Time flies when you're... being obedient (which is also having fun)

It's true. Obedience = success.

This week has been such an improvement over that past few weeks. Elder Glover decided to stop listening to his non-missionary music, and it's amazing how something as small as that can really change the way things are going. We taught more lessons this week than we taught in the past 2 weeks combined, and were able to have 13 new people come to church! It was was exciting! Almost overwhelming. We had potential to have 19 there though, so there's always room for improvement. Maybe next week we'll get 19. I just gotta keep doing my best and making my best better.

We had a great 5th Sunday lesson yesterday. Our ward mission leader presented a plan for the Ward mission plan and also family mission plans. So this week we're going to try to see some people in the ward and help them get their family mission plan started. I'm really excited to do that, because we realized yesterday that we don't have a single white investigator, and I think if we did than that would mean that the members are doing their part. Like with all the Africans at church yesterday, there was very little if any fellowship for them because we only have one African family in our ward and they don't really know what fellowshipping is I think.

I had the worst food experience of my mission to date this week. Basically, I ate manure. We were teaching this investigator and his sister comes out and asks us if we would like some rice. So we're like.. sure, rice is good, why not? She comes out with these two plates of rice, covered in this brown stuff that looked, smelled, and tasted like spicy poo. literally. I only was able to eat 3 bites before I had to call it quits. Elder Glover hammered it down though. I asked him how he did that and he just said "you just gotta get an attitude and eat it". It was absolutely terrible. Makes me feel glad I'm not serving in Africa, but then again, my area right now is like a mini Africa. African food is just... bleh... I'm gagging right now thinking about it. I'd take mushrooms over African anyday.

I was reading in January's ensign Elder Hollands article about remembering Lot's wife, and it really is what I think inspired me to have such a great week. If you guys haven't read that yet, give it a read. It's great. Also, the temple was great on Wednesday. The President Maurer and his wife were in the session with us and he gave me some great advice afterwards and it was really nice to just talk to him in the temple for a little bit.

Well I gotta go. Hope you all have a good week. Don't forget to read your scriptures and pray morning and night. "By small and simple things are great things brought to pass", reading and praying are those small and simple things.

Heaps of love,
Elder Tanner

Elder Cook's Visit

This week was flippin sweet.

Monday through Friday was just average, taught a couple of lessons to our normal investigators, the Shumos, Gayedore and Banita, and a lady named Margaret. They're all African and they all love having us over to teach them. The Shumos and Gayedore and Banita actually came to hear Bishop Burton speak on Saturday night which was a really big step for us and them. And Margaret is going to come to church next week after she gets back from her dad's funeral in Africa.

But anyways, on Saturday we had the missionary conference with Bishop Burton and Elder Cook and we got to shake their hands and it was awesome. When Bishop Burton spoke he told us that this was going to be the most exciting year in the history of the church. He didn't tell us why but he just said the gospel was going to EXPLODE across the world this year. So that's pretty dang exciting. And when Elder Cook spoke he said something that really stuck with me. He said what I'm doing right now is the most important thing I could be doing at this time in my life. Not only for me, but for my parents, my siblings, my grandparents, my future spouse, my future children, my future grandchildren and so on. That just really stuck with me and it probably will for the rest of my mission. Other than that he just talked about how Preach My Gospel is inspired, I can't really remember what else he said, but I took notes, so It's all good.

In our Stake Conference Bishop Burton pretty much just told stories about all the prophets he has met/worked with. He told a story about how when he was young he met David O. Mckay and David O. Mckay told him a story about how when he was young he met John Taylor and John Taylor showed him some of the bullet wounds in him from Carthage Jail. That was a pretty cool story.

I wish we could have an apostle visit every week. Everything just went really well this week as we prepared ourselves for his visit. It was easier to go out and do stuff that usually we really wouldn't want to do, such as tracting in 100 degree weather haha.

I'm pretty ready for this transfer to end. I'm just ready for a new companion and new area. I love Elder Glover and all but he isn't as obedient as I want to be. And he gets caught up in a lot of "mission drama", something that I didn't even know existed. And I think it would be really cool to teach a white person haha. I think I could be here for 6 months though because President Maurer said he's going to start keeping people in areas longer. So we'll see how it goes.

My times about up, but I hope everyone has a great week. I miss you all. I'm doing my part out here so I know the Lord is taking care of everybody back home.

Love you all!

Elder Tanner

Arabian Nights

Ok, so first let me explain the subject line. My ward mission leaders name is Brother Rajah, he has a daughter named Jasmine, and we started teaching a guy named Jafar this week. Now all we need is a street rat with a magic carpet and a genie and we're all set!

This week wasn't quite as busy as last week but that should be expected with how ridiculously busy last week was. We taught a considerably smaller amount of lessons this week. And we weren't really able to do any tracting or anything of the sort seeing as how it was 40 degrees all week. Hopefully it cools down this week because we need some new investigators badly. I wasn't even able to fall asleep last night until like 1 am because it was so dang hot. But yeah, I think this week should be better. Glover has been kinda down this past week for different reasons, but he says he's gonna step it up this week.

The African family we have been teaching that we were going to be able to baptize at the end of the month still haven't kept any committments including coming to church, so things aren't looking too good there. We're going to try to see them a couple of times this week and I think the son, Koballah, is the most likely one out of all of them, which is like 10, to be baptized. He was super excited when we gave him a French Book of Mormon. So hopefully that goes somewhere. It makes it really hard when none of our investigators have a car too.

This week is the visit by Elder Cook and Bishop Burton. They're having a big Member/Missionary fireside, but since none of our investigators have cars and it's like an hour away, I probably won't get to go to that one. But all three of the visitors (the other is Elder Nielson of the Seventy) will be speaking to all the missionaries this Saturday so I definitely have that to look forward to.

I hope things are all good back home. Feel free to send me a quick email every now and then. I'm getting faster at typing since I have so much to say now.

Have a great week, pray for some cooler weather in Perth,

Love you all,

Elder Tanner

Busy Week!

Holy cow! What a busy week this has been. We taught 24 lessons this week. We also baptized a guy on Saturday! The guy that came up to us at church last week, Winston. We went over and taught him the first lesson on Tuesday, and then he told us he wanted to be baptized on Saturday. We had to get a lot of approval from people higher up than us, we called the Zone Leaders, the AP's, and the mission President and got the OK. So we taught him every day this week and then interviewed him on Friday and then baptized him. I didn't get to baptize him, but I got to the confirmation which was awesome. I was really nervous at first since I've never done it, but then once I got up there and was doing it, it wasn't that bad. I can't wait to do it again, which hopefully will be sometime this month or early next month. Hopefully I'll get to do the actual baptizing next time. I got some pictures, but I forgot to bring my camera today to the Library, so I'll either bring it next week or mail my SD card this week, depending on when I get my other one back.

Transfers are taking place today. Nobody in my district got moved, which is weird. We were all expecting our District Leader to go Zone Leader since our Zone Leader is now AP. I kinda feel bad for Elder Jacobs though, he was in my intake, he's the district leaders companion and they don't get along at all. They were really hoping to get split up this transfer. But that's probably why they didn't get split up, because they don't get along. I think our DL is awesome though. I think Elder Jacobs is definitely just going to have to learn to get along with him and vice versa.

I figured out this week that if you don't write "Australia" at the bottom of the address line, the letter takes 1 month to get here. This week I got a letter from grandma that she sent on the 8th of December and a letter from Sis. Heilman that she sent on the 28th of December. So yeah, just that little heads up.

That is so awesome that Bama won the National Championship. I'm glad McCoy got hurt, so Texas feels our pain (literally, haha)

Not much else to talk about this week. Other than today is the start of a new transfer so we get a fresh start on all our goals and things like that. Last transfer we were one baptism short of our goal, and it came on the last possible day, but we taught 70 lessons. So this transfer we're shooting for more baptisms. Which should be easy because the last transfer we spent the first half just finding people since we were doubled into the area.

My time is running out. So I'm gonna make like Coriantumr and get the Shiz outta here.

Love you all,
Elder Tanner

Photos from Phil & Trish Baker

Last week of Transfer #1!

So this time next week I'll probably be in the same area with the same companion, but we'll be in transfer #2! I think my District leader may become Zone Leader next transfer because I think my Zone Leader will become AP. That's kind of a bummer though because my Zone Leader is an awesome guy. We've been keeping ourselves way busier this week. We finally have some progressing investigators! We've got an African family of 7 that we've been teaching for 2 weeks now and they want to get baptized. Tomorrow we've got another appointment with them and we're taking a member with us, an African that just got baptized in August. His name is Brother Phillips and he's a great guy. This will be the first time I've had a lesson with another member present. Hopefully it goes well. It's so hard to tell if Africans genuinely understand what you're teaching them sometimes. And we also have another guy we're going to start teaching tomorrow. We actually met him at sacrament meeting yesterday and he came up to us and told us he wanted to be baptized. How often does that happen? haha. So it should be a pretty exciting month as far as baptisms go.

We're teaching a family home evening lesson tonight with this really awesome less active family from New Zealand, the McGaugheys. They have 6 kids all under the age of 9. Brother McGaughey wants to baptize his 9 year old kid, Tayzah, himself but he's not able to right now because of some stuff going on in his life. But it will definitely happen at some piont. Just maybe not in the near future. Brother and Sister McGaughey wants to get married in the temple someday. Just as soon as they start going back to church and stuff.

We tracted for 5 hours on January 2nd. It was crazy hot that day too, 40 degrees I believe. We only got to teach 2 lessons from our tracting, and I don't think anything major will come from them. I'm more excited for the other people we're taching. We were actually going to tract for 10 hours that day but we would have died. Our Zone Leaders were hardcore and tracted for 12 hours that day.. but their area is next to the ocean so they had a nice breeze all day. They did get sunburned though I guess. We did tract longer than our district leader so that made us feel a little better haha.

Not much else going on. Still working with our regular less actives, the Banucus, Jamie Rees, we haven't gotten one of them to come to church yet, but we keep trying. We have a dinner appointment every night this week believe it or not. So I think I'm gonna go to just eating breakfast and dinner and biking at least 2 hours a day, so I don't put on any weight.

Going to see some Kangaroos today at Yanchep National Park, about 40 K's from here. I'll take some pictures and send them home soon.

Oh that reminds me, mom if you ever see Elder Klienman again at the church or something, could you give him my address and/or email address and tell him to shoot me a letter or something? That would be awesome. Also, I need some family email addresses. Like extended family I mean. Thanks :D

Love you all, can't wait to hear from everybody!
Elder Tanner