gold mining, and we're holding the entire industry of importation and exportation of "gold" right here in Baldivis Ward! Yet another reason to be absolutely gutted to be leaving. Elder Hodgkiss and his new companion will do a really good job though, that's for sure.

There's been a couple of good highlights to this week. I can't remember if I said this last week, but Geoff successfully completeted the stop smoking program and we had a little celebration for him on Monday. We had our May Specialised Training meeting this week with President and Sister Cahoon and Bunbury Zone came along as well. Elder Hodgkiss and I gave training on seeking people to teach from members, (we're trying to remove the word referral from our vocabulary), and it went really well especially considering our experiences these past couple of weeks with successfully finding through the members. We modeled (or role played) on how to ask for someone to teach and to get the members excited about it. Because anyone can ask for a referral at every lesson, but if you don't get the members excited about it, and if you're not excited about it yourself, you're not going to see near as much success. So that 45 minute training and modeling went really well. We taught Alicia again this week, and she kept her commitment to pray on her own, but she didn't come to our movie night on Friday or to church, and she hasn't been answering or returning our calls, so we're kind of going to ease up on her for a couple of days, sad because that means I probably won't get to teach her again, but hopefully everything goes well with her down the road.

Alright, funny story for the week. It actually comes from eating dinner with an 89 year old lady in our ward, Sister Wolven. Sister Wolven is potentially the coolest old lady I've met my entire mission. She invited us over for dinner on Thursday, and I've never been to her house for Tea, so we were pretty excited. When we got there she asked us if we had come on an empty stomach, and if not, we should have. Luckily, it was relatively empty. She told us that she had a 5 COURSE meal prepared for us. It was absolutely amazing. Every single course that she made was prepared and cooked to perfection. Amazing this was that she didn't do any cooking while we were there. Every course was cooked and ready just at the right time to eat it. I don't quite know how she could have planned it that well, but every course was delicious. The first one was a cream of chicken and corn soup. Course two was a prawn (shrimp) cocktail. Course 3, the main course, consisted of roast beef, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, mixed veggies and broccoli and cheese. It was about half way through this course that we started to feel full. But we couldn't disappoint Sister Wolven so we just kept on plowing through it. The fourth course was an apple and pear crumble with ice cream and cream on top. Fair dinkum, these were no small portions either. We were choc-a-block full. But, we persisted and cleared our plate or bowl on every course. The fifth and final course consisted of these little chocolate cups filled with Nutella and cream. She placed a platter of them in front of us and we just kind of ignored it and carried on our conversation, hoping she would forget about them. But our hope was in vain. She asked us to take some and so one at a time, we downed them. 4 chocolate cups later, I felt like exploding. I wanted to stop at 1, but she would pick up the platter and say "just one more? Just to fill the corners? Please?", and she would just look at you with these loving grandmotherly eyes that you just couldn't deny. So after those four chocolate cups each, there's 3 more on the plate, and she asked us to eat one more. So Elder Hodgkiss and I pick up a chocolate cup each, look at it, then at each other, then back at it, then just erupt in laughter. This was the kind of laughter that cannot be controlled. Elder Hodgkiss was laughing himself to tears, and Sister Wolven joined in laughing with us. It really is contagious. We finally did manage to eat that last chocolate cup though. I think the laughing made room for it. It was absolutely hysterical though. It's good to laugh. I love it.

Well that's us for this week. I love you all. Hope you're all staying safe from the tornadoes. They made international news, so it sounds like a pretty big deal. I pray for you though!

Much love,

Elder Tanner