Week 20: November 26, 2019

Another good week in the ABM! Transfers is on next Monday so it'll be fun to see if I stay or if I go. This week was super fast though, for real. To start it out I got to go to a koala sanctuary and see my first koalas ever! They're a lot more lame than I thought, they just sleep like all day hahaha. 

The highlight of my week was getting to meet with my favorite new person we're teaching, brother Chen. He's like 50 and doesn't speak a word of English, and he's very interesting to say the least. Fun fact: like 3 weeks ago he called us out of the blue and wanted to go to church. We had never met him before or anything, so that was so cool. He invited us over for dinner last Friday, and it was super interesting. He fed us trail mix, a tomato, and then some kind of soup which was pretty weird. He also loves to tell us these really dramatic stories from the bible, in literally the most dramatic voice ever haha. He constantly roasts my Chinese though, because I'm currently at the level where I can have everyday conversations, but when someone starts telling me the story of Moses I get totally lost. And that's what this was like though. Elder Hohneke explained what he was saying and it was pretty funny to say the least. So naturally after he told his stories we asked if we could tell the story of Joseph Smith, and we did it in really dramatic voices too hahaha. It was the funniest experience ever. Hoping we can put brother Chen on baptismal date soon, because he's super interested in the gospel. Not much going besides that, we'll  see next week if I get transferred or not!

加油!

Elder Ensign 

高长老

Week 19: November 19, 2019

Another super fun week and a lot of crazy stuff has been happening! We got a new missionary handbook which got all us missionaries hyped up, but honestly it's not that exciting, but a couple of new rules like we can use headphones to call home so thats fun. 

This week has been so awesome, and I just wanted to highlight one point. I street contacted on Friday night with someone else, while my companion and his companion taught English class. It went really well and we talked to some awesome people, but when I was sitting at the bus station I saw a guy and felt really strongly like I needed to talk with him. I started talking with him and he was so awesome, from China (like basically everyone else in Sunnybank lol) and totally interested in what I was saying! So I invited him to church and 2 days later, he actually showed up! Which was surprising because a lot of Chinese people like to say they'll come but are really flaky and never come. So that was a serious miracle! Hopefully we can find some time to teach him this week. 

Also a CRAZY coincidence that happened this week. I was talking with our branches elders quorum president, Victor Lin, and about where he went to on his mission! Turns out he went to the Taiwan taichung mission a couple years ago, and when I asked what mission president he had, he had the same mission president as my older brother Michael when he went to Taichung! So I showed him a picture of michael and he recognized him, he said Michael was either in his district or zone. It was so cool though, and it really is a small world. The work is speeding up here and I'm so excited to be a part of it! 加油!

Elder Ensign

Alma 36

Some random churches bus with Jesus armwrestling Satan hahaha what the heck

Victor!

Week 18: November 12, 2019

Australia is going really good! It's getting super hot and humid now, but I'm not complaining because I'm not trudging though snow in Utah right now hahaha. However, there are a ton of fires here right now, I heard it's literally the most bushfires in Australia history, and they're all in like the Queensland area I'm pretty sure. The sky is super polluted all the time and it's scary for a lot of people but the fires haven't been close to where I am so that's a blessing. 

Not much has happened this week but I wanted to highlight one pretty sad part of my week. My comp and I decided to go door knocking one day, and ended up walking ALL over the place ha. We eventually decided we were going to finish, and we walking through a really rich neighborhood to our car, when I looked over and saw the most beautiful grass tennis court I've ever seen in my life. So naturally I decided we had to door knock them and beg them to play some tennis on it. However, when we got to the doorstep, I noticed a ton of cob webs all over the place leading up to the door. Then I looked up and right above the door was a humongous spider web, and in the middle was the biggest spider I've ever seen. It was like the size of the palm of my hand, soooo nasty. So obviously I freaked out for about 3 and a half minutes until my comp convinced me to walk under it to go to the door and reminded me of the pristine grass tennis court I was so excited about. So yeah I did and it was terrifying and I survived, except when I knocked on the door the lady was on her phone and told us she was busy and left. So my dreams were basically shattered haha. I'll go back in a couple days though, hopefully the spider will be gone by then? Anyway not much going on besides that and a lot of street contacting, hopefully we'll be able to meet with some of our friends we're teaching now that the college exams are finishing up. Hope you all have a good week!

Elder Ensign 

Temple pday

District piling up in the Sunnybank mom van

Week 17: November 7, 2019 I WAS MUGGED (NOT CLICKBAIT)

Another week in the Land down Under completed, and 4 months into the mission! It's super crazy that it's November now, it doesn't even feel like I'm out of July yet. Anyway, about the title! I didn't actually get mugged I just know that like no one reads my emails anymore, so I wanted to grab your attention for 3 seconds so I could remind you all to read the Book of Mormon, because it's pretty important to me :)

Anyway besides that, not much is going on! It's finals time here for all the college's, so its really hard to meet with some of our friends, so we've been doing a lot of street contacting. One of those ways is through a public outdoor ping pong table that we found in park! We found people are a lot less likely to reject you over a game of ping pong, and it's really fun to see all these kids come up and want to play with us, and then ask why we're dressed up like this. Today is my p-day because my district has a temple p-day so that should be exciting! Other than that not much else is happening!

Love you all!

高长老