Merry Christmas!

What a great Christmas week! The highlight of this week was definitely getting to call home. It's good to hear everyones voices again. But I guess I'll give the rest of you the low down on what's been happening in my life, and what's happened since I called home.

The week leading up to Christmas was pretty tough. It was really hard to catch people at home and when we did catch them at home, it was "sorry guys, come see us again after new years." And it make it even more difficult we were biking around in 35-40 degree weather. So it was uber hot. (Don't worry, I wore sunscreen and drank heaps of water). But it still makes it hard to bike all over Kwinana on a hot day like that. We'd always be stopping for water and shade breaks. It's amazing how much cooler it is in the shade here. So yeah, I think we only got to see a total of 8 people this week, which is way low, but we still kept busy.

On Christmas eve we had a specialised training meeting. President Cahoon gave us some great training on the doctrine of Christ. It kind of reminded me of one of our old training meetings with President Maurer. We were just all over the scriptures for a constant hour. It was pretty fantastic. We would go through an entire chapter (2 Nephi 31 for example) and just write down a different point of doctrine from each verse. I never knew you could learn so much from just 21 verses of scripture. It was definitely the best way to study and learn though. At the end of each specialised training meeting president selects 3 people to give a 3 minute talk and I got chosen this time. They tell us the topic a month ahead of time but don't tell you who is going to be speaking until just before. this month's topic was "improve the shining moments". I focused my talk on verse 2 of the song, and obedience. It actually went pretty well.

After our meeting we came home and Elder Shobbrook called home and by 5 o clock we went Christmas carolling. It was a bit strange Christmas carolling in the heat, but it was still fun. Good way to end Christmas eve though.

Christmas day was epic. We went to the Preedy's for breakfast and had massive feed #1. Then we drove to Dianella for massive feed #2. We also got to play sports with all the other missionaries there. We were meant to do a lot more there, but it was 38 degrees so we just kept ourselves couped up inside the gym and played basketball and volleyball. We had some good fun there though. It's always great to see all the other missionaries too. So that lasted from 11-6ish and then we drove home and went to dinner with the Rockingham Elders to a family's house in their ward beccause nobody in our ward invited us. Then we came home and I called home!

So since then, well yesterday actually, we had our baptismal interview with Evelyn. It went so well and I was so happy. Elder Lowe did the interview and we had Caleb Simpkins as a translator. Caleb actually came and taught her with us about 3 months ago and after that he said that she was nowhere near ready and that we were going in the complete wrong direction with her. But after the interview he came up to me and gave me a really good compliment. He said that we had done a really good job with her and that she really is ready to be baptised. It was such a testimony builder for me because the only thing I had to judge if she was ready or not was the spirit, since I couldn't really have a conversation with her like he could. But then he told us that she was really ready, I knew that the spirit had told me she was ready. We're SO STOKED for her baptism. We just hope it all goes well and that heaps of people come. Arturo is going to be the one baptising her, so we're excited for that. I'll be sure to send pictures!

Yesterday we biked about 45 kms would be my guess. Gotta help Elder Shobbrook build up those bike muscles. Speaking of Elder Shobbrook, I should be getting off the computer now so he can do his emailing. We're emailing at the chapel today because the library was closed and it might be closed next week as well. And monday and Tuesday were public holidays so today is p-day. So I hope you all have a magnificent week! and a Happy new year! 2011 baby! Sorry this email is so short! Love you all!

Much love,

Elder Tanner

ps. I've seen a Dingo.

Elder Shobbrook, meet Kwinarnia!

This week has been hectic! I loved it! So on Tuesday Elder Jorgensen and I went around and visited some people that he wanted to say goodbye to after being in this area for 6 weeks. There weren't many people. Mainly the Preedys and the Cook Islanders, but the said part was that we had 3 appointments set up for the evening and all three of them fell through. So Jorgy didn't get to say goodbye to everybody which he was kinda bummed about but not too bad, because he was only here for long enough to barely get to know everybody, so it wasn't too big of a deal. On Wednesday was when all the madness began. We had to leave Rockingham at 7:30 in order to be up in the city at 9 for a Training of trainers meeting. The training of trainers meeting was great though because it was just me, Elder Metekingi, and Elder Wright that were training, as well as three sisters. I like meetings with president where there's not as many people there, it's more personal it seems like. We learned a lot of good things about how to train and the things that we need to do in order to train our companions right. President Cahoon said that the example that we set for our new companions coming straight out of the MTC will become the normal for them. Personally, I don't want the normal to be anything less than 100% obedience. I loved that meeting though. I was just eating it up. We learned the best way to teach them how to do new things and to do it lovingly. I felt pretty prepared to get my new companion after that meeting. But I just had to wait about 24 hours to do so. So after that meeting we went straight into transfer meeting to find out where everybody was going. Turned out Elder Jorgensen was off to Noranda which was my previous area. So I was able to tell him all the good people to go see in the ward and where to get the massive feed hook ups. He's going to love it in that area because I know that he is going to work his tail off and see great things happen.

On Wednesday after transfer meeting instead of going all the way back down to Rockingham, Elder Metekingi and I stayed in Dianella (the area the mission office and temple are in) with Elder Wright since we were all companionless until Thursday. Wednesday afternoon/evening was awesome! We did some tracting because we had some appointments fall through and just from tracting we got to teach 2 lessons and get 3 new investigators. In one day, that's pretty amazing. I don't know what it is, but I haven't ever had that kind of success while tracting down here in Kwinana. I don't know if it's the people or if it's just me. I'm going to say that it is just me because that is something that I can improve. I can't make the people of Kwinana more humble, I can only increase my own faith that they will open their doors and let us in to teach them. We actually had a really awesome experience with that on Saturday, but I'll get to that.

Thursday was a great day. We got to the chapel at 11:00 after teaching a lady in Dianella that got baptised this past Saturday at 10:00. Then we got to meet our new companions at about 11:45. My new companion, Elder Shobbrook is from Melbourne. He already knows heaps about missionary work because he took mission prep class for two years before his mission. He has amazing faith and I've already learned so much from him. I hope that he has learned as much from me. I feel like now that I'm constantly striving to be 100% obedient that is the best way that I can teach him how to be a missionary. As long as you're obedient and do what you're supposed to, a mission is easy. Obedience is the first law in Heaven for a reason. Without obedience, faith, diligence, patience, all those Christlike attributes, a mission would be very hard. But yeah, Elder Shobbrook has one sister and she and his dad are both less active. So I really look up to him for coming out on a mission. I really hope that his family is blessed by his obedience and hard work and maybe starts coming back to church while he is on his mission. Obedience is key! Elder Shobbrook is great though. He helps me be a better missionary every day.

Speaking of Obedience, I had a great district meeting on Friday and I gave training on Obedience, diligence, and equality. I used 1 Corinthians 12:14-31. If you haven't read those verses, they are really great. They really help us as missionaries realise that we all have the same purpose; we all are part of the same body, of which Christ is the head. We can all help each other and when one person suffers, we all suffer, and when one person rejoices, we all rejoice. I'm really concerned about my district and their obedience so I'm really hoping that they took my training to heart and they apply it in their lives and in their missionary work. I feel like they did. At least I know that Elder Metekingi and his trainee (Elder Lammi, who is also the man) did. I look up to Elder Metekingi, aye. He has helped me a lot to become a better missionary/district leader.

On Friday the whole zone fasted so that we would all be able to have a miracle occur on Saturday. The miracle we were all aiming for is to set a baptismal date. We didn't quite all achieve it, but we got close. Our miracle was after we visited this less active lady, I got a flat tire. And while we were walking back to the flat to fix the tire I was talking about how great it would be to buy some ice cream from Mr. Whippy (the ice cream truck around here) but we didn't have any money. No longer than 5 minutes after we finished talking about that, Mr. Whippy drives up behind us and hands us a free ice cream. How could you not know the church is true after that?! Our other miracle was being able to find this guy named Keelan within 10 minutes of tracting. We only had time to tract for 15 minutes because we had to go to a Christmas activity for Rockingham. So we prayerfully selected a street, drove to it, and found Keelan who was keen on having us come back and teach him but he was just going out as we got there. He even gave us his phone number which was amazing. I haven't gotten that good of a potential investigator from tracting my whole time in Kwinana. So it was a great blessing and a miracle. Miracles happen every day. We just have to realise them. The Christmas party that night was cool too. They assigned the missionaries to act out a play of Jesus' birth as given in the Book of Mormon. I got to be Samuel the Lamanite. The Rockingham elders had a miracle of a couple that they met just not more than an hour earlier come to that activity and they were able to give them a chapel tour. The girl had lots and lots of questions. It was so good.

I love this mission. I love being obedient, it makes me much happier. Even obeying the small rules that don't seem that important, bring great happiness. And mission rules are commandments of the Lord so we can apply it to real life as well. OBEYING THE COMMANDMENTS BRINGS HAPPINESS! I love being a leader and being able to set that example for those around me.

I love you all! Have a merry Christmas! I know I will! Yay calling home! Sorry there's no pictures of my new companion, I forgot my camera cord today.

Much love,

Elder Tanner

Less than two weeks until Christmas! I can't believe it, but it's almost here. Excited to call home, that's for sure. This week has been great. More than great actually. It's been amazing! I suppose that the two highlights of the week would be finally setting a baptismal date with Evelyn and the Summer Wonderland activity that happened on Friday night. This week has flown by though because of how busy we've been. All week we've been full on with teaching. I'm struggling to remember the specifics of this week because I left my old planner at home, since today is the first day of a new transfer and all. Speaking of transfers, I'm staying in Kwinana for at least another 6 weeks, which I'm so happy about. I realllly didn't want to get transferred right before Christmas and miss hanging out with the Preedys and all that. Elder Jorgensen, however, is getting transferred. This is the first time that I've ever had a companion for only one transfer. It was pretty unexpected especially since he's only been in the area for one transfer and he's off. So we got the call that he was getting transferred on Saturday night from the Zone Leaders but last night (Sunday) we got a call from President Cahoon that Elder Jorgensen is going to go be a district leader now elsewhere and I am going to be training a new missionary! And this time he is going to be a legit NEW missionary, straight out of the MTC, not Alabama haha. I'm pretty excited to train. I'm just on this "new experience" buzz you know? I have no idea where he's going to be from or anything like that. I don't find out until Thursday this week. What is also going to be exciting about it is that Elder Metekingi in Rockingham is also training at the same time so we'll be able to help each other heaps. Although I will miss his previous companion, Elder Abel, I'm sure I'll serve around him again. I love both of those Elders. They're always such a great help to me and to others. I am sad to see Elder Jorgensen go so soon. He and I were just starting to really get along really well. It took us awhile to get used to each other I think, but we really started to get along great about 2 weeks ago. Something just clicked, I don't quite know what it was. But he's a district leader now, just like I told him he would be. He is sort of dreading it, but he'll do a good job.

This weekend has been hectic starting from Thursday. We went on Thursday morning to do some service for a friend of Angela's. He wanted us to lay some pavers, or slabs of concrete (I don't know what they're called in America), in his back yard. He originally told us that it wouldn't be that big of a job. When we got there, there were about 50 of these pavers that he wanted us to lay. This being our 4th job like this to do, we knew that this was no small job. In the past we've laid like, 15-20 pavers for one job. Luckily though, we've gained the experienced and cranked it out in about 3 hours, lunch break included. There were 4 of us missionaries there, Me, Jorgensen, Metekingi, and Lowe, and Metekingi and I were the only ones that really knew what we were doing so we just hammered out quick as we could. It was mean. I got a nice little sunburn from that as well. It was nice. So when we got back home by about 2:30, we baked some cookies for one of our investigators, which took about an hour. I don't know if you remember me saying anything about John and Tina how he is a less active and she's a non-member. Well we haven't been able to see them since that first time that we saw them. So we decided to bake some cookies and take them over to them to let them know that we haven't forgotten about them and hopefully they haven't forgotten about us. They've had to cancel on us the past two weeks but we have another appointment with them tomorrow, so we'll hope for the best. By the time we baked them and biked over to their house and gave them the cookies, it was time to go to Arturo and Evelyn's house. We taught Arturo and Evelyn a great lesson, about what I cannot remember, I've slept since then. But I know that it was a great lesson and we all felt the spirit testifying to each and every one of us. We asked Evelyn if she was able to pray about a baptismal date and she told us the date that she came up with was December 25th. Afterwards Arturo said it would probably be better to have it a week later because everyone will probably be to be on Christmas day. Personally, I couldn't think of a better Christmas present to give someone than the gift of baptism, but I understand that people that aren't missionaries still have lives to attend to. Looking at the bright side, I can't think of a better way to start the new year other than having a baptism on 1 January 2011. It's going to be great. So over the next few weeks we're going to be teaching all of the lessons again and then set up the interview with a Tagalog translator. We're pumped. Jorgensen is sad he has to miss it though.

Friday night was the Summer Wonderland activity which was AMAZING! They guesstimated that there were about 1000 people there, give or take a few. I got to see the McGaugheys, the Mains, the Berrymans, everyone! It was so great to see everyone. It was even better to see that they all still remembered me haha. The McGaugheys invited me to their temple sealing which they are anticipating is going to be on the 15th of January! So he gave me his mobile number and I just have to give him a ring early January and get it all organised. I feel pretty honored that they feel like I left a big enough impact on their family that they want me to be at their temple sealing. He gives me the credit for helping reactivate him and his family. One of my biggest goals on my mission is to see someone that I either taught or baptised get sealed in the temple before I go home. So I feel so privileged to be invited to their temple sealing. They said that they got the letter that I sent them awhile back and put the picture of me that I sent them in the corner of the frame of the picture of the temple that Elder Glover and I gave them while we were there. I thought that was awesome. Lucky I'm not getting transferred too, because I could've gotten sent up north or something and not have been able to go, so I consider myself pretty blessed.

Seeing the Mains and Berrymans was great too. The Mains have moved to a place called Clarkson which is in Merriwa ward in Warwick stake. That means that I have another chance to serve in their area! They said that every missionary they've told that to has said the same thing though haha. So if I ever serve up in Merriwa, I'll be so happy. I've heard that it's just a good area anyways, even before they moved there. But yeah, when I leave Kwinny I'll probably only have 6 or 7 transfers left in my mission, so the chances are pretty slim. Auntie Berryman told me that I'm welcome to have my farewell party at the end of my mission at her house. She just had one last week for Elder Weitzeil who went home on Friday and she was sad that I couldn't make it, so she told me to come have mine at her house. It's a long time from now, but never hurts to plan ahead.

We didn't get home from the Summer Wonderland activity until after midnight, but we had permission. All the missionaries had to stick around to help clean up and get everything off the field outside into the chapel. The activity itself didn't end until 9:45 so we cleaned up until 11:30 then drove home. It was good to see all the missionaries too. Well, most of the missionaries anyways. Great night though. The APs sent us all a text thanking us for all the hard work that we put into it and told us that someone has already set a baptismal date from that night. We were way excited to hear that. What do you expect though when you have around 400 nonmembers show up to an activity like that. So yeah, fantastic night.

On Saturday I got to give my first baptismal interview as a district leader. It was for an 11 year old girl so it went really well. She was on to it though aye. Way smart. Her dad who wasn't a member was way proud of her for passing the interview, so hopefully those missionaries can work with him and teach him as well. Then on Saturday night we had a ward Christmas party which was by far the best ward activity I've been to in this ward, well probably in my whole mission. Not only because most of the ward showed up, but because there was lots to do. Bouncy castles for the kids, Barbeque outside, sumo suits for the adults. Good fun. I'm really growing to love this ward though aye. This will be my second area to serve 4 transfers in and there is even a possibility of doing 5 in this area. I'm pumped!

I love this gospel. I love sharing it with everyone I meet. I'm so excited for this new experience ahead of me. I'm going to realllly have to start doing everything straight by the book. I want to train this new missionary as best as I can. I gave some training this week in District meeting on accountability and who we are accountable to and for what. I feel very accountable for how I train this new missionary. I want to see him become a great missionary, and I know that it is up to me to help him become a great missionary.

Well that's about it for this week. I love every single one of you. I pray for your safety and protection both physically and spiritually every day. Always stay close to Christ and his Gospel if you want to always be happy.

Have a great week!

love,

Elder Tanner

The Epistle of Elder Tanner to his family in the Land of America, which is near the Waters of Pacific which borders the Land of Australia

Well I must say, I really wasn't expecting to hear that Buddy had to be put down, I was sure that he would last until after my mission, or at least that Charlie would go first. But at least we know that God is a loving God and that he will let us see Buddy again someday. But until then, I sure am going to miss him.

Well anyways, on to a happier note. This week has been fantasmigorically awesome. It's been super busy, which I guess is the reason that it has been so awesome. On Monday night I got to go on an exchange down in Mandurah with Elder Taumalolo. He served in Girrawheen right after I did for 6 months so we had some really good chats about people in that area. I found out that one African lady that Elder Richards and I had found got baptised. Her name was Catherine and to be 100 % honest, I had no idea that she would ever be getting baptised. He told me that the Mains have moved as well, so that means that there is a chance of serving in their area again, a small chance but a chance nonetheless. I really liked it down in Mandurah though. They have a massive area down there but it's really nice. I'd love to serve down there, but then again, I'd like to move around a bit as well. I'm really hoping to get to go serve down in Albany or something someday, something really far away so that it would just be me and my companion and that's it. I think it would be a lot easier to get a lot of work done that way. People say that country areas are hard to get baptisms in, but Elder Happel, our last zone leader, who just got transferred out to Northam (an area that has been shut down for 18 months or so), they now have 3 baptismal dates set out there. So I think an area is exactly what you make of it. There's no such thing as a dead area, just dead missionaries. That would be a quote from Elder Metekingi that he used in his 3 minute talk on Enthusiasm last week in our Specialised training meeting. I think it's so true, aye. An area is only as dead as you make it out to be. I'm going to try to remember that throughout the rest of my mission. Just ignore what people say about certain areas. Because usually if they tell you it's a dead area, you'll probably believe that and won't get much work done, if they tell you it's a great area you'll believe that and get heaps of work done. So if I just believe that every area is a great area, I'll get lots of work done. That's the theory anyways.

We've had lots of meetings this week. One meeting that we got to go to that was completely unexpected was Zone Leader Council. The reason that we got to go to that was President Cahoon invited Elder Jorgensen to share some of his insight on tracting that he received while he was in the Alabama mission. He was able to share some really good stuff that apparently President Eyring shared with the mission president over there. Some things that he shared with us are, "tracting is not only for the salvation of the souls of those people that we meet, but it's also for our salvation. There's something that pleases the Lord about tracting." Before I got with Elder Jorgensen I wasn't really a big fan of tracting either, but since becoming his companion we've tracted heaps and found a lot of success from it. Not only do we find investigators going door to door, but the Lord blesses us when we're diligently seeking those souls that are waiting to hear the message of the gospel. He blesses us as well as our families in more ways than we even recognise at first. He blesses us with new investigators that we find through other ways other than tracting. I think the attitude of this mission is that there's no point in tracting in God-less Australia so we're just going to sit around and wait for a member to find us somebody to teach or something like that. That's sort of the attitude that I had even adopted for a time. But Elder Jorgensen and I have been extremely blessed and I believe it is because of the amount of tracting that we have been doing. Tracting just makes you feel like a missionary more than anything else I think. Getting out there, getting those doors slammed in your face, all that good stuff. So yeah, Zone Leader Council was great. I'm really excited for the things that are coming up here in our mission. We've got a lot of good things happening. And a lot of the new missionaries coming up are so much better than some of the past generations of missionaries. Past missionaries sort of got lost in the traditions of their fathers, but not these new missionaries. They are so on to it. They'll probably all reach leadership positions at some point in their mission because of how on to it they are. So yeah, I'm way excited.

So that was Wednesday. On Thursday when Elder Jorgensen and I had our weekly planning we had one of the most intense weekly planning I've had on my whole mission. Because we spoke so much in Zone Leader Council on the importance of Key Indicators (which is just a fancy way of saying numbers) and how we can get those numbers up, Elder Jorgensen and I set plans to reach all of our goals and it's just going to be a great week. I think setting those goals makes us even more accountable and accountability is the best way to help us reach our goals. For every goal that we set we had a name to go with each number (besides new investigators of course). My whole mission I haven't been that gun with setting goals, but now I think I realise the importance of it and I'm just going to try harder from now on.

Exciting news with Evelyn is that she is now praying for a baptismal date and we're hoping to set that date either this month or next. It's so exciting because awhile ago we thought it was going to be ages before she decided to be baptised because of her staunch catholic traditions, but she's definitely had a change of heart and it's apparent. We taught a super spiritual lesson on the importance of the Book of Mormon in conversion. We were finally able to get them a Tagalog Preach My Gospel and we did some reading out of there. I think we helped her realise that she really does know that the things that we have been teaching are true. Because she does read and she does pray every time that we ask her to, so she definitely has a testimony of the Book of Mormon as well as prayer and we explained that because you know these things are true, you know that this church is true and that you should be baptised. I just hope that she understands everything that we've taught her. But I'm sure she does. Arturo has been a great help as well. I'm sure he teaches her and helps her do the things that we ask her to do when we're not there. So we just gotta keep praying for the best and pray that we'll be able to see Evelyn get baptised soon.

In our Zone meeting on Wednesday we made Titles of Liberty from "rent garments". The Zone Leaders were talking about things that really frustrate us on missions and then out of nowhere they ripped their shirts off (don't worry, they had another white shirt on underneath). Then we made our own titles of liberty on their rent garments. On them we wrote why we came on a mission and what we want to do with the time that we have left on our missions. On the bottom they had us write Alma 5:26, which just happens to be one of my favourite verses in the Book of Mormon ever because of Pageant. I'll be sure to hang on to that Title of Liberty, help remind myself of the things that are on it.

Oh I can't believe I almost forgot to tell you about my experience city contacting this week. We went up to the city on Friday evening to do some contacting with about 20 other missionaries. It was SO packed. Friday night, everybody doing Christmas shopping, just heaps of people. While I was contacting somebody that turned me down anyways this old crazy drunk homeless man came up to me and out of nowhere hit me in the butt with his knee. He was yelling something in my face but I have no idea what he was saying because of how drunk he was. He smelled like pure gasoline. Looking back on it, it was a pretty funny experience, one that I love sharing with people because of it's hilarity, but at the time, i was just like.... whoa what's going on?? hahah funny.

Man! so much happened this week. Last night we had one of the best family home evenings ever with the Cook Islanders. I'm sure I've told you about them before. But they live in a house of 9 guys, 4 nonmembers. We taught them a great lesson on the Plan of Salvation. I love teaching that because it helps build my testimony of it.

Anyways, gotta go, lunch time! Love you all!

This is Elder Tanner, and I close mine epistle to my family, whom I love and whom I keep in my prayers.

Things are REALLY starting to heat up down here.

I can't even begin to say how hot these past few days have been. Ah well, it's only going to get hotter, that's what I have to look forward to. This week it got up to about 38 degrees and we didn't have the car for most of the week. So we're out biking around (mind you we probably did about 20-30 kms/day on the bikes this week) and when we get back to the flat there is no air conditioning or anything to help cool us down, so we just have to sit there and sweat, and drink lots of water of course. Hopefully when we get to the middle of the summer I'll be able to have a car or an air conditioning or something. Because this is just hectic right now. I guess it does have one good advantage, I am getting a mean tan, on my arms and face that is haha, gotta love the missionary tan lines, especially the collar. It's pretty ridiculous. But I love it. Helps me get into shape as well.

This week as been way good as far as teaching goes. We got a new investigator this week named Tina and she lives with a less active guy named John. She had a lot of questions about the church and John wasn't able to answer them so they invited us over. Her questions were kinda not what we were expecting at first, they were mostly just about the Book of Mormon because she's been reading that, but we taught a really good lesson on the restoration and how we got the book and how she can find out if it is true. At the end of the lesson we watched the Restoration DVD and the spirit was really strong in the room. We asked her how she felt after the DVD and she said that she had a really good feeling. So then we invited her to pray about the Book of Mormon and if she gets that good feeling again after praying about it then she'll know that it is true. We're seeing them again this Tuesday so I'm pretty excited to see how she went with that. It's pretty sad that John couldn't answer her questions for her though. He served a mission about 10 years ago and he's just strayed way off the path ever since. So along with teaching and hopefully baptising Tina, we're hoping to get John active in the gospel again and help him to find or re-find his testimony. It's just so unfortunate when people go astray after serving a mission. It just shows you how powerful Satan can be. Because right now I feel more solid in my testimony than I ever have felt in my life and I'm sure that will be doubled in another year from now. I can never see myself falling away because of the strength and power of my testimony. I guess it also shows you how important it is to constantly be nourishing that testimony. I guess some people just come home from a mission and go right back into the life they left behind rather than living the things that they preached on their mission and keeping their study and prayer habits up. Study and prayer is so important, and some people just overlook that I guess. But I have faith that John will come back, he's already starting back on the path, we just have to help him the rest of the way until he reaches that Iron Rod and is continually holding fast to it.

This Wednesday we had another Specialised training meeting and we learned all about "how to begin teaching" in Preach My Gospel. There's 10 points in there that if we use them people will really see us as representatives of Jesus Christ and help them realise what we are there to do, to teach them and to eventually help them come to the waters of baptism. I think that's really something that we have to do with Tina next time we go over there as well. We didn't really establish that on our first visit, so next time we're going to do that and see if she is really wanting to make changes in her life or if she just wants to have her questions answered. But the meeting was really good. President Cahoon is the most inspired person ever for this mission. I realised that with the new schedule and way of doing things we only have 4 interviews with him a year. That's like hardly anything. But that's just planned interviews, we could really have one a month if we really wanted to, but that could start rumours. It's just way different, I didn't realise that it was that infrequent until just this week cause I was thinking it should be time for interviews again, but nope, not until January. Oh well.

Christmas coming up in less that a month!!!! That means phone calls! boo yah! I'm so pumped. Speaking of Christmas, my Australia Thanksgiving wasn't too bad. I think I ate more here than I've eaten any other Thanksgiving in my life. But I also think that's because of the black tag, people just love shoving food down your throat (not literally, of course). But we had a Cook Island Thanksgiving. All the Chop Suey and Rice you could ever dream of. I think when I get home I'm going to make up some Chop Suey and Rice everything Thanksgiving from now on, just in remembrance of this Thanksgiving. It was fantastic. The only bad part of it was the biking home afterward with about 5 extra kgs of food on me haha. I guess I've kinda become accustomed to that by now though. The only thing that was missing from my Thanksgiving was a game of football. It was saweet.

On Saturday we were going to do some Christmas caroling at the Rockingham Foreshore, but before we could even start singing a guy came up to us and wanted to talk so the 6 of us sat around and talked to him and we actually set a baptismal date with him. He lives in the Rockingham area, so I don't really know much more about him, if he came to church or anything like that. But it was still a pretty cool experience. We may try the "musical contacting" again this week, but we'll see what happens.

On Friday night we biked to the chapel (20 km round trip) for a "Kapa Haka" practice. It's the coolest thing ever. I can't really describe it, but if you YouTube it, you might get an idea of what we were learning. It's like Maori songs mixed with the Haka and dancing. It was so cool. If I could speak one other language fluently (other than Spanish) it would definitely be Maori. It's the best. LOVE their culture. I can't even imagine going to New Zealand to experience it. I bet it's like 20 times better over there. But there's enough Maoris her to experience it enough. Love it.

Well anyways, that's about it for this week. I love you all HEAPS! Hope you all have a great week!

much love,

Elder Tanner

Thankgiving this week??

I honestly cannot believe that Thanksgiving is coming up this week. Not only because it's my last Thanksgiving in the mission field, but this week has been blimmin hot! I think one day it got up to 38 degrees. But I'll tell that story in a bit.

This week has been pretty busy, kinda slow as well though. I know that kinda doesn't make sense, but I'll explain. I've been on two exchanges this week. One with Elder Metekingi in Rockingham and the other one with Elder Cummings in my area, and Elder Jorgensen got to go down to Halls Head for that one. Halls Head is THE farthest city area away from the actual city. But I digress. The exchange with Elder Metekingi was the best. He was able to teach me a lot about how to be a better leader and we had some really good conversations about things that he has observed in the past that works in leadership and stuff that doesn't work. He is totally going to become a district leader or even zone leader very soon. He's such a loving guy and he's so much better with people than I am. Not that I'm bad with people, but he's just heaps better. We had fun together though for that 24 hours. He promised me that we would get at least one feed since I hardly ever get feeds in Kwinana. We ended up getting 4 feeds in that 24 hours. I was so smashed by the end of that day. We were on bikes as well. I am getting a nice little tan though. Being out on the bikes in that 35-38 degree weather. Woo, it's so hot. It actually rained the past two days though. I even actually heard a thunder strike. That's probably about the 8th bolt of thunder I've heard my whole mission. So it's a bit cooler today, just a little muggy. I reckon it will probably get up to about 30 later though, so we'll see. On monday night we had a Family Home Evening at a family's house in their ward, The Peihopas. They have a son who leaves for his mission in March or something and he's going to Washington DC, I may have already told you about that though. They invited a couple of their investigators over for this FHE and it was the best one probably of my whole mission. Mostly because everybody there was Maori except for me, and I love the Maori people/culture. Brother and Sister Peihopa were teaching the investigators (Sharon and Leoni) about the temple and eternal families, while me and Elder Metekingi were eating dinner. It was great. And then we shared a lesson about service after that a played a pretty cool game about service as well. It's a fun game, I'll have to teach it to you someday, it's too hard to explain through an email. But yeah, great exchange that one was.

We got to go to the temple on Wednesday. I feel like since we don't get to go to the temple as often anymore I appreciate it more. It makes me feel for those people that have to drive hours and hours to go to the temple that can only go like once or twice a year. More blessings for those people, that's for sure. I was kinda bummed though because we didn't get to stick around afterwards. Soon as the session was over we had to leave pretty much right away to take our car to get serviced. It was fun getting to go get our car serviced though because I got to drive back to my first area. Although I didn't get to go visit the Mains or the Berrymans or the McGaugheys like I wanted to, it brought back a lot of good memories just driving through the area. We would've tried to visit one of those families if we had time, but we had to be at the Preedy's house at 6:30 and we didn't leave Ted Harris' house (the guy that does the car servicing) until about 6:05. And the drive from Marangaroo to Kwinana is about 50+ kilometres. We were booking it through that peak hour traffic though and made it to the Preedy's by 6:45. Pretty good timing I'd say. And when I say booking it I mean going the speed limit which is only 100 km/hr. It was good to see the Preeds again though. I think that was the first time we had been over since Elder Jack left, so it was good.

We went on splits with the bishopric on Thursday night. That was the first time on my whole mission that I've ever done that. It was exciting though. We went to go visit the Higgs and Bishop personally invited them to church. Although they didn't show up yesterday, they felt a bit more welcome than when just we invite them. We're going to keep inviting them every single week until they show up though. We NEED Sister Higgs to be active so she can fellowship Evelyn into the gospel. But it was just a really good experience going out with the Bishop like that. And even though we only had time to visit the one family, but next time we do that hopefully more people can come along so we can spend more time visiting other families as well.

The exchange with Elder Cummings went well also. Taught Evelyn a sweet lesson about Temples. We invited Arturo and her to the Summer Wonderland activity and they said they will come if we get them a ride up there. It will be so good for Evelyn to see the temple and feel of the spirit there. The spirit was so strong when we were talking about Eternal Families with them. I know that Evelyn wants to be with Arturo for eternity and vice versa.

So let me tell you about the story of it being 38 degrees. We decided to take our bikes out on the particular day even though we knew how hot it would be. We just brought heaps of water with us. We biked to a couple of peoples houses near by and nobody was home so we decided to bike it out to Bertram, about a 30 minute bike ride. We were just passing the Kwinana train station, about the farthest point we could be away from the house and still be on the bikes, and I got a flat tire. So luckily we were right there by the station because there's another train station just down the road from our house so we hopped on the train, went back home, fixed the flat, and then we were on our way. It was miserably hot though. Because before we hopped on the train, we decided to go see at least one of the families that lived up there, so we just walked. We were blessed enough to walk by some sprinklers that were going off in a park to cool us off a bit, but yeah. So we walked to this appointment, then walked back to the train station, and then rode the train, then walked home. Pretty hectic day if you ask me. The next day, I patched the hole, went riding again, and got ANOTHER flat on the same tube. So I just bought a new tube. It's all good now though. Gonna be back on the bikes this week for sure. Especially since we only have 200 kms left for the month in the car and that is not enough.

Anyways, love you all! Have a great Thanksgiving! Save some pumpkin pie for me!!

Much love,

Elder Tanner

G'day, Elder Tanner speaking...

Wowzers! What an amazingly long week. First let me explain the subject. I never imagined that being a district leader would involve making so many phone calls. It seems like every day the Zone Leaders are ringing me up and asking me to ask my district something then I have to call everybody and then call the zone leaders back. Or like missionaries in my district will just be randomly ringing me up asking questions. I don't know, it doesn't sound like much, but it definitely feels like a lot. I definitely use the phone heaps more than I used to that's for sure. I am loving it though, being a district leader though. This week we had a leadership meeting as well as a zone conference. That was my first leadership meeting to ever go to, but I liked it way more than zone conference I reckon. Mostly because everybody that was there I knew because they're all people that have been on their mission for just as long as me at least, whereas at zone conference there's always heaps of new missionaries that you don't really know. We learned about the same thing at both meetings so it was a bit tedious, but it was still fun. The thing that was cool about Leadership meeting was that I got to role play my district meeting for the Zone Leaders and they got to tell me what I did well or didn't do well. The only thing is that I had to teach the same thing that I taught at my last district meeting, which they were at, so it was basically just a re practice, they were just seeing if I had adjusted the things that I needed to make better. Such as making it last only 45 minutes and getting the district more involved. It was also sort of different because I got to teach it with the other district leader in our zone, Elder Blair. It was kinda just like we were teaching a normal lesson to them. I was actually really surprised at how well we were able to teach together since we had never really taught together before. I ran really smoothly. Even more smoothly than some lessons I've had after being with a companion for 10 weeks. I don't know why, it just clicked along really well.

Elder Jorgensen and I have still been on the bikes every single day. We're supposed to have the car Friday-Monday, but that just doesn't seem long enough. It seems like the time we need it most is when we don't have it, but I guess that's probably just all in my head, because there's no way that you're going to get me to bike 60 kms on Sunday. Especially with the heat coming up soon. Very soon. Can't wait for that!

We had a pretty cool experience this week with one of our neighbours. I don't know if I've ever talked about him but his name is Joe and we help him out whenever he needs it because he's always really nice to us. This week he asked us to come over and bless his house because he and his wife haven't been having good feelings in that house like they want to be having. He's lost a couple of jobs in the past couple of months and he was supposed to be finding out later that day if he was going to be getting this new job or if he was going to remain unemployed for the time being. Before we blessed the house he was telling us how he knows that we can help him with this because we've helped him with so many things in the past, but he wanted us to know where he stood with religion and he basically wasn't going to be changing anytime soon because he's too staunch a catholic. But anyways, we blessed the house, prayed that he would get the job and then didn't hear back from him for a couple of days. But when we did hear from him again he came over all excited and told us that he got the job and he knows that it was because of our prayers. It was such a good experience. And even though he's not going to change any time soon, we at least know that he has a good testimony of prayer, so that's something that we can totally work with down the road.

The reason that I'm emailing so late today is because this morning we went to this wildlife park and it was so cool. It's the closest I've ever been to Kangaroos, and Dingos, and Wallabys, and Camels, it was so much fun. We had a big bucket of food that we got to go around and feed all the animals with. My favourite was definitely getting to feed the Kangaroos. They're so awesome. I wish I could bring one home and have it as a pet. These ones at this park were just so lax, you could come right up to them and pet them and feed them. Wild ones won't let you get near that close. Oh and I got to pet a koala, which is also very soft awesome, but they would make boring pets, sleeping 20 hours a day "to conserve energy". I wonder what they're saving all that energy for.

I get to go on exchanges with my district starting this week. Starting tonight actually. I'm pretty excited. Especially for the one tonight. We're exchanging with rockingham and I get to be in Rockingham with Elder Metekingi. It's going to be so good. Our goal is to invite 20 people to church for the upcoming Sunday. We'll see how that goes. But I'm uber excited either way. Elder Metekingi and Elder Abel are the best. I wouldn't mind serving around those 2 Elders for my whole mission. I love those guys. Not only are they just good people to be around, but they help me out heaps with being a district leader. They're always giving me the encouragement and everything that I need and helping me to be the example to the district that I want to be. If I'm lucky maybe I'll even get to serve with one of them down the road.

Well I'm attaching some pictures from my morning. Hope you enjoy them!

I hope you all have a great week! Pray for a missionary experience! You WILL get them!

Much love,

Elder Tanner