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
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