Week 2 of Kwinana - Lovin it!

I have to say, this is definitely the most awesome ward I've been in on my mission, the Baldivis ward. We had a ward activity on Saturday called a progressive dinner. I don't know if you've ever heard of that but it's probably the best idea ever. Well, except for maybe a chili cook-off. But anyways, everyone signs up to bring either an appetizer, a main course, or a dessert. Everyone goes to one house for the appetizers, a 2nd house for the main courses, and a 3rd house for the desserts. Any missionary would love this activity because we basically got 3 feeds in one night. It was amazing. There was probably about 100 people that showed up so luckily the 3 houses we went to had a pretty big backyard because if we all had to stay inside it would've been crammed. The 3rd families house even had a basketball court and a playhouse for the kids. It was just so cool. You can tell how unified this ward is. I can't wait to get to know everybody in it better, cause right now I only know a few families.

Not much else happened this past week. We got 2 new investigators so our total is up to 4 now. So we still got a ways to go before we have any real progress in this area. But hopefully we can set a baptismal date with one of our investigators. We gave her a triple combination and she's been reading it a lot lately. Even though she's been an investigator for a really long time, we feel pretty good that she's ready, and she's even mentioned that she thinks she's almost ready. She just wants to do it right. She also has a lot of family influence on her that is making it difficult, but I think we had a really good impression on her dad the other night before he went back to Tasmania. The he played us so Johnny Cash on his guitar haha.

This week is going to be so good, I can already tell. We have Zone Conference on Friday and Stake Conference on Sunday. Elder Hamula of the Seventy is going to be coming for our Zone Conference, and anytime there's a General Authority at a missionary meeting, it's always inspiring. I hope we can all be spiritually prepared for what he's going to be speaking to us about. And it's going to be fun going to Stake Conference because it's a 45 minute drive. I figured out that I'm pretty much in the country now. There's one more area south of us that's still a part of the "city zones" but past that it's country. If all country areas are this awesome, I really want to go country for real after this.

Another reason this area is so awesome is Shay and Ruth Preedy. I think I mentioned them last week but I've seen them twice since then. Shay has been a member his whole life, but was inactive for 10 years. He's been coming back since Ruth was baptised in April. He's getting the Melchizedek priesthood this week. And next April they're going to the temple. That's kinda the reason that I hope I stay here for 9 months, so I can be here for that. I love those guys so much already and I've only been in the area for like 11 days. It's been so good.

I've been studying the New Testament and reading it chronologically rather than from cover to cover and I've learned so much. Institute manuals are the best. And I read a quote this week by Spencer W. Kimball talking about missionary work. Basically what he was saying that if we continue at the pace we are going at, it is going to take us 10,000 years to baptise 1 billion people. Then we still have 3 billion to go, not counting all the people that are being born and dying in that 10,000 years. This work really is the most important work we ALL can be doing right now. If every member of the church brought a person or family into the church every year, the membership of the church would grow exponentially. EVERY MEMBER A MISSIONARY!

I attached a picture of my new companion, since I forgot to do that last week.

Love you all, keep up the amazing work
Elder Tanner