Week 25: December 31, 2019

Hope you all had a merry christmas and have a happy new year! It's already 2020 out here in Australia, so crazy that I've almost been on my mission for half a year. Super good week though, and having so much fun in australia!

To start the week off we were shopping for food on p-day when a lady came up and started speaking to me in chinese looking for insect killer and I totally had a best 2 years moment where Elder Calhoun thought he was never gonna be good at the language, but his trainer told him one day someone would talk to him in Dutch and he would respond back without even knowing. So yeah that happened hahaha.

For Christmas Eve Dinner we went to a family's house in my old area, Eight Mile Planes, and when I got there I realized it was a family I had eaten at with before, and the kids were crazy and bit my comps leg. So luckily I came in prepared and became best friends with the craziest little girl named Maggie and then together we bullied the other Elders :)

Christmas was really boring because we had nothing to do, but luckily I had the mannheim steamroller 1984 christmas album on my phone along with all the Michael buble christmas songs, so I was able to last the day.

Overall a good holiday and I hope you all enjoyed it as well, along with remembering the actual purpose of Christmas! Remember all that Christ has done for you this time of year! Have a happy new years everyone!

Elder Ensign

高长老

1 Nephi 19:9

 

My best friend maggie

me in the city

Week 24: December 22, 2019

Merry christmas! (In 2 days, or 3 in the states) not much happened these past 5 days, so there's not much to catch up on. We had our mission wide christmas conference on Thursday last week, and it was really good to see some familiar faces, along with meet 2 elders from logan utah, Elder Hopkins and Elder Merriam. It was crazy to see almost 200 missionaries all gathered in the same chapel, which I haven't seen since the MTC so that was nice. The rest of the week contained lots of christmas activities so we have been pretty busy for the most part doing those. I'm so grateful for the christmas season to reflect back on all that Jesus Christ has done for us! Make sure to keep that in mind as you're celebrating this christmas season!

Elder Ensign

高长老

All the chinese missionaries and most of the ABM missionaries 

All the missionaries

Week 23: December 17, 2019

Another really fast week in the 澳大利亚 布里斯班 mission! Nothing too interested happened except when me and elder Kong were door knocking. Elder Hohneke stayed at our flat that day because he was looking after an elder from the Papau New Guinea mission, because he broke his leg. So me and Elder Kong went and did missionary work without him.

But anyway, we were walking from door to door, and on the way I saw a guy in a Jazz Jersey so I got super excited so I started talking to him, but when I got closer, I could smell the wine very strongly on his breath haha. But we talked about the jazz for a little bit, until he started talking really really deep church doctrine with me haha. He got into some anti church stuff and was just trying to tear me down and catch me off guard. Fortunately, I for real had the Holy Ghost on my side, otherwise I would've gotten beat real bad. Then he started ripping on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, but I was able to testify of their importance and as I was doing so I could feel the spirit so strong, and he stopped trying to fight with me on my beliefs, and I was able to give him a Book of Mormon pass along card. It just made me realize how important the Gift of the Holy Ghost is. I didn't do any of that testifying, but I know that he felt the spirit and that's what stopped him from continuing to bible bash me. So that was a little fun experience I had! Also Monday this week hit a solid 41 degrees Celsius, which is about 108 degrees Fahrenheit. It's starting to get really really hot here and so humid, but hey it's better than -20 and 2 feet of snow right?? 

Have a good week everyone!

 高长老

Elder Ensign

Week 22: December 10, 2019

Wow, it's crazy I've been out in the field for 5 months already! Time really does fly on a mission. This week was super good though, and lots of good things coming!

We get 30 minutes for exercise in the morning, and my comp elder hohneke likes going to a park with a basketball court. I noticed there's a wall there though, so naturally I went to an OP shop (like the DI) and bought myself a 2 dollar wooden tennis racket, so now every morning i go play tennis against a wall. I also found a guy named Ralph whos 80 years old that goes there every once in a awhile to hit, so we play with each other. Hes so awesome and reminds me of Ron bachman, so that's been really fun. watch out all you tennis players back at home! The park also is very popular to chinese people in the morning- theres about 50 people there doing TaiQi and a lot of old people meditating. It's super funny and weird because it feels like I'm in mainland China in Sunnybank.

I was also doing service for a member in my ward, and we were like cutting trees and moving tons of trash for their house, but anyway I picked up a big branch and felt something crawling on my arm, and looked down and the biggest spider was chilling there, I can guarantee you I freaked out for about 7 and a half minutes hahaha

The people here in Australia also do NOT celebrate Christmas very big. I remember the highlight of Christmas was seeing all the lights around in Utah, and all the snow, but there's neither of those here! There's maybe 1 in 100 houses that actually has Christmas lights up which is so sad. However, we were driving home one night and saw the most decorated house in my life- literally just covered in lights and decorations. We talked to the guy who did it and he said he had to code all the lights because they actually were synchronized with songs they were playing! So awesome and got me hyped for christmas.

Also we got assigned someone from our Stake high counsel to help do literally anything for our Branch, and he is so hard working and trying to help us missionaries out so much. There's a lot of big moves about to happen in Sunnybank come Chinese new year, so I'm really pumped to see what's going to happen. We are making personalized pass along cards, videos, a website, etc.- it's going to be so awesome and I hope I can stay in Sunnybank to see it through. 

Have a good week! Love you all!

加油!

Elder Ensign 

Christmas house

Week 21: December 3, 2019

Super good week! Transfers were this Monday, and honestly these past 6 weeks flew by so fast. I also can't believe it's December right now! A big part of that is also because I'm so used to having snow in December but I'm definitely ok how it us right now hahaha. I'm staying in Sunnybank for another transfer, which is a blessing, and we got a new companion Elder Kong who is from mainland China and is super fun. He's also 26 years old so that makes for a major age gap. 

Last week for Thanksgiving, an elder bought like 100 pieces of chicken and a ton of sides from kfc and invited all the elders in my district to come over for a Thanksgiving dinner so I actually got some Thanksgiving dinner. We called it Kentucky fried giving. KFC here is super popular, but its not near as good as in the US which kinda sucks honestly. 

I also figured out something that made me so happy to be here this week. Apparently when President Hinckley was dedicating the Brisbane temple, he said that it would be the key to opening up China. I'm so blessed to be a part of something that big, and I'm so happy to be working with the Chinese people here in Brisbane. The mission has been such a blessing in my life and I'm so grateful to be able to help other people out for these 2 years!

Elder Ensign 

高长老

Also saw this at the airport when we were picking up elder Kong, and couldn't help but think about 2 Nephi 28: 8-9 haha give it a read