Transfers!

This email won't be overly long, I just need to tell you all about the exciting news about this week. I get to train a missionary again! In Karratha this time! I have really grown to love Elder Naruo and we've had many many good times together. I'm going to miss that guy, and it's going to be hard to replace him in the town of Karratha, but I'm sure my new companion will be great if he's anything like the other missionary I trained, Elder Shobbrook. One thing that I'm really excited about is the fact that I get to go to Perth for the training of trainers and orientation meetings. I'll be there for probably 3 days, so I'm looking forward to that. It's like my home away from home. And I'll probably be seeing a lot of the missionaries at the transfer meeting on Wednesday for the last time ever since I'll be flying back up on Thursday or Friday to never return again until the end of my mission. I really love Karratha though. The members here are just awesome. I always feel their love whenever we enter into their homes. I just hope that they love me as much as I've seen them love Elder Naruo since he's been saying goodbye to them. Maybe by the time I've been here as long as he has. I've really learned a lot from him though. It's been really cool having a companion that was baptised himself only 3 years ago. He has a lot of cool and funny stories to tell. He's definitely a story teller too that one. It's just how his island tradition is. I feel like I could go to Chuuk Island and fit in pretty well because of all the things that he has taught me about it. He says that I've become a true islander too, haha.

It was kind of funny how I found out that I was going to be training. Usually we get a call from President Cahoon on Saturday night if we're going to be having any special assignments or anything like that, but I didn't get a call. So we went to church on Sunday and President Pilkington spoke in sacrament meeting and he said that he was speaking to President Cahoon on Wednesday and President Cahoon told him that he would be sending him the best of the new missionaries. So that's how I found out that I would be training. But President did finally call last night to make it official. So needless to say, I have an exciting week ahead of me. An exciting 12 weeks that is. President Cahoon told me that there is going to be a new program from training new missionaries that is just starting this transfer. Apparently it involves 2 hours of companionship study instead of just one with lots of role playing and watching training DVDs and things like that. But I don't know much else about it. I'm sure I'll be able to tell you more about it next week.

So the definite highlights of this week were getting to teach Monique finally and also our two lessons with Marion. We sat down with Monique on Wednesday or Thursday and just started talking about the world and how crazy it is today and we moved on to the topic of the afterlife and having hope that there is more than just this life and having a purpose to this life. She is really golden. We also found out that her mother was baptised a year before she died, which was at the age of 21. So Monique has so much more potential than what we were beginning to think. And her dogs are the best too haha. She and her husband are having us around for dinner tonight since Elder Naruo will be leaving, she wants to say goodbye and give us that Barbi she promised us. The lessons with Marion were good, but we're finally hitting some roadblocks. We taught about baptism and the holy ghost this week in our first lesson and the second lesson we taught about the apostasy and I think in our next lesson we're going to try to teach about the priesthood more in depth. He thinks a lot, but sometimes he just compares what we teach him to what the catholics teach rather than thinking about the relevance it has in his life. But one thing that we did say to him that might get him thinking about it a bit more is we told him the "WIIFM" (the "what's in it for me" - Bro Foott) is that his family can be together forever, and we told him that we can contact missionaries in the Philippines to go teach his wife and kids so that they can be learning about this at the same time, and then maybe the spirit might really move them. He said he's going to talk to his wife to see how she feels about that.

We also had another lesson with Dr. Martin Kumar on Saturday as well! We gave him, his wife, and his mum, a copy of the Book of Mormon each. They all wanted to read it, and they're all avid readers so they couldn't deal with only having one copy to share among the three of them. So that was really good. Hopefully they all read it and possibly even discuss what they read together. They'll have family home evening without even knowing it! The spirit was STRONG in the lesson we had with them though. We were definitely guided that whole night. Especially since that was an unplanned teaching appointment. We were praying for a street to go tract and the spirit whispered to me during the prayer to call Martin Kumar, so I did, and he said we could come over in an hour. I'm thankful that I've learned how to recognise the spirit in all aspects of my life. Martin Kumar is a gift from our Heavenly Father and we have to rely 100% on the spirit to teach him.

Well that's about it for this week! I'll talk to you all soon! And I'll be sure to tell you all about my trip to Perth, the greatest place on Earth!

Much Love,

Elder Tanner

P. S. I forgot to mention, our baptism with Carlo didn't happen this week. It's been pushed back until further notice. It was originally because of Word of Wisdom issues, but he went to the Baptist church this week and when asked why, he said it was just the same. Back to square one I guess with him..

Marion and Carlo

Telling you all about the happenings of this week begins about 30 minutes after I finished my email last week. I was sitting in the chapel library watching a church movie waiting for Elder Naruo to finish his email and we receive a phone call from the mission office. Sister Kruger, the office secretary called to tell us that she had a referral for us. I thought it was odd that she was calling with a referral because usually it's Sister Neilsen that calls with the referrals, but this referral wasn't received in the conventional way. This man, named Martin Kumar, phoned the office but had actually dialed a wrong number because he was looking for his friend. Sister Kruger told him that he had actually rung The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and Martin replied with, "oh I guess I could use a little bit of Jesus in my life." So Sister Kruger jumped straight on to it and asked him if missionaries could come around a visit him. He said yes, and then Sister Kruger called us up straight away and told us about him. So immediately after we finished talking to Sister Kruger we gave him a call and he said that the only time during the week that he could see us was right then at that moment. So we dropped everything and went over to visit him. He's a very humble man, says he doesn't believe in coincidences and he was willing to listen to what we had to say. We talked to him about how he can find more and lasting happiness in his life through the gospel of Jesus Christ. He's going through a lot of stress right now with work, which is why I think he was so willing to listen. We had the opportunity to exercise our priesthood authority and give him a blessing of comfort and counsel. He seemed very grateful and when we left he was very willing to come to church this week. He didn't show up yesterday, but we still have hope for this man. We know that the Lord placed him in our way and we and he will be blessed because of it. Hopefully we're able to catch up with him before next week so I can have more to tell you about concerning him, but we weren't able to see him yesterday at all. He works 13 days a fortnight, so it's a very busy life for him, but that's normal in Karratha.

This past weekend we had our Progressive dinner that we had been planning for a couple of weeks and it was a great success. Marion came, which was the biggest success for us, and also a guy named Rob came who we havent' taught yet, we just met him on the street and invited him to come and he came and also one of the aboriginal families that we see all over the place came as well. So a very good turn out indeed. The message that we shared at the end of the progressive dinner was a simple one, but it was quite powerful. We watched 3 Mormon Messages - I am a Child of God, Choose This Day, and Testimony of the Book of Mormon. And after each video we had the branch missionaries bare their testimonies on the principles taught in the video that was just watched and at the end we got to bare our testimonies. So like I said, simple but powerful. Those Mormon Messages man, they're the best. I highly suggest that all of you watch a few of them and share them with your friends, (I'm sure there's a simple way to do that on facebook, but I'm not really sure). http://mormonchannel.org/video?lang=eng It was really good that Marion came because that meant that it was more comfortable for him to come to church on Sunday, which he did! It was really great because we didn't feel like we had to be with our investigators the whole time because the branch took them in with loving arms. Brother Otto is the man when it comes to fellowshipping people. He's probably the best branch (or ward) mission leader I've had my whole mission. He's very proactive in the missionary work. I'll tell you what though, the spirit is really starting to work on Marion. We've now taught him 6 times and we know he feels the spirit. We've taught about the restoration or the Book of Mormon in all but one of those 6 lessons, and that one that wasn't was about the Plan of Salvation, which we know because of the restoration. And with watching the Testimony of the Book of Mormon video on Mormon messages, it's really getting his mind turning. He asked some more questions about Joseph Smith after the Progressive dinner and we told him that next time we saw him we would watch Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration with him, which turned out to be Sunday. I feel it will be just a matter of time that we extend the baptismal commitment to him. He is a great man. I wish you could all meet him. I wish you could all meet all the great people that I've met on my mission. Maybe someday, aye?

Speaking of baptismal commitments, we finally committed Carlo to a date to be baptised. Once again, the importance of members in missionary work. I wasn't actually there when he committed to a date, which is the 20th of August by the way, it was Elder Naruo and Brother Otto on splits. I don't know what has changed for Carlo over the past month since last time we tried to commit him, but something must have changed because he is definitely committed. We taught him the commandments on Friday this week and found out that he still smokes, but he's been trying to quit it sounds for awhile now. We'll be running the stop smoking program with him this week, hopefully tomorrow, and hopefully the baptism will go ahead on Saturday. (Just a little side note, I recently got to talk to Elder Hodgkiss on the phone and he said that Geoff is still a nonsmoker. I shouted for joy when I heard that. Elder Hodgkiss is tearing it up in that area now, they have like 5 or 6 baptismal dates with people that he and I taught.) Carlo hasn't had his interview yet, but we should be hearing from Carlo or President Pilkington today or tomorrow on when it's going to happen and then we're just going to make the rest of everything else just happen! He's definitely been in our prays though for the help to stop smoking and to truly be ready for his baptism.

My 21st birthday was awesome. I absolutely love the members of this branch. Sister Weeks, Sister Garepo, Mick and Erana Halls, and Teancum took us out to eat on Wednesday at this nice Chinese restaurant and even went as far as to bring a cake and make a big deal out of it and everything. I felt from them the love that I know you all give me from home on my birthday. Definitely by far my favourite mission birthday ever. Also for my birthday that night we got to go around and deliver about 50-60 loaves of bread donated from the local bakery to people in need. We gave that bread out so quick that if I had blinked I would have missed it. It was touching to see some of the young children literally leaping for joy when we handed them a loaf of bread. That's definitely going to be something that we start doing more often. I thoroughly enjoyed that. It gave me a good excuse to go to the bakery as well, which is nothing in comparison to Panera. :)

I got to give a talk in sacrament meeting yesterday, but I didn't find out until Saturday night. It was a really good talk for what it was worth. I'm sure that with a week or two of preparation time could have made it much better. But luckily I said a prayer and the spirit guided me as I prepared it and as I gave it. It was about love. I quoted The Beatles by saying "All you need it love" and then cross referencing that to 1 Corinthians 13:1-3.

Things are really happening up here. I'm loving it. I love you all and am very grateful for your prayers. Don't forget to do your hometeaching this month! Someone needs you! I'll see you all soon!

Much Love,

Elder Tanner

Love Endureth by Diligence unto Prayer

Moroni 8:26. I love that verse. Four of my favourite principles of the gospel in six words. Love, enduring to the end, diligence, and prayer. There's so much power in each of those principles. Two things come to my mind when I read that verse. A story from the scriptures and my own life. When Nephi was tied up by his brothers on the ship and the storm came, the storm lasted for four days while Nephi was tied up, and in 1 Nephi 18:19, we learn that for that entire four days, his wife and children were praying for him. Now that is love. I suppose it's a lot like Emma Smith. Love is manifest by prayer. This week I reach 21 years of living and 21 months of serving a mission, and I know that I could not have come this far in life or in my mission if it were not for the prayers and faith of my family. I love you guys. Thanks mom and dad for all you have ever done for me. I know it must have taken a lot of prayers from you for me to be where I am today. I know and am thankful that God answers those prayers. I couldn't be happier in life than I am right now serving God and serving the people of Western Australia. I'm thankful for a loving family whose love is manifest by their prayers, and I hope you all know that I too pray for each and every one of you and hope you know that I love you as well.

Now about this week, we finally got to teach Marion again! We taught him on Tuesday night and this man never ceases to amaze me. After we taught him, he offered to share his food with us. What a humble man. The lesson that night went well. We watched the restoration DVD with him and tried to help him understand the importance of the restoration. He thought that we were teaching about a restoration that was still yet to come, so I guess that's when it's important to be on the same page as our investigators. We re-explained that it had already happened and that this is the restored church. Yesterday we brought Sister Weeks with us and taught him again, this time it was the plan of salvation that we taught and also this time the whole house was present. 5 Filipinos rambling away in Tagalog and we were just kind of sitting there. Every now and then Sister Weeks would tell us what they were talking about, but it was good nonetheless that they were able to build up that friendship with Sister Weeks so that they can feel more comfortable if they come to church. Marion hasn't been reading the Book of Mormon because he says he has a lack of time, which is actually believable in Karratha. There's no such thing as overtime here. He works 10 hour days from Monday to Friday and then I think a 5 hour day or something on Saturday. So it's just work, eat, sleep, call his family in the Philippines. But we encouraged him to try to read at least 15 minutes a day before he goes to sleep or something. 15 minutes is all it takes for the spirit to work on somebody. And we fasted for him to gain a spiritual witness that the Book of Mormon is true. We just have to keep working with him. But he says he's going to come to our progressive dinner this Saturday. That's one step closer to coming to church. The other thing that we fasted for was for Carlo to get closer to baptism. He's pretty much an eternal investigator now because he's impossible to catch at home when he's not asleep. Another case of work, eat, sleep. But yesterday at church I experienced a first. President Pilkington asked Carlo if he would say the closing prayer in sacrament meeting and he said yes. He did a really good job too. So I was trying to figure out if we could count an investigator as progressing if they say the closing prayer in Sacrament meeting. I never knew that nonmembers were allowed to participate in sacrament meeting like that, but I guess it's up to the branch presidents discretion.

I know this is a short email, but I have a lot to do today that I've been putting off for far to long, so I got to get going. I'll talk to you all soon! I love you all, I pray for you!

Much Love and prayers,

Elder Tanner

The FeNaCl Festival

So for those of you that don't know what the word FeNaCl means, just have a look at your periodic table. Iron and salt are the two big industries up here in the Pilbara and this weekend they had a massive festival with heaps of people there. It was like a fair. Usually we wouldn't go to something like that, but we decided that it would be the most effective use of our time. With it being a small town and everything, everybody was going to be there. So it was no use trying to set up appointments for that day, or just doing drop in visits. And we decided we would definitely get to talk to more people and be seen by more people if we went to the festival and just walked around rather than going and knocking on doors or something. And it was true. Yesterday we decided to go try to see a couple of people at their homes, but we were right, nobody was home, and the couple of people that were home we about to head out to the FeNaCl or just got back from the FeNaCl so they were too tired to let us in or anything. It was a great weekend though. We saw heaps of less actives and nonmembers that we knew as well as members. It was good to catch up with a lot of them. It was hard to contact people though, pretty much all we could do was just give them a pass along card in passing, as nobody really wanted to stop and chat except for those people that we already knew. We are pretty happy that it's all over now though. Now nobody can use that as their excuse for us to not come over. All week we've been hearing about how everybody is just going to be at the festival and nobody could really tell us a day or a time that we could come back, but now it's back to normal life. It's funny how an entire town can get so hyped up about something like that. Today is kind of like a public holiday but not really. A lot of people aren't working today, probably just recovering from the weekend. But it's still a normal day for us.

So other than the FeNaCl, this week has been another adventurous week. We went out to the Cheeditha community again on Wednesday and went out to Roebourne on Friday. It was kind of a bummer this time around out at the Cheeditha community. Last time it seemed like everybody wanted to talk and have us in and everything, but this time, it just seemed like everybody was drinking and didn't really want us around. However, we did get to talk to Jake Samson again. I'm pretty sure I talked about him last time we went out there. The old man with lots of hair and a massive beard. We actually got him to say more this time. And when we asked if we could come in, he just beckoned with his hand to come in. We met somebody in town that knows him and found out that he's just a naturally quiet person. But he just seems so wise. Like the wise old man that hides in the mountains. I hope he warms up to us someday, but because we go out there so rarely, it'd be hard. Our trip to Roebourne wasn't bad. We weren't able to see any of our investigators. Just two members, and one of them fed us so it was all good. The one that didn't feed us is an aboriginal lady that is related to just about everybody that we know, and she hasn't been to church since branch conference. She's a nice lady though.

Church yesterday was amazing. Talk about a full house. 6 nonmembers came, 4 of which we had never met, they were just looking for a church and found ours. One of them was this aboriginal guy named Chris who we met on the street and told him where and when our church was, which we tell a lot of people, but he actually showed up. We haven't taught him yet, but I guess he just felt inspired to come to church. So that was great. The 4 guys that showed up randomly were from South Korea and have only been in town for a week. Right now they're living in tents out at the country club, which isn't abnormal. Accommodations around here are so expensive, so when new people come to town, it's usually a struggle. But hopefully we can help them out if they come to church again, otherwise it will be hard to track them down.

We weren't able to catch up with Marion this week, probably because of the FeNaCl. We were supposed to see him yesterday, and we brought Sister Weeks with us, but he was probably off at the festival. So hopefully we'll be able to catch up with him this week and I'll have something exciting to tell you about next week.

But that's about it for me. Summer is here now. Well to me it is. But apparently it gets hotter. 45 degrees Celsius is an average summer day here, but lately it's been up in the 30's, which is hot enough. Definitely the shortest "winter" I've ever had haha.

Well I love you all. And always remember that God loves you!

Much Love,

Elder Tanner

Ups and Downs

Wow. This week has been "chalk-o-blok" full of ups and downs. Not major ups or downs, just the normal ups and downs of missionary work. Nothing to literally get down about though. The ups always outweigh the downs anyways. Some of the best ups about this week would definitely have to be finding our new investigator Marion, getting in touch with Monique again (the lady that we did service for that one time a few weeks back), the barbi that we had on Saturday night, as well as the volleyball, that most of the active members in the branch attended, having one of our less actives that we have been working with keep his commitment to read the Book of Mormon, and dinner at the Clarke's, which is always a highlight of Sunday nights. So yeah, I won't really go into the downs of the week, because they're not as exciting. Really, now that I think of it, there weren't many downs this week. The only ones that I can remember were having appointments fall through. That's something that happens so regularly that it doesn't really affect me. I just write down the person's name to go try them again the next day or later in the week or something. So all in all, this week has been all ups for me.

So going back to some of the highlights of this week, where to begin. I'll begin with Marion. I found Marion 2 weeks ago while tracting with Teancum Clarke on splits. We weren't really able to set a return appointment with him or anything when we met him, but he said he would be interested in hearing anything that came from the word of God. So we felt impressed to see him on Wednesday this week and the lesson we had with him was spectacular. And we taught him again yesterday as well. Between Wednesday and Sunday he had already kept his commitment to read the Book of Mormon, but hasn't prayed about it yet. After teaching the first lesson he said that he recognised the feeling of the holy ghost and he really like it when we explained the apostasy especially when we used the analogy of a broken mirror. That analogy really stuck with him and he said it made him feel really good inside because it answered some questions for him. Marion is a really great man. He's a catholic and has been for his whole life. He has lots of humility, charity, and love. He is working over here while his family is back in the Philippines. Apparently in the Philippines the only jobs he can really get only pay about 30 dollars a day, whereas here in Karratha he can drive a forklift for 35 dollars an hour. And 2,000 Aussie dollars equals about 70,000 Filipino pesos. He pretty much just pays his rent and his bills for the place that he's staying here as well as buying food and then just sends the rest of his money home to his wife and 2 kids. And anytime anyone back home asks him for money, he's always willing to give it. He told us that he can't not give, because he just gets a feeling in his heart that tells him that he needs to be giving. Of course we know what that feeling is. We're looking forward to this week because we're setting up a lesson to have Sister Weeks come with us to a lesson since she is Filipino herself and has one of the strongest testimonies in the branch. I pray that good things lie ahead for us with Marion.

We finally got in touch with Monique again. If you don't remember we found her by walking past her house while she was weeding her yard and we offered to help and did her whole yard while still wearing our white shirts and ties. She was very grateful for that but then we kind of lost contact with her for about a month because she went out of town and when she got back we tried to go over and visit but her husband, Peter, came to the door and just said it wasn't a good time. We kind of took that as a rejection and thought we would kind of lay off for a couple of weeks. Well we decided it was time to go see her again this Tuesday and it was inspired. She asked us if we could help her move some furniture on Thursday because he husband was going to be at work and she wouldn't be able to do it on her own. So we organised for Mick Halls to come along and help us out and so we got another chance to serve her. Peter called us from work and asked what he could do to pay us and he just thanked us and all that. So that was cool, to know that he's not standoffish either. Apparently one of the members, Brother Van As, overheard him talking on the phone to us at work and told him that he knew us and that he went to church with us and told him a bit more about who we were. He said he described us as "disciples of Jesus". That was such a great experience. Even better than the last experience that we had with her. We invited them both to church again as well as to the barbi on Saturday, but they didn't come, but we're going to definitely stick with it now.

The barbi was great. All of the people that came were the Ottos, the Pilkingtons, Rachel and Sara Seuga, the Garepos, Sister Weeks, the Halls, Teancum and Ethan Clarke, Sister Alvarez (a less active member), and President and Sister Shepherd from the mission presidency were even in town and they came along. It was a super night. Lots of volleyball and lots of food. Our investigator Carlo came as well so we shared a message at the end of the night about gratitude and had everyone go around and say one thing that they are grateful for. So we left that spiritually and physically full, as well as physically ready to have a sleep.

At the Clarke's house last night we watched episode 1 of Preach My Gospel DVDs season 2 and then had a discussion about missionary work. I've watched these DVDs with people before but never have I seen people get so into it. Teancum is like a movie critic and he's sort of preparing for a mission, so he had lots of comments about the movie. It was fun to see them all getting into the DVD. We really felt the spirit and I think it really increased their desire to do missionary work, which is our goal for this branch. We've come up with a cool idea that we're going to start putting together today. We took a picture of our name badges and we're going to get it printed with the words "Will you pray for us by name?" on it and chuck a fridge magnet on it. Then we're going to share Alma's prayer in Alma 31:26-35 when he prays for his fellow servants by name and then prays that they may all have success in bringing people unto Christ. I'm pretty stoked about this idea, and I wish I would have thought of it sooner.

Well my time is far spent on the computer. We have a busy day today organising that lesson as well as getting our flat ready for a flat inspection, which is never fun.

I love you all, Talk to you soon!

Much love,

Elder Tanner
--

Send a letter to:

Elder Clark Tanner

4/170 Withnell Way

Bulgarra, WA 6714

Australia

Wundiwa! My name is Yumbalin Tanner!

Translation: Hello! My name is Elder Tanner! The spellings are probably way off, but that's from the local Aboriginal language. I think it's called Inja Bandi or something like that. But we've pretty much gotten to know almost all of the Inja Bandi people in Karratha so we've been picking up on some of their language. None of them know how to spell anything from their language though so I just have to give it my best guess. This week we had a dinner appointment out in Robourne, which is 40 kms away for those that don't remember, with Sister O'Conner which was good as it always is, but beforehand we were going to go out to Wickham again to see Sister Lim and do some tracting. But Sister Lim texted us and said she was too busy so we were just left with tracting. On the way out there, there's this small Aboriginal community that we always pass called the Cheeditha Community. It has a total of about 14 houses. Everybody in the community is related to each other. They can all just walk in and out of each others houses freely. The Aboriginal culture is really an interesting one, and kind of a sad one when you look at it from some points. Nobody ever cleans anything. When we went to each house we asked everybody to come outside so we could teach them rather than going inside. So with 14 houses, we spent about 2 and a half hours there. Everyone would have let us teach them, but we just had to use our best judgment on whether or not we taught them. Even though it's meant to be an alcohol free community, they still sneak it in. And their chairman or the head of the community wasn't there at the time we went so there was nobody to enforce the rules. We really did meet some great people there though. We met a lady that is related to some of the less active people that we're working with in town, (which I guess means they're all related the less active people we're working with), but she seemed to know them better. We met an old man named Jake Samson, who must be related to one of our investigators in town named Lovina, but this experience with Jake was an interesting one. We walked up to the house, after someone told us that nobody lives there, and it definitely looked like nobody lived there but we thought we would go check anyways. We knocked on the door, which was open, and looked inside and this old man was sitting there at a table just smoking. He looked like he hadn't had a haircut or a shave in years. We began to ask him questions but he didn't even look at us, let alone speak to us. We proceeded to teach him because we knew he could feel the spirit when we walked in. While we were teaching him, he shed a couple of tears. We mainly taught him about the love of God because that seemed like something that he needed to hear. The only thing that he told us was his name, which was a blessing. We think that every time we go out to Robourne from now on we might stop in at this community just to say hello. And possibly teach some of them again. It was such a great experience. I really love these people. And even if they're not ever going to progress in the gospel, it brings me joy when I can serve them and help them feel the love that God has for them.

The rest of this week has been pretty great. We had a dinner appointment every night this week except for Wednesday. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday's dinners were the best. Friday because it was with the Seugas and they cook up a mean islander feed with chop suey and all. I love that kind of food. We had a good time with them as well. We shared a message about the Liahona and how we all need to figure out what our Liahona is in our lives. Saturday and Sunday were both family home evenings. Saturday was at Sister Weeks' house and Sunday was at the Clarke's house. There was a lot of people at both of them. And fun was had by all. For some reason pictionary seemed to be the game to play this weekend because we played it at both of them. Brother Clarke shared a great lesson as well. He used an object lesson with two oranges and put one in the water and it floated and for the second one he had us all name a different sin and for each sin he tore off a piece of the skin from the orange and when all the skin was off he put it in the water and it no longer floated. It was a cool object lesson and definitely one that I'm going to have to use. I really love this branch, everyone in it. Now that Elder Naruo and I are no longer the Exec Sec and the Clerk, we've been teaching a lot. Taught Elder's Quorum last week, aaronic priesthood this week, it's been really good. We handballed teaching gospel principles over to one of our branch missionaries, and it's great to have that kind of support. I think this is the first branch/ward I've ever had with branch/ward missionaries. I never knew how great it was to have them. Going on splits each week is great.

I love this mission. THIS IS A GREAT MISSION! I can't believe how quickly my time here is winding down. I love the people here. LOVE them!

I love you all. Talk to you soon! Always seek to become an unprofitable servant. Mosiah 2:21-24

Much Love,

Elder Tanner