38 DEGREES CELCIUS ALL THE TIME!!!

So yeah, this week has been hot, to say the least. We haven't had a high temperature below 30 degrees since Christmas and this week we didn't have a high below 35. I'm pretty sure that trend is going to continue for this coming week as well. I remember it being like this last February as well. Feb is just the hottest month of the year. We haven't had rain yet this year either, so hopefully we get some soon and we're able to come out of this hot streak. Elder Lowe and I have been tracting like crazy too because we basically had a purge of all of our investigators over the past two weeks. Over Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we tracted a total of 8 hours, 4 of those being on Thursday. We just loaded up on sunscreen and water and went to it. When you're actually out in the heat for that long of time you kind of stop feeling it as much. The only thing you feel is the sweat dripping down your face and the nice shiny layer of sweat on your arms and that. So those three days were good. On Thursday we set a goal for this coming week to tract for 25 hours total, and then later that evening we found out from a member that there wasn't a day below 35 degrees on the 7 day forecast. Oh, the cunning designs of the evil one. We set that goal and we are keen on achieving it. We know the Lord will bless us for not only being out there and finding the elect, but for achieving our goal. For those of you that don't know, 25 hours is A LOT to tract in one week, especially in this kind of heat, but we're prepared for it. Usually we do about 7-8 hours total over the entire week, so even 8 hours in 3 days seemed like a lot, but 25 is just going to be hectic. I know from experience though that if you're out there doing the Lord's work, searching for those that have been prepared to hear the gospel, the Lord with bless us with people to teach. Even if they don't come directly from tracting, He will provide us with someone to teach from some other way. Possibly from a member referral or someone we meet at the shops or anything like that. It only works if we talk to EVERYONE though. "Open your mouths and spare not, and ye shall be laden with sheaves upon your backs, for lo, I am with you". We're hoping in this case that being laden with sheaves is being laden with investigators to teach. Lots of prayers are going to be backing this 25 hour tracting week that's for sure. We don't want to be relying on our own efforts to find people to teach. We just need to ask every day to find someone, and it will happen, I'm sure of it.

On Tuesday this week I was a bit sick. Well actually I started to feel sick on Monday night after p-day and that sick feeling caused me to not be able to sleep all night so on Tuesday I was utterly exhausted. I don't know what it was but it was just an unbearable stomach pain that cause me to not be able to get comfortable in no matter what position I tried to sleep in. On Tuesday the stomach pain wasn't as intense, but yeah like I said, I had absolutely 0% energy. The unfortunate thing was that we had our monthly specialised training meeting on Tuesday and Elder Lowe and I were meant to be giving training on how the Book of Mormon is key in conversion. We were going to pretend that there were two identical investigators and we asked them two different questions. One question was going to be "Do you believe that God exists?" and the other one was going to be "Do you believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God". Then we were going to talk about how many eternal truths the investigator can learn by answering yes to each of those questions. If all they know is that God is real, then they'll probably believe the Bible to be true and that they need to do their best to get to heaven and that's about it. Whereas if they know the Book of Mormon to be true then they not only know that truth, but they know that Joseph Smith was a prophet, the church is true, God has a plan for us, we're not saved by grace alone, the list goes on and on. Elder Lowe said it went really well without me anyways, which is good I guess. My spirit was willing to give the training, but my flesh was weak, so I just went into the mothers lounge at the chapel and had a bit of a sleep during the meeting since I could finally lay down without feeling like I was getting stabbed in the side. So that was a bummer. The training that we had planned was really good too, I felt pretty bad that I couldn't give the training with Elder Lowe but that he had to do it by himself. It would have been my first opportunity to give training to the zone as a whole too. I'll get another chance this Friday for our Zone Meeting though, so I'm looking forward to that. Hopefully we can plan something as good as what we had planned before.

Crazy experience this week! So we were doing some tracting on Wednesday and we had been going for about an hour and had about 20 minutes left before our dinner appointment. It was a pretty average day of tracting, hot, not too much success, the works. So with 20 minutes left we knocked on this one door and the guy that came to the door was wearing a blue shirt that said "TULSA" on it. The first thing out of my mouth before Elder Lowe could even say "Hello, we're missionaries..." was "HEY! Are you from Oklahoma!?" He was kind of caught off guard because I'm sure he doesn't get that very often when he's wearing that shirt. Well he wasn't actually from Oklahoma but he said that he had lived there for about 3 years back in the 80's. He said he loved it too. We had a pretty good chat. I told him how much Tulsa has probably changed over the last 20-30 years since he has been there, not that I know how much it's changed, but I'm sure that it has. He didn't even know where places like Jenks were or anything. It turned out too that his wife is actually a less-active member, but she wasn't there at the time because she's a "FIFO" worker, Fly in Fly out. Which means she works about 2-3 weeks up in the mines or where ever she is in the middle of WA and then flies back for a week then repeats the cycle. That's actually what heaps of people do, it's definitely the most popular job in WA, mining is huge. But yeah, she was a member and he was a practicing Catholic. He told us we could come back whenever we wanted so we're going to try back next week and try to catch his wife as well. Really cool guy though. Mike his name was, in his 60's or so. I never thought I would ever meet someone or even see someone wearing some kind of Oklahoma shirt or had even ever been to Oklahoma on my mission, but now I have. It was a pretty exciting experience meeting him even though he hadn't been there since the 80's and he had only been in Tulsa, never made his way down to the city.

So yeah, that's my past week in a nutshell. Awesome week it was. This week is bound to be interesting as well. Zone Leader Council tomorrow. ZLC is becoming my favourite part of the month. Since we had two in February because of President Callister's visit and there's only 28 days, it feels like we just had one the other day and now we're having another one. But usually we only have it on the first of the month. And tomorrow after that I'm going on an exchange with Elder Ulas which is going to be awesome. I don't know if you remember him, but he was the Elder from Vanuatu that got to be with me and Elder Glover for a few days when he first came into the country. His English has improved dramatically since then and he is heaps fun to be around now. He tells me that when I come to Vanuatu, I have a place to stay haha. So I need to do my best to make it there someday.

Well I'm off for this week. I hope the COLD is treating you all well. I'll trade you 38 degrees Cecilius for 38 degrees Fahrenheit. Sounds like a fair trade to me! Have a great week! I'll talk to you all soon!

Lova yas!

Elder Tanner

President Callister's Visit

What a spiritual feast this week has been! President Callister was here this week and we had the opportunity to hear from him on Thursday at Zone Conference and again on Friday at Zone Leader Council. AND I got to have an interview with him after Zone Conference. President Callister is a very smart man, and he definitely carries the spirit with him on a full-time basis. When he walked into the room on Thursday it was just like, we were 100% separated from the world, it was a great feeling. I remember driving home from it as well thinking it was weird to be back in the world with people all around us that sin and don't have the gospel in their lives. It was kind of the same feeling I had driving from the MTC to the airport. It's just like.. "wow, there's actually a world out there, I just thought everybody felt the spirit this strongly all the time" It was pretty crazy. President Callister talked about some really good stuff in both of those meetings. In Zone conference he spoke on more general subjects such as how to become a consecrated missionary, how to have a celestial planning/celestial day, how to build/develop faith in us and our investigators, and how we can better understand/learn the doctrine. In ZLC he spoke more about how to be a better leader and things like that. It was more training than a council this one, but I was OK with that, that was exactly what I needed. He taught us the role of a zone leader, shared some good scriptures having to do with that. D&C 93:43,44,50 say we must set in order our own lives before we can help others, so in other words we must be good examples in obedience. He spoke about how to be better problem solvers and that was probably my favourite part of the whole training. He compared mission rules to the Mosaic Law and mission principles to Christ's Law. So we must teach people the principle behind the rules if we want them to understand why we have the rules, or commandments. He said if missionaries could live off of principles alone, the white handbook would only have to be about 5 pages long, but we can't, so we have rules. Our responsibility as leaders is to teach principles, not tell people the rules. President Callister actually said something really interesting that the Lord won't help us when we can help ourselves. So for example, if we're having heaps of headaches or something, we can't pray to have our headaches taken away if we're not getting up on time, not eating healthy, etc. We can only ask for the Lord's help when we know we've done all that we can do to solve the problem ourselves.

In my interview with him he asked pretty simple questions such as, what is the most important thing you've learned on your mission so far, what are you going to do to be a great zone leader, do you stick to the morning schedule, etc. But we had a pretty good long chat. Just getting to talk to a General Authority one on one like that was a great privilege. And the last thing he said to me was that he could feel a great amount of the spirit in me, such a compliment coming from a Gen. Auth. Oh that's another thing he told us, which I kind of already knew, that being a Zone Leader or any kind of leader in the church isn't a privilege, it's a sacred trust. The Lord trusts us to do the best things that we can for those that we lead.

So the rest of my week doesn't even really compare to those two days in awesomeness, but I'll tell you about it anyways haha. Friday and Saturday were good. On Friday after ZLC we went to the Shelley area to do a blitz with them, just tracted with them for about 90 minutes. So that was good. Then we got to go city contacting. City contacting is still one of my weaknesses I feel, but I definitely want to turn that weakness into a strength before the end of my mission. It's just really daunting walking into the city centre being surrounded by hundreds of people that are all in a hurry. But once you get into it, it's not too bad.

Really there isn't too much else to speak about this week other than Elder Callister's visit. No real progressing investigators at the moment which is a bummer. The two that are the closest to progressing didn't come to church yesterday which was a bummer. Just need to keep trying though.

Until next week, sorry for the short email. I hope you all have a great week and I'll talk to you all soon [as you write/email me]. haha.

Love you all!

elder Tanner

Preparation for Elder Tad R. Callister

This week has been crazy good! I can't believe that we're already halfway through this transfer. It is just flying by. I'm sure the last half of the transfer is just going to fly quicker. I had some pretty good experiences this week, nothing too far out of the ordinary though. The coolest thing that happened to me this week was getting to go on exchanges with the APs and getting to go see what it's like to be an AP for a day. That was on Wednesday, it feels like it was just yesterday though. We did have some days this week that just seemed to drag on, but the week as a whole has gone by pretty quick. On Tuesday we had planned 6 people to see between 10 and noon. Only one of those 6 were even home, so we had finished all those 6 people by 11. That's when we called the Assistants to see if we could go on an exchange the next day, because we could tell that we were going to need something to look forward to that day, otherwise it really would have seemed like the longest day ever. It was good though because after lunch we were able to see 5 families before we started our exchange. A couple of less-active families and even a part-member family so that made that day pretty good actually.

On my exchange with Elder Weber, (who was also my district leader in the MTC), we were able to get heaps of stuff done. I liked being on exchange in the APs area. It's amazing how much their phone rings, that would make being an AP pretty stressful I reckon. We had to go get the car serviced in the morning and the whole time we were waiting around for the car to be done, I was studying and Elder Weber was just on the phone. We almost got an opportunity to go see Sister Berryman in the afternoon because we had to drop something off to her place, but she was too busy that day. I would have loved to see her again though, it would've been fantastic. We did actually do some proselytizing in the afternoon, and I discovered the reason why Elder Weber is an Assistant to the President. He is an outstanding missionary. We chose one road to tract, which in my mind was only going to take about 60-90 minutes to tract, but we made it go for a little over 3 hours. He's really good at talking to people even after they say that they're not interested. I guess he just has no fear of being rude. We had one guy come to the door and tell us that he was too busy at the moment and then he said he wasn't interested. But thanks to Elder Weber's skills, we were able to keep talking to him for about 30 minutes and even gave him a Book of Mormon to read. I learned a lot from getting to work with Elder Weber for a day, hopefully I can apply some of the things that I did learn. I know that everybody is different and has their own styles of doing missionary work, but I really want to implement some of his styles into my own. I've always known that Elder Weber is the man, ever since we were in the MTC together. So that was great fun. Unfortunately, it wasn't a full 24 hour exchange, due to their hectic schedule, so I didn't get to spend as much time with him as I would've liked. Our goal for the exchange though was to memorise a scripture and give out 2 Books of Mormon. And we accomplished it. The scripture we memorised was 1 Nephi 19:9 - "And the world, because of their iniquity, shall judge him to be a thing of naught. Wherefore they scourge him, and he suffereth it; and they smite him, and he suffereth it. Yea, they spit upon him, and he suffereth it, because of his loving kindness and his long-suffering towards the children of men."

That brings me to the next topic. This week in preparation for Elder Callister's visit, we've been asked to prepare a 2 page article on the Atonement. I haven't even begun to write mine out yet, but I have been doing heaps and heaps of reading and studying about the Atonement. I've read about 70 pages from the book Jesus the Christ starting from the Last Supper and I'm just about to the resurrection. I can't believe how much this book as sucked me in. Every morning for personal study, I tell myself that I need to start writing the actual article, but then I pick up that book and just can't put it down until before I know it, it's time for companionship study. I've learned so much about the life of Jesus Christ just from those 70 pages that I've read. And that's barely a tenth of the whole book. I've been trying to read that book my whole mission, but I always get distracted with other things that I need to read or study. If I was studying for myself, I would definitely read that book every day, but on a mission, there's so much I need to study for. I need to study for my investigators, and less actives and everybody else I'm teaching, but now I also need to study for my zone. I'm always thinking of ways that I can help each of these groups of people and studying the scriptures and preach my gospel is the best way to do that. I love reading Jesus the Christ, but I always feel like I need to study the essentials when I'm studying for investigators and things like that. It will be nice when I can study for myself again. But until that day, I'm always thinking about the needs of others.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but as a zone leader, I'm guaranteed to have an interview with Elder Callister, and he's only going to be picking 4 other people in the zone to interview. I'm so looking forward to getting to have an interview with a General Authority. I have no idea what to expect, but I've been doing some pondering on some good questions that I can ask him. I'll also get a chance to conduct the meeting at zone conference, for at least a part of it. That's such a great privilege. Blessings from obedience, that's the only thing I can contribute it to.

Elder Lowe and I have been doing a lot of planning this week. We've been asked to help plan a ward activity. So the idea that we came up with is a Baldivis Ward Iron Chef competition. Instead of cooking the food there, like the do on Iron Chef of course, we're going to ask people to prepare either an entree, a main dish, or a dessert containing the "secret ingredient". We're pretty excited for this activity and think it's going to go really well. We're just still in the planning session though. We didn't even get to talk to our Ward Mission Leader about it yesterday because we had stake conference, but we're pretty hopeful about it.

Stake Conference was amazing! It was a broadcast from Salt Lake and our speakers were Patrick Kearon of the 70, Sylvia Allred from the RS presidency, Elder Richard G. Scott, and President Uchtdorf! They all gave amazing talks. We had an investigator attend, and she said it was too somber for her. She's used to jumping up and down and clapping and having rock bands in church. So next time we teach her we're going to talk about the importance of the spirit. The broadcast was to 38 stakes and 14 districts in Australia and Papa New Guinea. Richard G. Scott has become one of my favourite speakers to listen to on my mission. Yesterday he spoke about the sanctity of women, which was a way good talk. President Uchtdorf spoke on ways that we can help less-actives as well as how we can help ourselves stay active. I really loved his talk, but I wish I could have paid better attention, the whole time I was thinking about whether or not our investigator was going to like it. But it was good for sure. It was like having a session of General Conference in February! Blessings blessings blessings!

That's about it for this week. Happy Valentines Day everybody! I love you all! Valentines day scripture: 1 John 4:7-8. Enjoy your week. Talk to you soon!

much love,

Elder Clark Tanner

First full week as a Zone Leader!

Wow, so this week has been amazingly busy. A lot of what we've been busy with this week has just been meetings meetings meetings. I did love the meetings which we had though. It's amazing how meetings like that can take it out of you just as much as tracting and stuff like that can. I've been so tired this week. I think being spiritually drained is just as tiring as being physically drained. On Tuesday we had Zone Leader Council. On Wednesday we had Leadership meeting. And on Friday we had a district meeting which required us to drive to pick up the sisters and then drive to the other district meeting. We've driven 650 kms this week too, just driving too and from the city as well as the driving we had to do to pick up the sisters, driving can take it out of you as well. So yeah, we've just been loaded with busy work this week. I've absolutely loved it though. I've really needed some of the meetings we had. I'm still trying to learn all of me Zone Leader responsibilities and all that. Zone Leader council on Tuesday was really good. I kind of felt like I couldn't give much input into the council part of it though because a lot of what they were talking about was follow up from the last zone leader council meeting. So maybe that means that at the next zone leader council, I'll be able to give more input. It's great to see mission leadership at work though. I imagine it's very similar to when all the apostles and first presidency meet together, except they have a lot more on their plates than we do. But we were able to come up with a lot of really good action items of things we wanted to implement into the mission and more particularly into our zones. A lot of them had to do with preparation for our visit from President Callister. He's in the Area Presidency. He's coming to the mission next week and touring all the zone conferences and for two hours after zone conference he is going to select some missionaries to be interviewed. What kind of question do you ask a General Authority? That's my big dilemma right now, because he will be interviewing all the zone leaders for sure. And we get to have a special Zone Leader Council on that Friday (the 18th I think?) with President Callister. It's bound to be a very very spiritual week. We're actually going to get to hear from 2 general authorities next week because next Sunday we will be having a stake conference broadcast from Salt Lake. I'm not sure who the speaker is going to be for that, but I'm sure it will be good, and even more spiritual. I feel pretty blessed by the amount of General Authorities that have come to visit my mission since I've been here. I've seen more General Authorities face to face in the past 15 months than I have in my life. One of the many blessings of serving a mission. And oh yeah, I do hit my 15 month mark this week, wowzers!

In the Wednesday leadership meetings that we had, we talked about a lot of the same things that we talked about in Zone Leader Council except for this time all the district leaders and trainers were there as well. We were able to talk about some of the action items we came up with in zlc and see how the district leaders felt about them. President Cahoon also gave some excellent training on being positive and how it can affect every aspect of our missionary work and our lives. I had never really thought about some of the things I do or say as negative until President gave his training, but it really helped me open my eyes so that I would be able to be more positive more of the time and hopefully have the positivity rub off on the missionaries in our zone.

I feel like I've had some really good opportunities on my mission to develop charity and love. If you want to succeed as a missionary you have to love those people that you're teaching and sometimes that can be really hard. Especially when they don't do what they say they're going to do. Or when they're just not progressing at all. It's often easy to be tempted to just drop people and never visit them again when they promise you they're going to come to church and then don't make it. What we really need to do though when something like that happens is just show an increase of love towards them. And it's not just situations like that, but just when people are rude to us or whatever it may be. We must remember that the worth of every soul is great in the eyes of God. I think I've just been thinking about it a lot with President's training on being positive. And also because of watching Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration with one of our investigators. The part where Joseph Smith tells those that he is in jail with that every soul is great in the eyes of God really struck a cord with me. Everyone we meet deserves a chance to experience the blessings of the Gospel that we enjoy, no matter what we think they may say to us. If you don't approach them, the answer is already "no". Just some thoughts I've been having lately.

As a zone leader we correlate with President and the APs every week. It was so good to get to talk to them this past week. Especially President Cahoon. I feel like I'll be able to really build my relationship with him getting to talk to him every Tuesday night. It's so much better than just getting to talk to him once every three months. We mostly talk about the zone concerns and investigators, but if I ever do have a question for him, it's much easier to just ask him while I'm correlating with him. I love President Cahoon though. He's such a loving inspired man. Not only is he inspired himself, but the First Presidency was inspired to send him to this mission. We couldn't have dreamed up a better mission president than President Cahoon. He always knows what to say when he's giving us training that will help us. So in tune with the spirit that guy is. I love it. I love him. I love the gospel. I love serving a mission. I love Australia. I love Rockingham. Most importantly, I love the Saviour. I hope to develop the kind of unconditional love for others that He has for me as well as those that I meet. I'm so blessed by the opportunity that I have to serve Him. It's sad to think that I only have 9 months left to be serving Him full time. I pray that I get another chance later on in life to serve full time again.

I love you all! Keep the letters coming, or, start them coming if you haven't written me yet, (you know who you are!) I pray for your safety both physically and spiritually each night. I know it's a dangerous world out there these days in both of those categories. Thank goodness for the armor of God!

Talk to you all soon!

Much love,

Elder Tanner

BEST TRANSFER EVER!

So I got the exact transfer that I wanted and I'm so excited. I got transferred to Waikiki. That means that I'm pretty much in the same area. I'm doing my emailing at the same library, going to do my shopping at the same shops, serving in the same ward, around all the same missionaries. I'm so happy that I got to stay in Rockingham zone. I love this zone with all my heart might mind and strength. If I stay as a zone leader in this zone for 4 transfers, which I'm hoping for, then that means that I'll have stayed in the same ward for 11 months. That would be amazing. I love this ward. When I showed up at church yesterday everybody that knew I was getting transferred was pretty surprised to see me. Not many people knew though, which is good. I've already been in the ward for nearly 6 months, and it's a great ward to get to spend nearly half my mission. Unless President Cahoon changes his mind real soon, I'm sure I'll stay for at least 9 and a half months. So yeah, I'm super excited about this area. My new companion is Elder Lowe so that's also a good deal because I don't have to take the time to get to know somebody new, and it's a lot easier than training a new missionary as well. Elder Lowe is from Brisbane, but his family wasn't affected by the flooding. He's a really good missionary, as you would expect from somebody with only 4 transfers left. I'm hoping to be able to learn a lot from him.

I've been learning a lot about my new responsibilities as well as opportunities that I have as a Zone Leader. Thus far, I love being a Zone Leader. We have two meetings this week, zone leader council and leadership meeting, and at leadership meeting Elder Lowe and I have to give some training to the rest of the leaders in the mission on how to develop appropriate relationships with our missionaries. I'm so looking forward to those two meetings. Especially Zone Leader council because I remember when Elder Jorgensen and I got invited to that meeting I loved it. And they feed us at both those meetings, added bonus. This month President Tad R. Callister from the Area Presidency is coming to visit the mission and he's going to be attending our Zone Conferences and something that I learned is that all of the zone leaders get to be interviewed by him. In other words, I'm going to be interviewed by a General Authority! That is going to be such a great experience. I need to think of a good question to ask him, maybe even write a few questions down so that I can have a plethora of questions, just in case. What a great opportunity! Another thing that I'm looking forward to doing is going on an exchange with the APs and experiencing life as an AP for a day. That will be way cool. Especially if I get to go with Elder Weber, who was my MTC district leader, and now he's and AP. He's the man. We have two great district leaders that we get to work with as well. Elder Metekingi and Elder Narhwold, they're both really great missionaries and they're going to help us out a lot. It's good too because they're both new district leaders so they're both learning at the same time which gives us heaps more opportunities to give them training that they need. I love giving training to leaders and other missionaries because the best way to learn is to teach, and every time we talk to them we get an opportunity to teach as their leaders. I feel so blessed for this opportunity to be a mission leader. It makes me always strive to reach that plane of exact obedience, which we should all be striving for anyways, but as a leader it makes it much more imperative.

I've been able to formally meet a lot of the other members in the ward now in their homes now that I'm in their area and it's been really good. Even though I sort of knew everybody in the ward before, I've never been able to go to each of their houses and spend time with them there. Last night we went to the Reid's house for dinner. I met Sister Reid on my first night in Kwinana at an activity at the chapel, but other than that, didn't know much about the family. And there's heaps of families like that. Families that I've known for ages but don't really know. Another one is the Karaitianas which we're visiting tonight. He's on the bishopric but he could hardly ever remember my name when I was serving in Kwinana, so I'm looking forward to spending time in their home tonight.

The only problem I've found with this area so far is that we don't have near as many as investigators and I thought we would. I think when I left Kwinana we had more there than there are here. I thought with it being a Zone Leader area there would be heaps. I guess it just goes down to leaving the area better than you found it, which I intend on doing, just like I felt like I've done in Kwinana. Just as long as I get to spend sufficient amount of time here.

I'm becoming a bit spoiled as well I've discovered. My new flat has air conditioning! And also, we spend a majority of our time in the car instead of on bikes. Mostly because we have a pretty massive area and heaps of people to visit in those areas so biking just wouldn't be an effective use of our time. So I've been doing some morning runs to try to stay in shape with all this air con and driving I've been doing. Running sure does use some different muscles from biking though, I have been a bit sore. I love it though. I need to do more running anyways.

Well I got to get going. Busy day ahead of us. And I still need to email President Cahoon. Thank you all so much for your love and prayers. The support you all give me is such a blessing in my life. I love you all

Have a magnificent week!

much love,

Elder Tanner

My Life In Kwinana Comes To An End

Well I must talk about the exciting news first. We got transfer calls this past Saturday and I'm getting transferred! I got the call from the Zone Leaders at about 9:35 Saturday night and they told me everybody in my district that was getting transferred so that I could call all of them and let them know. Ever since last P-day we've all been speaking in rhyme because we were bored last p-day. So I decided to write out a rhyme for everybody that was getting transferred. Let's just say, it was a hit. It was pretty funny because I called everyone up on a conference call and did the rap and they thought it was the best transfer call ever haha. So after all that commotion I was just laying in bed talking to Elder Metekingi on the phone about transfers and President Cahoon calls. This was about 10:25 so I was almost asleep, luckily I wasn't asleep yet though. He called me to give me a new calling. He first started with all the small talk saying that this calling was really going to make me stretch, but he was happy with the work that I had done in Kwinana and the example that I have set for those around me. Then he asked me to be a Zone Leader. Wowzers. If I thought that I had learned how to rely on the Lord as a district leader, I'm sure I was wrong. Now I'm definitely going to have to rely on the Lord 100% and be a perfect example for those around me. In my prayers that night after receiving that call it was just "help me, thank you thank you thank you, help me, thank you thank you thank you.." I'm really excited for this new opportunity and experience though. I loved being a district leader for 2 transfers. I feel like I learned a lot that has prepared me to serve as a Zone Leader. There's definitely some things that I know I need to work on to be a good zone leaders, but that's what the humbling experiences are for. I absolutely love humbling experiences. I love finding out my weaknesses so that I can learn better to rely on the Lord and turn those weaknesses into strengths. I'm not sure yet which zone I'll be in as a zone leader, but I think there's a chance that I'll stay in Rockingham Zone which would be absolutely amazing because I would stay in the same ward but get to experience the better half of it. It wouldn't be a big adjustment for me at all. I think my other two options are down south to Bunbury or up in Warwick zone. Either one would be amazing. We'll find out on Wednesday though, so I'll let you all know next p-day.

This week as been hectic busy. On Wednesday we got to attend the temple AND go city contacting. I always love going to the temple and can't wait until I can attend more often. City contacting was a bit blah. Everybody seemed to be really busy, not many people really wanted to talk. But it was still fun to be in the city. I went on two exchanges this week. One with Elder Palalagi in Halls Head and one with Elder Onetaka in Mandurah. They were both really good. We biked ages in Halls Head because they don't have a car since they wrecked it and their area is ginormous. Since they don't have a car we had to ride the train from the city to get there and same with Mandurah, we had to take the train from Rockingham after district meeting. We had a crazy experience on the train on Friday. This lady confronted us and started going off on us about how we were all brainwashed and Jospeh Smith was crazy and she couldn't believe why we would want to associate ourselves with such a religion as mormon. It's amazing how much persecution we get just because of our black name tags that have the name of Jesus Christ on them. It was really sad hearing her talk to us because she believes that when we die, nothing happens, and she's perfectly happy with that. I don't understand how anybody could find happiness in that. The part that I really didn't like about her confronting us was that when she went to go sit back down a couple rows behind us all the people around her were telling her how brave she was for confronting us and "it was no different her confronting us on the train as it was us confronting them at their doors," and the one thing that really made me upset was one one lady said to her "good on you". I'm just glad that I do have the testimony that I have and that an experience like that cannot even come close to shaking it. It's crazy some of the false rumours that are out there about Mormons. Some of the things that lady said about us and Joseph Smith that she had heard just blew my mind that she could actually believe that. I'm happy that I know how to recognise the Holy Ghost telling me that this church is true and the Joseph Smith was indeed a prophet. There's so many times on my mission that I just feel like Alma when he says "O, that I were an Angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people!" But I, like Alma, know that it is not possible to force people to heed to our message. I just wish everybody could know the happiness that I know. On that same day we did talk to a really great guy who said he was a Seventh Day Adventist and when we asked him about what he believes happens to us when we die, he practically taught us the Plan of Salvation, with just a few minor differences. It's great that there are people out there that at least have faith in Jesus Christ and aren't too far off the strait and narrow path. Even though he wasn't interested in having us come teach him, I know he'll accept the gospel someday.

Well don't have a whole lot of time today for emailing, got heaps to do today before I get transferred. But I'll hope to hear from you all soon! Love you all!

Elder Tanner

ps. - Write to me!

PO Box 185

Tuart Hill, WA 6939

Australia!