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