My new district

Noranda Week 1

So, as you all will know, I did get transferred this week, but I'm only 5 minutes down the road from my old flat. The area is called Noranda but we cover something like 5 suburbs I think, and one of the suburbs, Mirrabooka, borders my old area. Even though it's so close it's in an entirely different zone. It's actually pretty cool. The area is a bit nicer and the ward is amazing. It's really good being only 5 minutes down the road from my old area because a lot of the members that I've met don't live too far away. We had dinner at the Berryman's yesterday who used to come to Ballajura ward (that's my new ward) but now they go to Madeley (my old ward). Sophie and Blair were there too so it was nice to see them again. We always have so much fun over there. Eat some Kai (food), play some Pukana, play some ping pong, it's good fun. Sister Berryman is really good at finding us people to teach too. We're going over to one of her friends houses today that isn't a member and hopefully we can start teaching them and in a couple weeks maybe have and FHE over at the Berryman's house with them.

My new companion's name is Elder Hunt. He's Samoan, but he grew up in New Zealand. He is the man. He's big into his rugby so I'm gonna have him teach me some skills this transfer so I can get better. We played rugby this morning with the DL, ZLs, and APs and I was terrible at it. So I plan on getting better soon. But yeah, Elder Hunt and I have been pretty busy this week. We did a lot of service which was way good. Tuesday we did service at the Salvation Army, Wednesday and Friday we did service at some members houses. We have an investigator family, the Scotts, that Elder Hunt and his last companion were working with that is actually related to the lady that we were about to baptise in Girrawheen. They were keen to get baptised but something came up where her parents and one of their sons didn't want them to get baptised, so hopefully we can keep praying for them and get them baptised soon. I think that's why President Maurer put me here. Since I worked with Emma and she's getting baptised next week, hopefully I can help the Scott's get baptised. Oh yeah that's another thing. I'm now in President's ward which is so cool because I get to see him each week and I'll be in his ward when they go home which also means I'll be in the ward when the new mission president gets here and I'll get to know him first hand getting to see him each week. It's pretty exciting. Sister Berryman is putting together a going away party for the ward so I'll get to go to that AND the one the mission is having. I'm pretty stoked for that. As much as I really wanted to move out of the city or at least further than 5 minutes away, I'm really glad I got put where I did. I love the area, the ward, the people, my comp. It will be interesting to see how long I stay here.

We FINALLY got our May Ensigns this week. I've been reading about 10 pages every morning for personal study. It's amazing how much more you catch when you read it than when you watch it or listen to it. Boyd K. Packer's talk was phenomenal, but while I was watching it I didn't catch half the things that he talked about in it. Amazing. I'm looking forward to getting all the way through it, so i can go back and read them again and catch even more. Another thing that I'm doing is reading Preach My Gospel in 3 weeks. That's 10 pages a day, but it's easy. I think it's easy to forget how useful PMG can be and how much information is contained in it, so I'm going through and just reading it so I can remember all the things that it teaches us in it. I found myself in church yesterday quoting from PMG, something I never used to be able to do, but it's amazing the things that diligent personal study can do for you.

Well that's it for this week. I love you all
Elder Tanner

Iiiiii'm. movin' out.

What a great last week in Girrawheen. I was able to see all of my favorite people one last time along with all of the people that I've been teaching for 6 months. It was kinda hard saying goodbye to some people. It was weird. I'm sure I'll be seeing everyone again though. Last night we ate dinner at the Main's and the Berryman's were there which was so good because those are my two favorite families in this area. It was even hard to say bye to the Banucus. I've eaten there 23 out of the last 24 weeks, and even though I don't really care for the food, they're a really good family. Last night at the Main's was fun though. We had two really good New Zealand dishes, Chop Suey and Boil Up, and we followed it up with German Chocolate cake and some fun games. I took some videos of the games, just so that down the road I can teach everybody how to play, because writing about it in my journal just can't describe it fully enough lol.

I'm so excited for my new area. I don't know where it is, or who my new companion is going to be, but I'm looking forward to it either way. I probably only have a transfer or two left of being junior companion which is exciting. I'm ready to be senior just to see what it's like. There's a guy that came out at the same time as me that is training a new missionary this transfer, so hopefully I'm in those shoes in a couple of months. I think it would be a great experience.

What a blessing it is for me to be serving a mission right now. I owe everything to the Lord in helping me get out on a mission and I intend on showing Him that by be as diligent and hard working as I can for these next 18 months. And hopefully I'll be able to see the fruits of my labors. Alma 26:27, 31-33. I Love the sons of Mosiah.

Well I'm about out of time, gotta get going to transfer meeting!

Love you all! Thank you for all of your prayers, I couldn't do it without them!

Elder Tanner

1 week til mothers day!!

I don't really have much to say this week, seeing as how next week is mothers day, I'm just excited to call home.

We were supposed to have a baptism this past Saturday but it got pushed back to next Saturday. The only reason being that she has family getting baptised in another ward next weekend and she wanted to be baptised with them. So we're really excited for that. Plus the bonus is that we don't have to set it all up. BUT, Brother McGaughey called us last night and told us that he wanted to baptise his son Tayzah this Saturday. So we now have a baptism Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon. So that should be a pretty good day. It was funny when brother McGaughey was talking to me though because he mentioned that Bishop Snow asked him if he had started thinking about a date to baptise his son and he said he wanted to do it before May 15th because that's when I'll probably be out of this area for reals this time. I'm super excited to get to see him baptise Tayzah though. That's one thing when I first came into this area about 6 months ago that I told myself I wanted to see. The McGaugheys start coming back to church and Jeremy baptise his son. And it's happening! Hooray!

We had Zone Coference on Thursday and the Assistants taught us this lesson from Luke Ch. 5 when the fishermen are cleaning their nets and then Christ comes and tells them to cast their nets one more time and so they do and they catch so many fish that their nets break. But the thing we were supposed to get from it was that they were cleaning their nets, in other words finishing up their day, and Christ told them to just cast their nets one more time. So on Friday when Elder Ulas and I were on an exchange we were biking and we were pretty far from the flat, but then we were biking back for lunch and stopped for some air in the tires and while we were doing that, we got a phone call to go visit a referral that was so far away, it was actually on a road we had just been on. We could've just gone in for lunch and forgot about the referral, but then we remembered the story from Luke 5. So we casted our nets again, but the guy wasn't home, but it's the thought that counts! It was just a big faith builder for me, even though he wasn't home, we were still being tested.

2 more weeks til transfers!

Love you all!

Elder Tanner

Ah, Fair Dinkum Mate!

I love it when that happens... I just typed up like 3 paragraphs of an email and then somehow deleted all of it and it autosaved seconds after I did that... so now I get to start over... great.

So the Temple last week was SO good, as usual. Before we went we got to go around back and take some pictures. It's really pretty back there, even though the temple is so close to the main road and other houses. There's a big wall surrounding the gardens area so it's nice and quiet and peaceful back there. We got some good pictures of the whole zone that I'll be sending home later.

International night was so fun this past Saturday. As I was leaving though, I realized that I didn't take any pictures.. dang. But it was fun. We probably had about 5 or 6 investigators there as well as The Sumo family that we baptised back in March. And the McGaugheys were there as well as a few other less active families for the other Elder's area. I'd probably guess there were about 100 people there, the most I've ever seen at a ward activity here. The food we had was so interesting. My favorite was definitely the dish from Ireland.. it was basically just a beef and potato stew lol. I did try all of them though. The most interesting dish was the one from Morocco. I don't really know what it was but I hope I never have to eat it again.

The baptism this weekend is still happening as far as I know. We found out though that her sister-in-law is getting baptised this weekend as well. She's been going to Ballajura ward the past couple of weeks with her sister-in-law, which is in a different stake, but not too far from here. But it just makes things awkward. Because I think Emma, the lady we're baptising, feels more at home in Ballajura ward, even though the member that referred us to her is in our ward. Hopefully everything runs smoothly this weekend.

We had dinner at the Main's last night and the dinner was good. It was kinda like a giant quiesh... or however you spell it. But it was good. The good part about last night was we taught them the restoration lesson again as they're preparing to be sealed in the Temple in a couple of months, they think it would be good to hear the lessons again. Plus it's just good practice for us. They always ask the best questions though and we just go off on gospel tangents.. my favorite kind of tangents. We talked a lot about repentance and forgiveness, two things I've really been studying this transfer. I've learned a lot and it was good to share with them kind of what I've been learning. But next week is going to be good. Because A. We're cooking dinner and B. We're teaching the Plan of Salvation lesson. I have that little puzzle that grandma sent me and it comes in such good use when teaching that lesson. I love it. Oh, and the dinner we're making for them is PB&J's. They've never had a PB&J!! So we're making PB&J for "dinner" and they're making Belgian waffles for "dessert". haha it should be lots of fun.

I can't believe I call home again in two weeks! Once i get out of my first area I hear that's when time starts to fly, but time already seems like its flying, so it will be exciting to see how fast time goes once I get out of Girrawheen. I really want to get transferred to a country area, but we'll see... we still got 3 more weeks til next transfer.

Well gotta go. Love you all. Have a great week

Elder Tanner

ps. - GO THUNDER!!! BEAT THE LAKERS!!!

Crikey!

So it's temple week this week, and I've always been told that emailing on Monday of temple week was ok. It turns out that I was misinformed. Oh well, at least I know now.

This week has been so much better than last week. Last week was kinda rough for me, but this week has been a lot smoother. Not only are we going to the temple today which is always the highlight of the month for me, but we set a baptismal date for our investigator Emma that we met through the Phillip's family in our ward. She's getting baptised on May 1st which is way good since there's a mission goal for every companionship to baptise in May. We'll be one of the first ones! She's only been to church once other than General Conference and we've only taught her twice but she has already told us that she knows the church is true. How awesome is that?? She's so solid. We wanted to have the baptism this Saturday but it's ward temple day followed by a ward activity so there was no time in there for a baptism. The activity should be fun though. It's called "International Night". they're going to be having food from 15 different countries or something like that. that's how diverse our ward is. I love it though. This feels like my home ward away from home. It is going to be sad when I have to leave this ward, as hard as the investigators are to work with in this area. We had dinner at the Main's house twice since I last emailed, on on Wednesday and one on Monday. I love them. Next week when we go over for dinner we're going to start teaching them the Preach My Gospel lessons again. They want to see how much they can remember since they're getting ready to go to the temple in July. It should be fun. Another one of my favorite families are the McGaugheys. We went over to their house on Saturday and helped him paint a room. They were signing a new lease on their house and had to have the painting done by Sunday so we pretty much spent most of the day over there. We went over at 10 and left around 5. They fed us a lunch of lasagna and it was so good. They would have fed us dinner too but the Zone Leaders were planning on coming over to our flat to cook us dinner, so we passed. One of my least favorite rules is that I can't hold children, because the McGaugheys have the cutest little daughters Katana and Halo. Halo especially, she's like 14 months old I think he said. So cute.

The dinner with the Zone Leaders was good. Elder Ezekiela made us some stir fry and then afterwards we had a bit of a discussion just about things we've been learning in personal study. Elder Cook is a really smart guy. He goes on in August and you can totally tell that he's been 100% consecrated on his mission. he just knows so much about the gospel and it's good to learn from him by example.

This week we got our K allotment for the month (same as Mileage allotment), and we got reduced by 600 K's. So we only get 1200 K's this month and we've been budgeting them as if we had 1800. So by the time we got the phone call we were already at 1050. So pretty much we're going to be biking to everything except the temple and Zone conference. And we're still going to go over on K's no matter what. I think President Maurer is trying to encourage us to ride bikes more. Which is ok for now, now that it rarely gets above 30 degrees. But in a month or so when it starts raining every single day, it may become a challenge. But anything is possible.

Heaps excited for the temple today. I hope the new mission President still lets us go when he gets here. That would be a bummer if he did away with going to the temple, but we'll see. Not a whole lot else going on with me. I've been working as hard as I know how, and trying to learn how to work even harder. I love it out here. I'm so glad I made the decision to come. I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing right now than sitting in a library in Girrawheen, Western Australia telling my family how much I love my mission and wouldn't want to be doing anything else right now... except for maybe eating lunch lol

Love you all,
Elder Tanner

Singing Elders