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