This email won't be overly long, I just need to tell you all about the exciting news about this week. I get to train a missionary again! In Karratha this time! I have really grown to love Elder Naruo and we've had many many good times together. I'm going to miss that guy, and it's going to be hard to replace him in the town of Karratha, but I'm sure my new companion will be great if he's anything like the other missionary I trained, Elder Shobbrook. One thing that I'm really excited about is the fact that I get to go to Perth for the training of trainers and orientation meetings. I'll be there for probably 3 days, so I'm looking forward to that. It's like my home away from home. And I'll probably be seeing a lot of the missionaries at the transfer meeting on Wednesday for the last time ever since I'll be flying back up on Thursday or Friday to never return again until the end of my mission. I really love Karratha though. The members here are just awesome. I always feel their love whenever we enter into their homes. I just hope that they love me as much as I've seen them love Elder Naruo since he's been saying goodbye to them. Maybe by the time I've been here as long as he has. I've really learned a lot from him though. It's been really cool having a companion that was baptised himself only 3 years ago. He has a lot of cool and funny stories to tell. He's definitely a story teller too that one. It's just how his island tradition is. I feel like I could go to Chuuk Island and fit in pretty well because of all the things that he has taught me about it. He says that I've become a true islander too, haha.
It was kind of funny how I found out that I was going to be training. Usually we get a call from President Cahoon on Saturday night if we're going to be having any special assignments or anything like that, but I didn't get a call. So we went to church on Sunday and President Pilkington spoke in sacrament meeting and he said that he was speaking to President Cahoon on Wednesday and President Cahoon told him that he would be sending him the best of the new missionaries. So that's how I found out that I would be training. But President did finally call last night to make it official. So needless to say, I have an exciting week ahead of me. An exciting 12 weeks that is. President Cahoon told me that there is going to be a new program from training new missionaries that is just starting this transfer. Apparently it involves 2 hours of companionship study instead of just one with lots of role playing and watching training DVDs and things like that. But I don't know much else about it. I'm sure I'll be able to tell you more about it next week.
So the definite highlights of this week were getting to teach Monique finally and also our two lessons with Marion. We sat down with Monique on Wednesday or Thursday and just started talking about the world and how crazy it is today and we moved on to the topic of the afterlife and having hope that there is more than just this life and having a purpose to this life. She is really golden. We also found out that her mother was baptised a year before she died, which was at the age of 21. So Monique has so much more potential than what we were beginning to think. And her dogs are the best too haha. She and her husband are having us around for dinner tonight since Elder Naruo will be leaving, she wants to say goodbye and give us that Barbi she promised us. The lessons with Marion were good, but we're finally hitting some roadblocks. We taught about baptism and the holy ghost this week in our first lesson and the second lesson we taught about the apostasy and I think in our next lesson we're going to try to teach about the priesthood more in depth. He thinks a lot, but sometimes he just compares what we teach him to what the catholics teach rather than thinking about the relevance it has in his life. But one thing that we did say to him that might get him thinking about it a bit more is we told him the "WIIFM" (the "what's in it for me" - Bro Foott) is that his family can be together forever, and we told him that we can contact missionaries in the Philippines to go teach his wife and kids so that they can be learning about this at the same time, and then maybe the spirit might really move them. He said he's going to talk to his wife to see how she feels about that.
We also had another lesson with Dr. Martin Kumar on Saturday as well! We gave him, his wife, and his mum, a copy of the Book of Mormon each. They all wanted to read it, and they're all avid readers so they couldn't deal with only having one copy to share among the three of them. So that was really good. Hopefully they all read it and possibly even discuss what they read together. They'll have family home evening without even knowing it! The spirit was STRONG in the lesson we had with them though. We were definitely guided that whole night. Especially since that was an unplanned teaching appointment. We were praying for a street to go tract and the spirit whispered to me during the prayer to call Martin Kumar, so I did, and he said we could come over in an hour. I'm thankful that I've learned how to recognise the spirit in all aspects of my life. Martin Kumar is a gift from our Heavenly Father and we have to rely 100% on the spirit to teach him.
Well that's about it for this week! I'll talk to you all soon! And I'll be sure to tell you all about my trip to Perth, the greatest place on Earth!
Much Love,
Elder Tanner
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