And thus begins weeks 13-18 in Girrawheen!

Transfers finally happened. And Glover left just like we both knew he would. But this day has been so different than a regular transfer. We got a call from the APs yesterday saying that they were going to pick us up at 6am and Glover needed to pack his bags and put all of his necessities in one bag and make sure it weighed less than 50 pounds. So this morning we woke up at 5 o clock, got ready, and then the APs rolled up at 6:05 and we drove to the airport. Glover got sent to Port Hedland. It's about a 2 hour flight from here if that gives you an idea of how far away it is. Look it up on a map. He was so excited to go though. It was just what he wanted. A fresh start, away from other missionaries, in a completely new place and with a companion he doesn't know. It was kinda hard to say goodbye just cause he was my first companion and he really was great. So after that the APs and I drove to the mission office and they went into meetings and I sat around for about 4 and a half hours. I was so bored, and too tired to do any studying or reading since I woke up so early. So that part of my day sucked.

Transfer meeting started at 1 and lasted til about 2:30. It was nice to have an extra meeting with President Maurer that we don't usually have. Got me excited for this transfer. I want to see some of our families get baptized so badly before I go. But that could be another 6-12 weeks, so hopefully it happens in that time. My new companions name is Elder Richards. He seems like a real nice guy, but I haven't really gotten to talk to him a whole lot yet. He's from New Zealand which is pretty cool. It will be weird to not have a companion from America I think, but fun at the same time. Maybe I'll pick up on more lingo being with him. He says he's ready to work and get someone baptized too, so that's way good. I'll try to include a picture of him in my email next week.

This past week was good. We actually went on exchanges with the APs on Saturday and they taught me quite a bit. Those guys are such great missionaries. I want that to be me some day. We set a baptismal date for the Sumo family (not Shumo like we previously thought), and hopefully we'll be able to get them baptized on the 6th of March. Wow, I can't believe it's almost March already. Nothing else really exciting happened this week though. Since Elder Glover pretty much already knew that he was going to be leaving we didn't do a whole lot for the last half of the week. But we still had a better week than last week, that's for sure.

Tonight I'm eating Kangaroo meat for the first time. That should be an exciting experience, especially since I'm making it myself. I saw it at the store and had to buy it. I'll probably make it into some spaghetti or something. Mmmmm, should be good.

Hope you all have a great week. Stay out of Satan's gravitational pull. The closer you come to it, the harder it is to get away from it. The closer you get to Christ's gravitational pull the harder it is for Satan to get a hold of you, (I used some Physics in a lesson I taught this week), THAT'S DOCTRINE!!!

Love you guys!

Elder Tanner

Week 6

So this is the beginning of the last week of my second transfer. I'm so excited for transfers. I'm most definitely getting a new companion or going to a new area. We think we might even get doubled out because there's a big "For Sale" sign in front of our flat and this week we noticed a big "SOLD" stick across it. So we'll see, but President told Elder Glover he was probably getting transferred for sure this week and he told him to have a great last week because we didn't do so well this past week.

Pretty much the most significant thing from this week was a lesson we had on Tuesday night at a member's house. He actually taught us more than we taught him but it was a great lesson. He taught us about coming unto Christ and that we have to come unto Christ ever single day before we can invite other people unto Him. Moroni 10:32-33 talks about how we come unto Christ and contrary to my prior belief it means more than just getting baptized. It means so much more. Giving up all ungodliness and loving God are the two most important things we can do that will bring us unto Christ. Nothing is hard in life if you just do those two things. And serving a mission is one of the easiest things ever because I'm constantly trying to do those two things.

Interviews with President Maurer were good this week too. I told him about that lesson we had and he pretty much just told me to keep up the good work and keep making my best better.

6 lessons taught in one week = bad. Next week will be way better. Yay transfers!

Stay Classy San Diego,

Elder Tanner

How to go from trainee to psuedo-trainer in 9 weeks.

I have now caught a glimpse of what it's like to train a new missionary.

So we got a call from the AP's last monday night and they told us that there was a new missionary coming into the mission Tuesday morning at 7:45 and that he would be staying with us. He only stayed with us for two days but it was a great two days. His name is Elder Ulas and he's from Vanuatu, which is in the Pacific islands, close to Fiji. His english isn't that spectacular so we pretty much spent the two days with him teaching him english and things about Australia. His country is pretty much a third world country. He's never used a computer, never used a debit card, never been to a restaurant, and the list goes on. So we've been teaching him pretty much how things work and we spent a lot of time teaching him things like the first lesson, his testimony, and how to pray in english, and he's already coming along really well. But anyways, he was with us til Thursday which was Zone Conference and his new companion flew down from Karratha (it's like a 90 minute flight from here) and now they are staying in the Marangaroo flat covering that area. Which is sweet in some ways but not others. It's sweet because Glover and I no longer have to cover Girrawheen and Marangaroo, just Girrawheen. But it's not sweet because our old district got split up 2 weeks before transfers and we had an amazing district. But hopefully this district will be equally as awesome. We'll see.

We're really going to have an awesome last two weeks together I think. This week and last week was just awesome. We may not get anybody baptised, but we're definitely going to get close. I've learned over the past two weeks how important it is to have faith in every aspect of missionary work. You even have to have faith to just stick to your plans each day. In my planner this week on the to-do list everyday I wrote "have faith to stick to plans" and just from that I saw a difference in our work ethic and just everything we did overall, even down to having faith that a certain person was going to be home when we knocked on their door, usually they were. It was fantastic.

Zone Conference this week was really good. Our mission president is such a smart guy. He gave us a list of ways we can increase our faith and one thing that he pointed out was the difference between increasing your faith and strengthening your faith. And he said that we need to learn to WAIT on the Lord to know that he will answer. Those two things just really stuck out to me. It was so cool that he talked about faith too since that's what I've been studying and working on for these past couple of weeks.

Not much else has happened this week. Getting to spend two days helping train Elder Ulas has pretty much been the highlight of the week. Lots of learning experiences. I decided I'm not ready to leave this area yet. I gotta see at least one person that I've found get baptized. But we'll see.

Love you all!

Elder Tanner

Time flies when you're... being obedient (which is also having fun)

It's true. Obedience = success.

This week has been such an improvement over that past few weeks. Elder Glover decided to stop listening to his non-missionary music, and it's amazing how something as small as that can really change the way things are going. We taught more lessons this week than we taught in the past 2 weeks combined, and were able to have 13 new people come to church! It was was exciting! Almost overwhelming. We had potential to have 19 there though, so there's always room for improvement. Maybe next week we'll get 19. I just gotta keep doing my best and making my best better.

We had a great 5th Sunday lesson yesterday. Our ward mission leader presented a plan for the Ward mission plan and also family mission plans. So this week we're going to try to see some people in the ward and help them get their family mission plan started. I'm really excited to do that, because we realized yesterday that we don't have a single white investigator, and I think if we did than that would mean that the members are doing their part. Like with all the Africans at church yesterday, there was very little if any fellowship for them because we only have one African family in our ward and they don't really know what fellowshipping is I think.

I had the worst food experience of my mission to date this week. Basically, I ate manure. We were teaching this investigator and his sister comes out and asks us if we would like some rice. So we're like.. sure, rice is good, why not? She comes out with these two plates of rice, covered in this brown stuff that looked, smelled, and tasted like spicy poo. literally. I only was able to eat 3 bites before I had to call it quits. Elder Glover hammered it down though. I asked him how he did that and he just said "you just gotta get an attitude and eat it". It was absolutely terrible. Makes me feel glad I'm not serving in Africa, but then again, my area right now is like a mini Africa. African food is just... bleh... I'm gagging right now thinking about it. I'd take mushrooms over African anyday.

I was reading in January's ensign Elder Hollands article about remembering Lot's wife, and it really is what I think inspired me to have such a great week. If you guys haven't read that yet, give it a read. It's great. Also, the temple was great on Wednesday. The President Maurer and his wife were in the session with us and he gave me some great advice afterwards and it was really nice to just talk to him in the temple for a little bit.

Well I gotta go. Hope you all have a good week. Don't forget to read your scriptures and pray morning and night. "By small and simple things are great things brought to pass", reading and praying are those small and simple things.

Heaps of love,
Elder Tanner

Elder Cook's Visit

This week was flippin sweet.

Monday through Friday was just average, taught a couple of lessons to our normal investigators, the Shumos, Gayedore and Banita, and a lady named Margaret. They're all African and they all love having us over to teach them. The Shumos and Gayedore and Banita actually came to hear Bishop Burton speak on Saturday night which was a really big step for us and them. And Margaret is going to come to church next week after she gets back from her dad's funeral in Africa.

But anyways, on Saturday we had the missionary conference with Bishop Burton and Elder Cook and we got to shake their hands and it was awesome. When Bishop Burton spoke he told us that this was going to be the most exciting year in the history of the church. He didn't tell us why but he just said the gospel was going to EXPLODE across the world this year. So that's pretty dang exciting. And when Elder Cook spoke he said something that really stuck with me. He said what I'm doing right now is the most important thing I could be doing at this time in my life. Not only for me, but for my parents, my siblings, my grandparents, my future spouse, my future children, my future grandchildren and so on. That just really stuck with me and it probably will for the rest of my mission. Other than that he just talked about how Preach My Gospel is inspired, I can't really remember what else he said, but I took notes, so It's all good.

In our Stake Conference Bishop Burton pretty much just told stories about all the prophets he has met/worked with. He told a story about how when he was young he met David O. Mckay and David O. Mckay told him a story about how when he was young he met John Taylor and John Taylor showed him some of the bullet wounds in him from Carthage Jail. That was a pretty cool story.

I wish we could have an apostle visit every week. Everything just went really well this week as we prepared ourselves for his visit. It was easier to go out and do stuff that usually we really wouldn't want to do, such as tracting in 100 degree weather haha.

I'm pretty ready for this transfer to end. I'm just ready for a new companion and new area. I love Elder Glover and all but he isn't as obedient as I want to be. And he gets caught up in a lot of "mission drama", something that I didn't even know existed. And I think it would be really cool to teach a white person haha. I think I could be here for 6 months though because President Maurer said he's going to start keeping people in areas longer. So we'll see how it goes.

My times about up, but I hope everyone has a great week. I miss you all. I'm doing my part out here so I know the Lord is taking care of everybody back home.

Love you all!

Elder Tanner

Arabian Nights

Ok, so first let me explain the subject line. My ward mission leaders name is Brother Rajah, he has a daughter named Jasmine, and we started teaching a guy named Jafar this week. Now all we need is a street rat with a magic carpet and a genie and we're all set!

This week wasn't quite as busy as last week but that should be expected with how ridiculously busy last week was. We taught a considerably smaller amount of lessons this week. And we weren't really able to do any tracting or anything of the sort seeing as how it was 40 degrees all week. Hopefully it cools down this week because we need some new investigators badly. I wasn't even able to fall asleep last night until like 1 am because it was so dang hot. But yeah, I think this week should be better. Glover has been kinda down this past week for different reasons, but he says he's gonna step it up this week.

The African family we have been teaching that we were going to be able to baptize at the end of the month still haven't kept any committments including coming to church, so things aren't looking too good there. We're going to try to see them a couple of times this week and I think the son, Koballah, is the most likely one out of all of them, which is like 10, to be baptized. He was super excited when we gave him a French Book of Mormon. So hopefully that goes somewhere. It makes it really hard when none of our investigators have a car too.

This week is the visit by Elder Cook and Bishop Burton. They're having a big Member/Missionary fireside, but since none of our investigators have cars and it's like an hour away, I probably won't get to go to that one. But all three of the visitors (the other is Elder Nielson of the Seventy) will be speaking to all the missionaries this Saturday so I definitely have that to look forward to.

I hope things are all good back home. Feel free to send me a quick email every now and then. I'm getting faster at typing since I have so much to say now.

Have a great week, pray for some cooler weather in Perth,

Love you all,

Elder Tanner