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!
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