Email #104 of 104... or something like that.

Wow!  I couldn't think of a better way to finish off my mission than a baptism.  What a glorious weekend this has been.  The baptism went amazingly.  We visited Noretta (proper spelling) every day this week getting her ready and making sure that she was truly ready and that she wasn't going to pull out last minute.  We even did some service with her on Thursday.  I've never met somebody be more ready for baptism on my mission than her.  The baptismal interview took place on Tuesday night, and we were kind of worried because it was supposed to start at 7:30, and when we rocked up to the chapel after our appointment got out around 8:45, she was still in there with President Pilkington.  So I didn't know if a long interview was a good thing or a bad thing.  Turned out it was a good thing though because President was really able to get to know her and really find out what her concerns were and help her.  She doesn't quite yet wrap her head around the fact that this is THE only true and living church upon the earth, but she feels good with this decision and she feels that there is definitely some truth to what we teach.  But that's ok, that testimony will come over time.  She is committed to living the commandments, coming to church every week, and being a staunch member.  The biggest thing for her is her children.  They are a rambunctious couple of kids.  She has a hard time getting them to be reverent during church, and even the Primary President said that they're a handful, but then again, she is so happy to have 2 more kids in her dwindling Primary.  Never in my whole mission have I had someone read the entire Book of Mormon before getting baptised before now.  And I truly believe and know that that's the reason she chose to be baptised.  The branch has begun to take her under her wing and all is well.  I'm so glad that there's such a thing as facebook.  It will make it so much easier to keep in touch with her and other people after my mission to help them stay strong in the gospel. 

Well this week starts the bittersweetness of leaving my mission.  We had a farewell party for me at the chapel last night.  A few families from the branch came, but it was organised by the Clarke's, and they're by far my favourite family in Karratha.  Today and tomorrow I'll just be going around visiting everybody in Karratha, members and investigators alike, and saying my goodbyes, and then I fly down to Perth on Wednesday.  Then it starts over on Thursday, going around Perth and saying goodbye to everyone that I love there.  That might be a bit hectic.  Only one day to see EVERYBODY.  We'll see how that goes.  I'm going to miss Perth.  Friday we meet at the mission office for lunch and pictures at 11:30, then between lunch and dinner, President Cahoon has to do 13 exit interviews, and I don't know what we'll be doing during that time when we're not the one being interviewed, then we go to the Mission President's home for dinner then we get driven to the airport.  Normally it would just be the APs taking us to the airport, but because our intake is so large, President will probably have to take a few in his car and then a senior couple might take a few in their car.  I love our intake.  I can't wait to see them all again this week.  I love missionaries.  Being able to call them my fellow servants of the Lord is going to be something I miss.  What a great calling a responsibility it is to be a missionary.  I can't imagine what life would be like if I had not served a mission.  I know I wouldn't be nearly as happy and I wouldn't have nearly the rooted testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ that I have now.  Yesterday in fast and testimony meeting I got up to bare my testimony for the last time in church on my mission, and I thought back to the first time I bore my testimony in church on my mission.  My testimony has been built upon a solid foundation of prayer, love, sacrifice, scripture study, and service over the last two years.  Even I can notice that.  How grateful I am to have served the Lord in the Australia Perth Mission over the past 23 months and 3 weeks.  How grateful I am to be able to serve for one more week as a full time representative of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I will truly miss that.

Thank you all for your prayers and your support over the last two years.  It really does mean so much to me.  The power of prayer is so real.  For example, we've been praying all week that the baptism would go well and everything would run smoothly.  Well apparently, Sister Weeks wasn't feeling well and neither was Noretta's daughter on Saturday morning prior to the baptism.  But they both said that they were feeling better just in time to go to the baptism.  And then after the baptism, Sister Weeks began to feel sick again (which also gave us an opportunity to give her a blessing), but that just goes to show you that God does hear and answer our prayers.  Because we remained so diligent in obedience and prayer for the week leading up the the baptism, we were blessed with a great day.  Sister Weeks even provided some food (a platter from subway) and some dessert for afterwards. 

Well, this is my last email.  I don't really want to bring it to an end because that means that when I do, then it will really begin to sink in that next time I talk to you all will either be in person, over the phone, or on facebook lol.  Haha, I guess I just need to face reality.  But I'm SO excited to see all of you again.  I love you all!  I'll talk to you soon!

Much much love,

Elder Tanner

FOR THE LAST TIME!

Karratha Chapel

Kathy and Karena at the Op Shop

Noretta's Baptism

Marion

The Seugas

The Clarkes!

The Clarkes 2!

Going Out With a Bang

Blessings blessings blessings!!!

 

Well the last full week of my mission is upon me.  I can't believe it's gone so fast.  I'm really looking forward to going home and seeing everybody again, but we've had some amazing things happen this week, and it makes it sad to leave.  Transfers are always hard, it always seems like the best things happen right before you go.  I still don't know why that is.  But anyways, this week has been great.  The greatest news from this week is that we set a baptismal date with Norita for the 5th of November, 4 days before I leave Karratha!  My whole mission I have prayed that I would be able to baptise somebody that we found on our own efforts, (since all the best baptisms come from member referrals), but I really wanted to find somebody, bring them to church, fellowship them, and see them get baptised.  And we have done exactly that with Norita.  We taught her twice this week and the first time we taught her, we invited her to be baptised, but she told us that she wanted to take some time to think about it and she wanted to finish reading the Book of Mormon before she made any big decisions like that.  So we just encouraged her to pray and just ask God if this is what she needed to do.  She had already received one answer to her prayers though.  Last Sunday she was praying for direction in life and what path she should take, and within about 5 minutes, the branch sister missionaries knocked on her door.  She recognised that as an answer to her prayer right away.  She seems very in tune to the spirit.  Turns out that the reason she didn't come to church last week was because she was waiting for her ride to get there, but her ride was late, and since she wasn't there by 10:00, she figured she wasn't coming.  Then when her ride did get there, I guess she had turned on some music and didn't hear her knocking at the door.  But anyways, back to the story.  So the second time we taught her this week, she came out, sat down, and the first thing she said to us, was, "I thought about what you guys asked me, and I want to be baptised." Woo!  Thank goodness for answered prayers!  I'm glad that I'll be able to be "going out with a bang" as they say.  But I really love this branch, I'd be going out with a bang with or without a baptism.  And I better not jinx it, that baptismal interview hasn't quite happened yet, but we have faith.  Norita is potentially the most solid investigator I've ever had.  It's amazing.  I think the best part about all of this is that it lets me know that the Lord still has things planned for the last 2 weeks of my mission.  He still has experiences He wants me to have, people He wants me to meet, and lives He wants me to touch.  It's not over until it's over.  Also when I found out that I was going to be staying in Karratha for my last transfer, I was pretty gutted because I wanted to go to Perth and be around other missionaries and go to zone conferences and things like that.  However, that wasn't the Lord's will.  Within a month, we have found, taught, and baptised (assuming all goes well this week) Norita, who I would have never had the opportunity to teach had I gone to Perth.  It's true that the Lord knows us and our situation better than we do.  He knows what's best for us.  I've very grateful for this lesson and many more valuable lessons that I've learned on my mission. 

 

Another amazing thing that happened this week that makes it sad to leave is this referral that we received from the mission office.  All referrals come via text message nowadays so we had to call up the office and get the details on this referral.  Sister Nielsen in the office said that the referral was given from the Kwinana Elders who got the referral from an investigator family they were teaching.  Seeing as how there was a high possibility of me knowing the family that gave the referral, we went straight over to visit him.  His name is Anton Voosyen.  He wasn't home when we went around but his wife was and I asked her how she had met the missionaries or how she knew them and she said it was from her sister-in-law's house Adell Erwee!!  Turns out that Anton Voosyen is Adell's brother!  If you don't remember from my past emails, Elder Shobbrook and I tracted into the Erwee's about a year ago now.  Well apparently they're still be taught by the missionaries and now they have even referred their family to hear the missionary lessons.  When I told Anton's wife (Natania) that I knew the Erwees and that I was the first missionary to teach them, she invited us over for dinner on Tuesday!  I wish so bad that I could stay and teach them.  What a gold referral!  Isn't it amazing the way the Lord works!  There's no earthly way that any of that is a coincidence.  God gave us this referral just in time for me to make the connection with them, plant the seed, and then leave, but set it up for missionaries in the future.  Man, I'm so pumped right now.  I love missionary work.  

 

We had the funeral that I mentioned two weeks ago this past Saturday.  It was held in our chapel and we had about 150 people in our humble little chapel.  It was a very sad experience.  Very touching though.  I had the responsibility given to me of reading out the eulogies of the family.  when we went to the grave site there were probably about 350 people there.  This girl was very loved, and is going to be severely missed.   

 

Well, only one email remaining after this one.  Probably won't have much to say next week except to talk about how great the baptism was and how excited I am to see each of you again!

 

Love yas!

 

Elder Tanner

The General Epistle of Elder Tanner the Missionary to the FAMILY

Doing service brings joy to the heart.  Tagalog Book of

Mormon helps Marion further his understanding.

 

Elder Tanner, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ,

2. to his family and friends scattered throughout

    North America.

3. Love be unto you from our Heavenly Father and

    from His son Jesus Christ,

4. Who gave His life for each of us that we may live 

    again and be one eternal family, together forever.

5. I thank Heavenly Father for all of you in my

    prayers, continually without ceasing.

6. In so doing brings joy, peace, and comfort to

    my heart.

7. I have received many blessings this week,

    in all shapes, forms and sizes.

8. Wherefore, we did about ten hours of service this

    week.

9. Helping all who were in need, including our Relief

    Society President, Sister Weeks, who was moving

    to Roebourne,

    beyond Karratha.

10. For two times we drove to Roebourne and back,

    hauling a trailer along the way, and in our free time,

    taking some rubbish to the tip. 

11. With our friend Marion, we had a great lesson with. 

    In the which, we were finally able to give him his

    own copy of

12. The Book of Mormon, in Tagalog, which was

    ordered from the office about three score days ago,

    and had finally arrived.

13. We proceeded to re-teach the message of the

    restoration and then watch the restoration DVD

    with him in the Tagalog tongue, to better his

    knowledge and his understanding.

 

                            Chapter 2 

 

Elder Tanner and Elder Ford teach Norita -- She has

read almost the WHOLE Book of Mormon, however,

she fails to come to church again.

 

Norita, as we found out, has really been progressing

well.

2. We taught her again on Thursday, thus being the

    fourth day of the week.

3. Upon visiting her, and following up on the

    commitment which had been left, we discovered

    that she was up to 3 Nephi chapter 10 in her

    reading, and she has only had the book in her

    possession for the time of one week.

4. This was cause for much rejoicing in the Lord,

    and giving much thanks,

5. For rarely do we have investigators keep their

    reading commitments in this area.

6. So to have that happen was one of the most

    exciting things we experienced this week.

7. Upon the completion of our lesson with her,

    we proceeded to invite her to church the

    following Sabbath,

8. To which she said she would love to come

    again because of the great spirit she felt there. 

9. However, when the day came, and the

    member that was to give her a ride walked in

    without her in her presence, it was a

    disappointment to our souls.

10. But we do not become discouraged, because

    that is what Satan would have us to do so

    that he may grab hold of our hearts and drag

    us down to misery.

11. We continue in prayer for Norita, even until

    this day

12. with faith that all things are possible if we

    rely on the Lord

 

                       Chapter 3

 

Elder Tanner testifies of the things he knows to be true,

with the days of his mission drawing to an end that is

nigh.

 

Now I say unto you my beloved friends and

family,

2. I hope with faith that you are all staying

    close to our Father in Heaven and His gospel.

3. For I know without a doubt that it is true.

4. It will bless your lives if the principles of

    obedience, faith, virtue, patience, prayer,

    study, and charity are lived and followed.

5. For it is of these principles that I have gained

    a greater knowledge of while in the service

    of our Lord in the state of Western Australia

    (which I love with all my heart, might, mind

    and strength:)

6. I boldly testify of the truthfulness of the Book

    of Mormon,

7. for it can bless your lives, by bringing you

    nearer to God and Jesus Christ.

8. In that book is this scripture fulfilled, I am

    the same yesterday, today, and forever;

9. I pray that we may do as Peter directs and

    grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our

    Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

10. I testify that it is by reading the Book of

    Mormon that we may do this.

11. I love you all, until we meet again, Elder Tanner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ps. I've been reading the New Testament heaps lately.   

General Conference Weekend!

Yes, I know that I'm about 2 weeks late on general conference, but that's what happens when you live out bush.  We finally got to watch it this weekend and it was amazing.  It seemed like half of the speakers were speaking regarding return missionaries or just missionaries in general.  It was potentially one of the best conferences ever.  We had 3 investigators come along to it as well!  And Norita even came to both Sunday sessions!  I've never had an investigator come for two sessions of conference.  Usually they just find it too boring so they're not really interested in coming for more.  But Brother Otto asked her if she wanted to come back for the afternoon session and she was more than willing.  She just wanted to take her kids home first.  Sunday morning session of conference was the best possible one for investigators to be at.  Especially Elder Callister's talk on the Book of Mormon.  Speaking of Book of Mormon, we got our October Ensigns this week as well and how cool is that??  Special edition all on the Book of Mormon.  Love it!  I thought that it was really cool seeing someone speak in conference who I've had the chance to have a personal interview with.  I always remember that interview with a General Authority.  What a special opportunity that was.  It seems like it was only a couple of months ago but that was all the way back in January or February.  Time just goes too fast on the mission, I'll tell you that much.  It's still not possible that I'm going to be home in 26 days.  26 days...??  

Anyways, conference was definitely the highlight of this week.  We were looking forward to it all week,  so it was pretty much our topic of conversation and all that was on our minds.  It was good though, kept us busy.  Invited absolutely everybody that we possibly could.  We could've had probably 6 investigators come, but the other 3 used their agency to choose not to come.  Bummer when that happens.  The 3 that did come though, (Marion, Norita, and Carlo), were all uplifted and really enjoyed it... I hope.  They said they did anyways.  I reckon we're probably going to try to set a baptismal date with Norita this week!  She loves coming to church, she's really been getting into the Book of Mormon.  We just need to get her to pray so that the spirit can testify to her of the truth of everything that she's learned so far.  If it's not by the spirit, it's not God's way.  

On a slightly sadder note, and I don't usually like to talk about the sad news, but we're going to be attending a funeral on the 29th of October.  It's for this 15 year old girl who is the niece of one of our less active members, Revis.  Revis has been coming to church for awhile now and he brought his niece a couple of times.  I don't really want to get into the details of what happened, but we pretty much know the entire extended family by our close association with the aboriginals in town and they've asked us if they can have the funeral services at the chapel.  I never thought that the first funeral I would ever go to would be on my mission.  She was a nice girl too.  It's pretty sad.  So I've been keeping Revis and his family in my prayers.  I sometimes ask myself, what could I have done more, but I know that the Saviour has done it all for us so that we don't have to.

Well I hope you all enjoy these last few weeks before my homecoming.  I'll see you all soon!

Much Love,

Elder Tanner

The Final Countdown

Well the last few weeks of the mission is upon me.  What can I say other than the fact that I just keeping working hard and serving the Lord with all my heart, might, mind, and strength.  Just like always.  It is getting ridiculously near though.  Some days do seem to drag on though.  I think the fact that I didn't get transferred for my last transfer is making it go a bet longer.  Since I've already been here for 4 months and just keep working with the same people over and over, it does get a bit tedious at times.  So yeah, all the people we've been working with still are showing no signs of progression really.  The new ones are the exciting ones of late.  We did come close to making a big step with Marion yesterday, but it failed.  We had the Clarkes invite him over for dinner with us, which we go to every Sunday night, and we had a fantastic lesson planned and if he had been able to hear the testimonies of all the Clarke family, there would have been no denying the spirit.  that's where we're at with him.  We need him to feel the spirit on his own.  The only time he feels it is when we come over, but we need him to be feeling it more than that, ie. read the book of Mormon, come to church, or come to a member's house for dinner.  But he's not doing any of those at the moment.  The reason that he gave brother Clarke for not wanting to come to dinner was because he felt too ashamed to come to his house.  I don't know what he meant by that, but we were very disappointed.  We haven't had any progress with the Kumars or Carlo lately either.  The Kumars are just too busy, and Carlo is like he's taking steps backwards instead of forward.  It's OK to take an occasional step back, everybody does, but it's how many steps forward you take after that step back that matter, and he's not doing any. 

 

We did have a miracle happen this week.  I just love miracles.  So to kind of give you a background of what happened, we met this lady named Tammy whilst tracting about 3 or 4 weeks ago, maybe even 5.  We also met this lady named Norita whilst tracting about 6 weeks ago, on the opposite side of town.  We hadn't really seen either of them since we met them tracting because they were proving really hard to catch at home.  Well about 2 weeks ago we were teaching this investigator named Azizah (who we found as a referral from a less active member named Roberta) and she gave us the referral of Tammy.  Well we tried to keep seeing Tammy, but never anybody home.  But one day she called us up randomly and asked us if we could give her a hand with her yard.  We were more than happy to of course and when we went around on Tuesday to do that, lo and behold, we meet Norita there.  She was watching the kids while Tammy was at work.  We did the service, which really took it out of us that day as it was really hot, and they left while we were working, but we did text Tammy and find out if we could come again on Thursday so that we could try to sit down with her and teach her.  Well we went again on Thursday and taught her, but she wasn't really paying much attention, she was distracted by the kids most of the time and getting up and down doing stuff, however, Norita was there and she got right into the lesson.  She was telling us all about her childhood and how religion played a roll in her life.  She says that she was forced into religion, almost scared into religion when she was young, and she didn't feel she was right.  She's from Torres Strait Island and she's about 30 years old now.  We taught a bit of the restoration and left each of them with a book of Mormon with a return appointment to come back next week and teach them more.  We didn't really think heaps of it, but we were wrong to do so.  It's amazing the power the Book of Mormon has, (and I can't believe how true it is!! but I'll come back to that).  Well anyways, Norita came to church!  She walked in right as the final speaker was getting up to speak and one of the members had to come tell us that we had an investigator there because we were sitting near the front and she walked in the back.  She stayed for all of church though and I think she really enjoyed it.  She said that she read the first few chapters of the book of Mormon and so she wanted to come check us out.  How great is that!  Miracles baby!  "Has God ceased to be a God of miracles? I say unto you, NAY!"  So we'll see how far this one goes, but hopefully it goes very far.  This could be the baptismal date before I go home that I've been praying for!  We'll just wait and see. 

 

Well yeah, that's about it for this week.  Only 4 left!  Love you all! See you soon!

 

Much love,

Elder Tanner

District Conference Weekend!

What an amazing weekend it was.  Not a whole lot happened prior to driving up to Port Hedland on Thursday, because we were just getting excited to go up there.  We did get to teach a couple of really good lessons on Wednesday.  One was with Penny, the lady who came to church because a member invited her to come to our activity with us.  We just introduced who we were, a bit about our message and how it can bless her life.  She didn't come to church this Sunday again though which was a bummer since she said she would.  But we're just hoping that maybe something came up.  She did say that there was a possibility that something would come up.  Apparently her work is pretty unpredictable.  So we'll be following up with her on Wednesday again and find out what the low down is.  Also on Wednesday Brother Mattys, the Young Men's president invited us to teach the Young Men about missionary work for their Wednesday night activity.  I really enjoyed it, even though the 4 young men in the branch are little hooligans.  I got a couple opportunities this week to teach about missionary work and that was the first one.  And that was followed by Sister Mattys making us some amazing homemade pizza.  

So we drove up Thursday afternoon to get to Port Hedland around 3:00.  Before driving up, the APs called me and asked if I could give a 20 minute training on Friday on A Successful Missionary from pg. 10 of Preach My Gospel.  So that gave me less than 24 hours notice to prepare 20 minutes of training.  So I was pretty stressed about that, because Thursday night was definitely busy.  We went to go see Monique and her husband who have moved to Port Hedland.  It was good to see them, and it was probably the last time I'm ever going to see them.  They're a really great couple.  That was after we picked the APs up from the airport and dropped them off at Port Hedland's flat.  While we were there, Elder Keers, one of the Port Hedland elders called me up and asked if I could come do a baptismal interview for them at 7 for a 12 year old kid that they were going to be baptising on Saturday.  It was good getting to do a baptismal interview again, it's been awhile since I got to do one of those, being up here, usually the Branch President usually does it, but since I just happened to be there, they asked me to do it.  It was great.  But that made us not get back until 8pm, and that's when I started to prepare my training for out meeting that would be starting at 9:30 the next day.  

The meeting was potentially the best meeting I've been to in a long time.  Haha, it's the only meeting I've been to in a long time.  But it was definitely great.  President and Sister Cahoon arrived just before the meeting started and came straight to the chapel from the airport.  It's just so good to be in their presence.  Sad that that will be my last time to be in their presence until just before I go home.  39 days left and they're all going to be sent in Karratha.  I think I'm the only one out of our 13 person intake (very large) that is going to be finishing outside of the city.  Exiled!  Well anyways, the meeting was all about Teaching People, Not Lessons for the first half and the second half was all about the apostasy and also my training.  President Cahoon prepared an awesome PowerPoint all about the Apostasy with heaps of information in it.  He went through it so fast though that I'll definitely need to make sure I get a copy of it before I go home.  I was trying to write everything down, but there's just so much information.  Some of it was quite amazing.  There's heaps to learn about it.  Apparently Elder Callister has a really good book, another one that I need to read when I get home, called the Inevitable Apostasy.  And I think that is where President got all of his information.  The training that I gave actually ended up being pretty good.  I think the Lord helped me out since I only had hardly any time to prepare.  By the time I got up to give it though, it was already past the time we were meant to finish, so I thought that was good, I could just give a little 5 minute training and not have to feel guilty about it being too short.  However, when I got going, it was hard to keep it under 30 minutes.  It's amazing how the spirit works.  I don't even really remember half the things that I talked about or said, but I know that it was long enough and that it was definitely spiritually uplifting.  I think especially for the young missionaries that were there, they definitely got a lot about it.  I spoke about exact obedience and Christ like attributes and how having those two things will pretty much make us be successful.  Oh and one more thing from the meeting, we had to give a 3 minute talk.  That's the one where everybody has to prepare something and then president picks 3 people to give it at the end of the first half before lunch.  We've been doing them in meetings for nearly 10 months now, so I'm sure I've talked about it before.  Anyways, this month's topic was Jacob chapter 5, the allegory of the olive tree.  Lucky me, I got picked to give my 3 minute talk as well.  I spoke about the phrase that comes from verse 50, "spare it a little longer".  Elder Nichols spoke about all the references to the Atonement in the chapter, which I found to be amazing.  I never really noticed how it talks about the atonement, but in verse 31 it says how the Lord of the Vineyard has tasted every fruit.  And also in verse 41, he says "what could I have done more for my vineyard".  When you think about those in terms of the Atonement, it's really quite humbling.   I gained a lot of really good insight about that chapter though, it's become one of my favourites.

So Saturday morning President and Sister Cahoon took us out to breakfast before the Broome Elders had to catch their bus back to Broome, and then I said goodbye to them until I see them again down in Perth probably on November 10th or something like that.  We helped the Hedland elders out with a big service project, which we also got a feed out of, then we drove back to Karratha, but stopped in Roebourne for a dinner appointment first.  By the end of the day, I felt like if I blinked, I'd fall asleep.  We didn't get much sleep over the 2 nights because we hardly get to see other elders so we got to do a lot of catching up with them.  Then the service activity and the driving, and the waking up early to get 8 elders showered on time.  Man, it was a great weekend.

Well, just under 6 weeks left now.  I'm looking forward to seeing ALL of you!  I'll catch yous up, aye?

Love,

Elder Tanner

35 Degree Heat!

Well this week has been the best.  We've been working hard, that's for sure.  I'm even getting a major collar tan line to show for it.  It's pretty bad, but pretty good at the same time.  Spending all day out on the bikes regardless of the temperature, it feels good.  Don't worry, I apply sun block.  The heat isn't bad to bike in, what kills us is the wind.  What that's what kills me anyways.  Biking into the wind is no fun.  I tell you what is fun though, something that we did last p-day, we pushed our bikes up to the top of the highest hill in Karratha and then biked down.  There's no paved roads or anything up there, it's only meant to be accessible by foot, so that's what made it fun.  It was like real mountain biking.  We loved it so much that we decided to go back up the hill by the time we got to the bottom because it was totally worth it.  We might do it again today if we have time, but I don't know if we will, we have a lot to do today.  

On to the more important matters of this week, the REAL exciting stuff.  We got 6 new investigators this week which was the best I've ever done in Karratha.  They all just kind of fell into our lap though which was the best way to find them.  Two of them came from one of our less active members, Moon, who's still making a come back, and she acts as a translator for us in teaching these two new investigators we got.  Our best new investigator though was definitely a miracle.  We had this activity on Saturday, it was like a Branch Mini-Olympics and we just had it at one of the local parks.  It was heaps of fun and most people from the branch came along.  Before we really got started and we were just waiting for everybody to show up we were setting some stuff up and Brother Otto (our branch mission leader) noticed a lady walking past and felt prompted to go talk to her.  We just assumed he already knew her because he knows pretty much everybody in town, having lived here for 24 years.  Anyways, turns out he didn't already know her, but he invited her to come join us in our activity.  So she came over and mingled with all the members and played sports with us and everything, it was great.  Her name is Penny.  After the activity though, I felt pretty guilty because we didn't get a chance to talk to her and find out where she lived and see if we could come around and teach her.  However, the Lord will always provide a more excellent way, and He did.  I guess someone invited her to church on Sunday, because as I was playing prelude music, she walked in and my heart was filled with joy because now I had another chance in talking to her and inviting her to allow to come teach her.  I'm still not sure who invited her to church, but the fact that she came was just amazing.  We can't get any of our investigators to come to church, but then a member just invites someone to come hit a volleyball around with us and to come to church and she comes!  How cool is that.  She stayed for all of church and she seemed to really enjoy it.  Especially Relief Society.  She really participated in our Gospel Principles lesson which was great.  Usually when we do get an investigator to church here, they usually just sit there and observe, but she was right into it.  We talked to her after church and she said she would love to have us come around and teach her.  So of all the miracles we've had up here in Karratha, this one is looking promising.  As far as our other miracles go, the Kumars and Marion,  still no progress, although yesterday was a good day for both of them.  We brought Brother Otto around to the Kumars with us and were able to give Martin a blessing because he just had his surgery.  Brother Otto invited them to church and they seemed to be a lot more responsive to that invitation than they did when we invited them.  Isn't there just so much power in member missionary work?  I'll tell you what, I love it.  When we went around to the Clarkes for dinner, Brother Clarke asked us if we wanted to go around and see Marion with him right then.  He wanted to invite him over for dinner which would have been amazing, but it was too late notice and Marion couldn't come, but he invited him for next week so we should start to see some good things happen with him.  He has a lot of respect for Brother Clarke, he just really looks up to him for some reason, so it was really good that we were able to go around with him.  Although he still seemed apprehensive about coming to church, we'll definitely be able to have a great lesson with him next Sunday at the Clarke's.  He's also still committed to coming to General Conference, so we still got that going for us.  I can't wait for General Conference.  I LOVE it.  

This coming week we're going up to Port Hedland for 3 days, well probably closer to 2 and a half days, but I'm really looking forward to that as well.  We're going up for a district conference (basically a zone conference) on Friday, but we're going to spend Thursday night and Saturday morning/afternoon with the Elders up there, as well as the Broome Elders as long as they're there.  I'm really looking forward to the district conference because I haven't been to a meeting like that in AGES since I've been up here for so long.  I absolutely love receiving training from President Cahoon, and you have to miss out on that when you're in the city.  I'll probably be asked to give some kind of training as well in the meeting seeing as how I'm the district leader and everything.  It will be just like city life again, just for a day though lol.  But I'm sure I'll have heaps to talk about in my letter next week with this meeting/trip happening this week.

So until then, you stay classy San Diego.  I love you all!  Keep up all the amazing work that you all do, and don't forget to read the Book of Mormon!

Much Love,

Elder Tanner

Enduring to the End

Never in all my experience as a missionary have I had to fix flat tyres as much as I've had to fix them this week.  On Thursday, we spent about 2 hours and 60 bucks fixing our flat tyres.  Elder Ford had 2, and I had one.  We went through I think 3 tubes on his bike and 2 on mine.  First we bought a thorn resistant tube, and it punctured.  Then we bought another tube to line the inside of the tyre with, with the thorn resistant tube in it, and it punctured.  So finally we broke down and went to the bike shop to get a whole new tyre with extra caviar in it and also bought some good slime stuff to put into the tyres.  I hate putting slime in tyres, but we had to.  We couldn't afford all this down time of fixing flats anymore.  Karratha is just so full of thorns (big nasty ones), and lots of broken glass all over, mostly from beer bottles.  We thought we had been doing a relatively good job of avoiding those things, but it was inevitable.  But the good news is that we haven't gotten a flat tyre since Thursday.  Hooray!

 

So our two best investigators right now are Marion and Martin Kumar and his family.  The only problem is that we've basically hit a wall in our teaching with both of them.  We've taught Marion 13 times now, and yesterday when we taught him, we were struggling to figure out what we should teach him.  We need to teach to his needs, but you can only teach to somebody's needs so many times before it just starts to get repetitive.  His needs are that he need to get baptised.  He needs to read and pray about the Book of Mormon, and he need to come to church.  We've invited him to do those things roughly 13 times now, and still nothing.  He's not keeping any commitments.  In most cases, we would just drop somebody like that, but Marion is such a good man.  I don't want to lose him.  We've invited him to come to General Conference and hopefully the prophet will say something that will inspire him.  You can always count on the prophet.  We just need to figure out what to teach him between then and now.  He just bought a new tablet this week so we might start showing him some Mormon messages on it and teach from them.  He really opens up when we watch videos.  We just finished watching the Preach My Gospel DVDs, and we always end up talking about baptism and how this is the only true church on the earth when we watched those.  So I think Mormon Messages are the way to go.  We'll see how we go with that though. 

 

Now when it comes to Martin Kumar, that's an entirely different story.  I've never taught a doctor before until we met him, and wow it's challenging.  I figured out why I get so nervous when we're preparing to teach him.  Not only because the Lord directed him to us, but he has some incredibly deep questions and will only settle for incredibly deep answers.  I feel confident with the answers that I give him, but it seems like he doesn't always like the answers that I give him.  I think he won't admit it, but he has a bit of pride because of his high level on knowledge.  He straight up told us on Saturday when we taught him "I can out talk you".  It's interesting though because talking to him about Joseph Smith and about the Book of Mormon and things like that, he believes just about everything that we've taught him.  He understands the need of the Book of Mormon, I think he believes it is the word of God, he understands why we need prophets on the earth today (I think), the reason that I'm not 100% sure about the things that he believes is because of the way that he talks.  He talks in a very roundabout way.  At first he seemed very humble, but I think since we helped him out of his time of crisis by giving him a blessing and praying with him, he feels like he's all set and doesn't really need to do anything about the things that we've taught him.  I think in our lesson with him on Saturday, the spirit wasn't really fully present, because it seemed like he wanted a logical debate.  We didn't really get the chance to begin our lesson with a prayer either which also had a major impact on the amount of the spirit that could be felt in the room.  We recommitted him to read the Book of Mormon, because he admitted that he had not been reading it since last time we saw him, so hopefully when he starts reading it again, he'll feel the spirit again and desire more and allow us to actually teach him.  He's having his gal bladder taken out this week, so we won't be able to teach him, but we'll just keep praying for him until we do. 

 

Our work with some of the Less Actives is really picking up lately as well.  I can't remember if I told you about Moon last week but she's this awesome lady from Thai, and the biggest reason that she is less active is because she doesn't have a ride.  But this week we offered to find her a ride (we only started visiting her 2 weeks ago) and she said she would love to come to church.  She's the best when it comes to member missionary work as well.  When we visited her this wee, we read the Book of Mormon with her and her friend was there.  Her friend didn't speak hardly any English at all, but Moon asked her friend to read the verses out loud in Thai.  The spirit was so strong when she was reading too.  It just testified to me that the spirit only has one language.  She read Alma 7:11-13 in Thai and we ALL felt the spirit.  Luckily Moon can speak enough English to have a basic conversation.  Her friend told her that she wanted a copy of the Book of Mormon and that she wanted to come to church with her.  Unfortunately, her friend wasn't able to come with her this week, but next week, we're sure she'll come.

So I'm trying to lose a bit of weight before the end of my mission by watching what I eat and doing a bit more exercise in the morning, but it's been a bit tough because of how awesome this branch is.  We have had a dinner appointment every night since this past Friday until next Monday.  Biking everyday just isn't enough.  Today we're going to try to hurry up with our emails so that we can have some time today to do some mountain biking up the hills of Karratha.  It should be fun, and a good work out.  I just hope we don't get any flat tyres. 

 

Well that's about it for this week.  I love you all and I'll see you soon!

 

Much Love,

Elder Tanner

 

PS. - For anybody that is following the rugby world cup, AUS and USA play next I believe.  As much as I would love to go for the US in rugby...  Go Wallabies!

Bike Week (Even More Exciting Than Shark Week)

Well as you can tell by the subject of this email, we smashed the bikes this week. Every single day from about 11-5, we were on them. I'm definitely starting to get a nice little tan though. We're saving up all the K's on the car for this month so that we can take a trip out to Port Hedland at the end of the month. We're doing a really good job too. Today is the 12th and we've only used about 300 K's for the month. We'd probably be able to get more K's allotted to us for our trip to Port Hedland since it's for a district conference, but I like to see if I can do it without having to ask for more K's. I am excited for district conference though. It will be good. I haven't received a proper training from President Cahoon, other than the training of trainers meeting, in ages. It will be last opportunity to have a meeting like this as well, so it should be the best.

I can't take too long writing this email this week, but I'll give you as much detail as I can on our awesome-ish week. The best part of this week was teaching Marion, as usual. We taught him about the sealing ordinance on Wednesday and he was loving it. It was just saying things like "I never knew about this before. I like this." He was going to tell his wife about it next time he talked to her on the phone. The spirit was strong in that lesson as it testified of the things that we taught. The spirit was even stronger in our lesson with him on Sunday. We started the lesson by watching the second episode of the Preach my gospel DVDs season 2. He said to us that the thing that stood out the most to him about those DVDs was the parts where it showed people getting baptised. He believes that baptism by immersion is the correct way to be baptised, but he hasn't been baptised in that way before. He asked, "How come the Catholic church doesn't baptise by immersion? Shouldn't somebody tell them that they're doing it wrong?" I LOVED that question. We told him many people have tried to tell them they were wrong, some of those people were Martin Luther and all the other reformers. Even though we've taught him the apostasy and the restoration so many times, it's finally clicking for him. He's realising that the Catholic church was the start of the apostasy. He's just so close. He knows that the catholic church will never change, so that will require him to change, but he's still scared to change because of his family. Just another concern that we will have to overcome, but we can do it.

Yesterday at church I was standing at the door greeting people as they walked in and I turned around and Elder Palalagi was standing there! Well he's not Elder anymore. His real name is Taha. He went home back in June, but I was his district leader and zone leader while I was down in Rockingham. It was way good to see him again. It's good to see any missionary again after their mission. During the intermediate hymn in sacrament meeting, I asked him if he has any girls that he went home to or anything and he said that he is engaged to Sister Vaivai (now Noeline Vaivai), but she was a sister missionary that was also in my zone when I was a zone leader. She just went home in August though, 3 weeks ago I think. I thought he was just kidding at first, but he was dead serious. Good on them I guess, but that was totally unexpected. It blew my mind. Not that it has any relevance to anything at all, but I just thought it was funny to hear that two missionaries that were in my zone back in Perth, are now off their missions and engaged to each other.

Well sorry for the short email, but that's about it for this week. I need to let Elder Ford get some email time as well

I'll talk to you all very soon!

Much Love,

Elder Tanner

First Full Week With Elder Ford

This week has been great. Every week is great when you're in the service of the Lord. I absolutely love it. But it's getting hard to not count how many weeks I have left until my return (9 and a half for those who were wondering). I love Perth. I love Karratha. I love the people that I've met on my mission. I love that no matter where I go, I can always have instant friends in the church. I LOVE studying the gospel every single day. That's definitely a habit that I don't ever want to lose after my mission. I always hate it when study time ends because I just wish I could keep studying all day, but then when I get out there and start sharing the gospel and teaching people I don't want THAT to end either. I just love everything about the gospel and my mission.

I've been learning this week about the level of Elder Ford's knowledge of the gospel, and it's kind of been blowing my mind. I wonder if I was like that when I first came out. I know that Elder Shobbrook wasn't that bad when I trained him, but he's a gun so that's why. I know that we learn a lot when we're on a mission, and since I'm near the end, I can look back and think about how much I have learned, but Elder Ford was reading the Gospel Principles manual today in study time and out of nowhere he just goes, "whoa! We believe that Christ will reign on the earth for 1,000 years?!" I couldn't help but laugh, but I've been teaching him a lot of basic knowledge in our study time as well as teaching him a lot of missionary knowledge (teaching the restoration and things like that). I guess that basic knowledge isn't really basic for a lot of people, I should've already known that from all the people that we teach. I don't know how much preparing Elder Ford did spiritually before his mission, but I know that he'll be a completely different missionary by the end of his mission, and hopefully by the end of me training him. I got 10 more weeks with him, 9 and a half if we want to get technical though.

So as far as how things in Karratha are going, they're going great! We didn't get to teach Martin Kumar and his family this week which was kind of a disappointment, but they're not dropped, we have an appointment with them this week before he goes to Perth for a visit. The good news this week is from teaching Marion. We didn't get to set a baptismal date with him or anything, but we taught him on Thursday and invited him to be baptised. He said that he couldn't answer that right now, so we committed him to get on his knees that night and pray sincerely to know the truth of the things we have been teaching him and if being baptised into the Lord's church is what he needs to do. He said that he would do that, but when we followed up on Sunday, he hadn't. But some of the things that he told us were very interesting. The reason that we committed him to pray was because he told us that he has been losing sleep over the things that we've been teaching him. He stays awake at night just thinking about all the things that we've said. And when he went back to his church after coming to ours, he couldn't stop thinking about us and our church while he was attending mass. So when we asked him if he had prayed when we saw him on Sunday, he said that he couldn't because he didn't want to tear apart his family. He KNOWS this is true and that this is what he needs to do, but he's afraid to pray about it and receive that spiritual witness because then he'll have to act on it. If his family were here with him rather than in the Philippines, he would probably be getting baptised next week, but he doesn't want to do anything without his family. So we're going to be praying that missionaries will either find his wife or that he'll give us her address so we can send it as a referral to the Philippines. Marion is such a great man though. I think if we could just get him to read the Book of Mormon more, then he would definitely want to be baptised. But we're still waiting for that Tagalog Book of Mormon from the mission office. Either way, I KNOW he'll be baptised someday. We've planted the seed in him and it is a good seed and it's already starting to grow. Someday.

That was really the highlight of the week when it comes to teaching. It was kind of a slow week for teaching. We got on the bikes for Elder Ford's first time ever, and that was good. On Saturday we had a branch service project cleaning up the grounds around the chapel. Nearly the whole branch came minus I think 2 families. It was great. Then that evening we had a priesthood Ping Pong tournament, but I think everybody was just too tired from the service so not a lot of people came, and the people that did come were just tired and didn't really want to play much. None of our investigators came either. Our branch President, President Pilkington brought a friend, but that was the only nonmember there. But it was a fun day nonetheless.

Well I think that's about me for the week. I think we're going on a hike up the side of the mountains (or hills) near Karratha today. It should be a good P-day. I love you all. I'll see you all ridiculously soon.

Much Love,

Elder Tanner

Perth Trip! NEW Companion!

Wowzers! This week has been awesome. We ended up leaving for Perth on Tuesday morning, so we didn't really get a whole lot of time to do much before we left. Luckily Elder Naruo said all of his goodbyes before then, so we just packed up on Monday night and shot off Tuesday morning. Monday night was fun though. We had dinner with Monique and her husband Peter. We had a really good time with them and we could really feel their love for us for everything that we've done for them. We did get a surprise. They told us of their desire to quit smoking. They said they feel like they would just be happier without that ball and chain in their life. We told them that we would love to help them do that and that we have a program that will help them. They were more than willing to accept that and to try out that program. Especially Peter, who I though would be the less receptive one, he was keen as. He just told us to bring it over and he'd love to do it. So maybe that will be happening this week as well. It's funny how when you do that program with one person (or plan on doing it), 3 or 4 more people come out and say they want to quit smoking as well. So we're happy to see progress there.

So now I need to tell you about my Perth trip and my new companion. Perth was the greatest. I love it there. I think something that I love is just the atmosphere of being around other missionaries that hold the same calling as I do. The Spirit is always so strong whilst in the midst of them. On Tuesday we got picked up by the Assistants and the Port Hedland Elders' flight had arrived at the same time as ours so we got to see them as well. The assistants (Elder Foster and Elder Semu) brought us back to the mission office where we got to see President and Sister Cahoon and all the office staff. There we waited for the Warwick zone leaders (Elder Metekingi and Elder Nahrwold) to come pick us up. I got to spend the evening on exchange with Elder Metekingi, and Elder Naruo went with Elder Nahrwold. We had a fun night, and did something that elder Metekingi and I always seem to do when we're on exchange together. Walk for ages and get lost. We did service for this elderly lady in their ward and then had to start walking to a dinner appointment to which he had no idea how to get there. So we tracted as we went and asked people if they knew where the street was that we were looking for. Nobody knew, of course, but we found a physio that was open and went in and asked the lady at reception if she could help us find where we were going. She was willing to get on to google and help us get to where we were trying to go. Elder Metekingi and I always just seem to rely on the Lord when we're together. No need to bring maps or anything haha. The funny thing was, we realised that we were going to be about 30 minutes late to our appointment by that time if we continued walking, so we called them up and they came and picked us up for dinner. I guess the lesson learned there was to do all you can do, rely on the Lord, and He'll provide for you in some way or another. But yeah, we had an amazing time.

Wednesday morning was the first of 3 mornings in a row or waking up at 5:30 to play touch rugby with some other elders, which I didn't mind because I wanted to get the maximum amount of time being with other missionaries as possible. But by Friday, I was really feeling it. Luckily I got to sleep on the plane ride back to Karratha. So Wednesday we had training of trainers meeting at which they introduced the new training program that the church has put out called "The First 12 Weeks". Kind of ironic since this is my last 12 weeks. But it looks like a great program. It lays out the first 12 weeks of companionship study with the new missionary and also gives us specific tasks to complete such as "let the new missionary take the lead in....". It also gives us 2 hours of comp study a day instead of just one. So that's 3 hours of studying a day that I get to do now rather than just 2. I'm really going to love that. I love my study time. I wish we could get 2 hours of personal study as well. That's where I do a bulk of the learning. Comp study is more of the applying part rather than the actual learning. Transfer meeting was great because I got to see heaps of missionaries that I missed. Elder Hodgkiss wasn't there, but I got to see most of the missionaries from my intake, Elder Shobbrook, Elder Ulas, just heaps of people. It was like a mini reunion, for me anyways. They see each other all the time, but when you're in a country area 1800 Ks from the city, you get kind of lonely sometimes haha. Wednesday after transfer meeting was pretty relax. I just spent the rest of the day with Elder Weber and Elder Harvey, who were also training. We were kind of all over the place for the rest of the day. We had to drop some missionaries off in Greenmount which was way out of the way from where we were going. We met up with Elder Abel and Elder Oswald (the Southern River ZLs) for lunch around 3:30, so we had a massive late lunch. Elder Oswald was feeling a bit sick so I volunteered to go spend some time with him in his flat so Elder Abel could go with Harvey and Weber to get some work done. So yeah, like I said, we were all over. It was good to catch up with Elder Oswald. We talked a lot about home since we're both going at the same time. I'm glad that I'm not serving with somebody that is going home at the same time as me, it's good not to think about it a lot, so that the time goes faster. But I still liked enjoyed talking about It with Oswald. But I digress.

So my new companion! His name is Elder Ford. He's from Sydney Australia. He has 3 brothers and one sister, he's been in the church his whole life, and he's way excited to be here. Most Aussies aren't always the most excited to be serving in Perth, but he said that he got what he wanted, so that's really good. I was excited that I got an Aussie as well. There were only 3 elders in this intake, and the other two were American. Elder Harvey, Elder Weber, and I were all talking about who would get the Aussie before we actually got our companions. I don't know why, but none of us really wanted the Americans. I was the one that scored! Elder Ford is a great guy. A lot of his mannerisms actually remind me of my trainer, Elder Glover, and Zach as well. He's a funny guy. He said that he was disappointed that I did have an Oklahoma accent. He said he and his brothers used to mock the Oklahoma accent all the time. I think the reason we didn't want the Americans is because it's much easier to train somebody when you don't have to teach them about the country itself as well. And trying to teach Americans how to play rugby, that's a fun one. Almost as hard as trying to teach Aussies how to play Gridiron. I'm sure I was just as bad though haha. But I'm glad to be serving with Elder Ford. I think he is just the man for the job when it comes to being my last companion and sending me out with a bang.

Speaking of a bang. Martin Kumar and his wife Jay are the best! We taught them again on Saturday and this was Elder Ford's 3rd teaching experience I think. He did really well, but what was even better was the fact that the lesson just went famously well. Martin has already read all the way up to Jacob (well he's probably in Mosiah by now), and Jay had already read half way through 2 Nephi. It's amazing the joy it brings when investigators keep commitments, especially to read. When we asked them if they had been reading, Martin said "yeah, I have a bad habit of reading". Haha, I wish all of my investigators would have that bad habit. More importantly, when we asked them how they felt as they were reading, they said they felt a feeling of sincerity. Like a calm peaceful feeling. Jay is on to it as well. She said that there was no way that Joseph Smith could have made it up. THANK YOU! That's what I've wanted every investigator ever to know. But all they need to do is read it, that's the only way they can know. We watched the Restoration DVD with them and they said that they felt that same feeling of sincerity as they watched it. We explained that that feeling comes from the spirit, and that the feeling is one that you can have with you always. We asked them that if they found out these things to be true if they'd be willing to act on the knowledge they have. They said yes, so that sets us up perfectly for a baptismal commitment down the road. Hopefully the short road at that. What an awesome lesson though! Elder Ford is getting right into the good stuff, which is great.

Well that's about it for this week. I hope that you all are having an amazing start to the school year. I pray for you all. I'll see you all in 10 weeks!

Much Love,

Elder Tanner

PS. The time for writing me a letter is growing small. GET ON IT! Thanks :D