busy busy busy

So this week I've pretty much felt like a worker bee. Ever since Wednesday Elder Richards and I have just been seeing everyone possible. We had ward council on Wednesday night and they gave us like 25 families to go see and we've been so busy just seeing those people and our investigators and we haven't even had time to go see other members yet, but it's definitely on our to do list. Most of the people we saw that the ward council gave us haven't seen missionaries or been to church in months, or even years, so it was good to see them and have some new people to work with in reactivating. That's pretty much going to be our focus for this transfer, even though we could still possibly get some baptisms. There's a lady named Emma that we got from a member referral and every time we come over she's so happy to see us and let us teach her. And before we even had a chance to invite her to General Conference this week she was like, "I'll see you at the conference on Sunday?" Member referrals are the best. We actually had 3 investigators at General Conference, which was so good. Emma is definitely the most solid though. I think there's a goal in the mission for every compansionship to baptise in May, and I think we can definitely do that.

General Conference was amazing. The Saturday afternoon session was by far the best I thought. I can't wait to get the new Ensign and read Elder Christoffersons talk and Elder Holland's talk again. Even though I took notes like crazy, I know there's a lot that I missed. I've been reading the last conference issue a lot this week and I've definitely needed some of those talks that were given. Even more so with this conference. I really loved it though. That story that President Monson told about the two brothers called to serve at the same time on opposite sides of the veil was so good. I definitely felt the spirit during that talk, more than I did throughout the rest of the conference. I love having Prophets and Apostles on the earth today. I could never deny that they are really called of God, and that Christ is at the head of this church, His church.

I love this gospel and I hope you all love it as much as I do. I love being on a mission. I can't believe how fast time is flying by. Someday I'll be sitting at the library and be wishing it wasn't so close to being over, because I can already tell it's going to be over before I know it. You're all in my prayers and I miss you.

I've been listening to Hill Cumorah Pageant soundtrack allll week. Oh the memories. I can't wait to go back there.

I love you all, sorry this is kinda short, but not much else happened this week.
Elder Tanner

Transfer Day!

I'm not getting transferred lol. Another 6 weeks in good old Girrawheen. By the end of this transfer I'll have spent 6 months in my first area, and be a quarter way through my mission. That doesn't even seem possible that I've been out almost that long. wow. It's been a good transfer with Elder Richards and Elder Tou, and I think the next one is going to be even better. We're finally starting to get on track with everything that we had planned to do at the beginning of this transfer like seeing more members, getting some of our investigators that we've been teaching for ages baptised and stuff, so next transfer should be mean. Elder Tou is leaving us which is sad. It was so good to have in him our companionship for the past 2 and a half weeks and we're going to miss having him around. He's definitely the nicest guy I've met on my mission so far.

Today is the start of Presidents second to last transfer which is sort of a bummer, but it's pretty exciting that we're gong to be getting a new mission president. I hope he's as awesome as President Maurer.

We sang in church this past week. Nearer My God To Thee. It was a great start to a testimony meeting. When we sat down the spirit was so intensely there, you could've heard a pin drop.. on the carpet. It's going to suck when our district can't sing together anymore. Because Elder Tou and Elder Hampson (one of our Zone Leaders) are getting transferred, we're not going to be near as good anymore. But I'm kinda ok with that too, we sing quite regularly now and it's getting kinda old lol. We're actually singing again today at transfer meeting.

I'm uber excited to watch General Conference this weekend. We watch it a week later so that we can still watch it at the regular times. So this weekend should be really good. The family we baptised at the beginning of March is moving today. What's up with everyone I baptise moving away?? Hopefully they'll be in good hands though. We gave their phone number to the missionaries where they're moving. And who knows, maybe I'll see them again if I'm ever in that area.

We had dinner at the Main's last night and it was so much fun. It reminds me so much of being at home on Sunday nights. We played games for like 2 hours and they are so fun. I wrote about them in my journal so I wouldn't forget so I can teach yous when I get home. My voice is kinda gone because of one of the games we played. It's kinda like the Haka but in a game. So much fun.

I put reading Jesus the Christ on hold for awhile so I can read the New Testament first. I think it will make reading Jesus The Christ a lot easier if I have The New Testament fresh on my mind. So much good stuff in that book.

That's really it for this week. Sorry it's so uneventful. Next weeks' letter should be better.
Love you all.
Elder Tanner

Pics of Clark

Elder Clark at work/play...

Rain!

WE GOT RAIN!! For the first time since I got here, which was December 2nd. It was the best storm ever too. Got some golf ball sized hail, lots and lots of rain, and so much wind. The only thing that was missing was tornado sirens haha. The best thing about it was that it was on a P-day and the zone leaders were at our flat hanging out with our district and when it started raining we went outside and started running around in it. Don't worry, we didn't get sick. But it was so much fun. Luckily some missionaries from up north called us and told us it was coming so we were able to get the cars in a safe place.

We had our interviews with President Maurer on Friday and they were like the shortest interviews ever. I think President is getting excited to go home. After Zone Stewardships he challenged a missionary to a basketball game (and lost) but it was just funny. He's getting more and more laid back I can tell.

This is most likely my last week in my first area, boo-yah! I wanna go country next transfer, I think that would be sweet. Maybe up to Broome. Or down to Albany or Kalgoorlie where it would be a bit colder this time of year. I can't wait to find out where I'm going, if I'm going. But the impression I got from President the other day was that I'm going to be moving, which is sweet.

Not a whole lot happening in the terms of missionary work in this area. We are still teaching the same people we've been teaching for the past few weeks or months and haven't made much progress. We did run into some new people this week and were able to teach them, but we'll see how they go.

We did have a great service opportunity this week. We were running to the butcher because we had no food and the butcher was about to close and we saw a lady putting some stuff in here car, it was a lot of stuff so we decided to help. She told us there was even more inside so we went in and helped her. When we finished helping her she told us what all the stuff was for, she said she was selling this stuff to try to raise money to buy her granddaughter and new walker or something and she started crying and asked us to pray for her and her granddaughter and her son and then she asked us if we have any reading material for her so we gave her a restoration pamphlet. She was so happy. We couldn't get her address from her but hopefully she runs into some missionaries down the road or something. It was just a really sweet experience. We weren't there to get meat, we were there to help her. But, we were still able to get our mince before the shop closed? So it was all good.

We're having a zone p-day today. Should be fun. We're going to give blood at noon and then going to the chapel and Sister Maurer is going to make us lunch and then we'll probably play some basketball or rugby. Hopefully basketball, I suck at rugby lol. Hope you all are having a good week. Hear from you soon!

Love,
Elder Tanner

1 Polynesian companion just wasn't enough for me...

What a great week, but I'll start off by exlaining the subject. So we had Zone Conference this week and we got to the chapel a bit early and we were waiting for the AP's to get there to unlock it. When they pulled up, a missionary that I've never met before jumped out of the back of their car. During Zone Conference President Maurer had him stand up to introduce himself and then he had Elder Richards and myself stand up and he told us that Elder Tou (toe-oo) would be our new companion. I guess his story is that he came into the mission in January 09 but had to go home for 6 months because of an injury and he just came back this past week. He's from NZ just like Elder Richards, but has lived in Brisbane the past 5 years. He's such an awesome missionary and brings so much to our companionship. He's just a good "people person", something that I'm still working on. Hopefully I'll learn a lot from him, even though I'll probably be getting transferred out of here in two weeks. Which is also something that makes me pretty happy. I can't wait to go see what the rest of the mission is like.

Yesterday was such an awesome day. Other than it being a church day, it was just a sweet missionary day. After church we drove down into the city to do some city contacting which is so much fun. There's so many people in the city, and even though most of them are in wayyy too big of a hurry to even stop walking while they talk to you, it's so much just to talk to so many different people and get so many different responses. I was able to have a couple of really good conversations with some people while we walked about the plan of salvation and the true church. I loved it. Something funny that happened was we were driving around looking for somewhere to park we turned the corner onto this street and there was a HUUUUGE line of people and when we got up to the front of the line I saw what it was and it was a line for the Cobra Starship/Owl City concert, haha, and the first thing that went through my head was, "we should go give a pass along card to ever single one of those people" haha. I did have the thought of "OH MAN!! I wanna go!!" for a split second, but then I remembered that I was a missionary lol. City contacting is the best though.

After city contacting we had to go to a Mission President's fireside that was so good. Our 5 man district sang a song (Whre can I turn for peace?) with our Zone Leaders and APs in front everyone that came (all four stakes were invited) and everyone said we sounded great. I wouldn't have been so nervous about it if I hadn't had to sing a solo haha. But it turned out all good. The fireside itself was so good because they showed this video that was put together by my Zone Leaders where they went around and interviewed a lot of recent converts to the church and put the video together a lot like the "From Small and Simple Things" video if you've ever seen that one. Such a spiritual evening last night though. One of the stake presidents talked after the video and it was so quiet while he was speaking you could've heard a pin drop.

I think it was between city contacting and the fireside that I realised how much I really love my mission. I love being out here. I love talking about the gospel. I love learning about the gospel. I love everything about it. I've started reading like 3 different books this week and I'm not even done reading a couple of the other books I've been reading. That's how exciting it is to learn about and live the gospel. I wish I could read faster because there's just so much to read and I want to know as much as I can. This really is the most important thing I could be doing with my life right now because this really is the most important work in the world, other than temple work that is, but I even get to do that out here!

I love you all so much!

Elder Tanner

p.s... I know March Madness is going on right now... and baylor is a 3 seed?? Go Baylor!!

So Much for Summer Being Over

So yeah, this week was so ridiculously hot. I heard that two weeks ago was supposed to be our last really hot week, but this past wednesday or thursday it got up to 109 degrees. It was so hot. It made getting any work done really hard because we didn't have the car for most of the time. But, I guess we still had a decent week. Getting to hear from Elder Nielson twice was so good, especially since the first time it was to just us missionaries. He taught us some really cool things about the organization of the church and about what's called the "revelatory process" as found in the Book of Mormon, I wish I could remember what chapter and verse, but it was really cool. He told us it was a "secret that only the prophets know", but really it's not, because all it takes is scripture study, prayer, and fasting. He said a lot of other stuff, but I don't have my notebook with me. Overall though, It was such a good conference.

The temple on Wednesday was amazing as usual. I love how I can learn something new everytime I go there, even if it's something small. It's such an amazing place. I wish there were more people there though. When we go, our Zone which is 14 guys, and then there's only like 3 other men there. So I can't imagine what they do when there aren't any missionaries there. So sad. Everyone should go to the temple.

It's kinda funny, ever since Elder Richards got into the ward, we've been finding all these less active Moari people and they're awesome. One family, The Hansens, we met this past Friday and now they're having us over for dinner on Wednesday. They're so awesome. We don't really know their whole story on why they're less active and all that, but that doesn't matter. We'll get them to chruch sooner or later. Also the McGaugheys, a family Elder Glover and I got in contact awhile ago are finally coming to church, and their 9 year old son Tayzah re-taught me how to do a Rubik's cube. So I went out and bought a new one. I might have said that in last weeks letter, I don't remember.

I have another physics analogy that I learned this week. This one comes from Elder Nielson, but I'm going to start using it as well. Everyone knows that the law of gravity exists. We can't see gravity, we don't know what it looks like, but we know it's there. So one day there was a guy that wanted to put the law of gravity to the test. He went to the top of a 40 story building and decided to step off. By the time he got to the 30th floor, he was thinking "this isn't so bad, maybe gravity doens't exist", by the time he got to the 20th floor he was thinking "maybe gravity does exist, that ground is getting closer. By the time he got to the 10th floor he starts to regret his decision and wonder why he decided to test the law of gravity. By the 5th floor he's thinking "oh dang. I shouldn't have done that". And then the ground came. The same thing can applied to the gospel. For example, we know that the law of chastity exists. We can't see the law of chastity, we don't know what it looks like, but we know it exists. If we decide to put that law to the test, the ground will always come. Even if at the 30th or even at the 20th floor, we don't think the ground will come, it will come. Always. In other words, there will always be consequences for disobeying a law of the gospel, just like there are consequences for disobeying the law of gravity.

I really love analogies like that. It just puts the gospel into such a good perspective. I bought a notebook just for writing analogies that I hear like that down. Hopefully it's full by the end of my mission.

I love you all, hope you're having a great spring break, while I'm burning up.

Love,

Elder Tanner

Labor Day Week

So yesterday was Labour day, that's why I'm emailing today. This week has been pretty great. Elder Richards, my new companion, is the man. He's Moari, but he's white. His mom is white and his dad is brown and he has 6 white brothers and sisters and 1 brown one lol. But he's such cool. Kinda laid back which isnt all that great for missionary work, but compared to other Moaris I've seen he's not as laid back as he could be. It's kinda weird having a Maori companion, because lemme tell you, he can eat. Hopefully being around him doesn't make me gain weight haha. we did all of our grocery shopping for the month and we bought 50 dollars of meat mince, 20 cans of baked beans, 40 litres of milk, what else.... some pasta packet thingys, seems like there's something else but I can't remember. He says that this will last us the entire month, and we'll save so much money, but we'll see.

Church this week was awesome. We had 3 Less active families come to church and one investigator family. Having those less active families there was almost as exciting as a baptism. Especially because one of them Elder Glover and I tried for 12 weeks to get them to church, and then as soon as he leaves, they show up haha. The investigator family that we had there is getting baptized this Saturday if everything goes right. I'm so pumped because we've been teaching them for sooo long. And I love it when success happens lol. We got an appointment with that less active famiy tonight and since they're from NZ and my companion is from NZ, it should be a fun night.

I talked to Elder Glover the other day and he said it was 50 degrees up in Port Hedland. That would be so bad, because the other day it was 41 here and we just about died. It was so hard to work that day because we were without a car. and just walking down the street made us sweaty, no, just walking outside made us sweaty. I'm SO READY for winter to get here. I want to spend the winter in Albany. So that way it will be a relatively normal winter. COLD.

Not much else to say this week. Zone planning on Friday was good. I can't believe President Maurer only has 3 months left until he goes home. Our new president is from Canada I hear. I hope he's as good as President Maurer.

Love you all,

Elder Tanner