Week 35: March 11, 2020

Wow, 8 months down and 1/3 of the way through my mission. Honestly really weird to think about that lol. Also s/o to my boy Christian for getting his mission call to ___ (it's a secret).

I got the hardest rejection of my life this week, we door knocked a door and this lady opened looking kind of friendly, and that look turned extremely angry, and then she slammed the door SUPER HARD in our face. Idk why that one hurt the most cuz its happened a couple times lol, but anyway I immediately remembered a talk by Elder Holland called Feed my Sheep, where a missionary has that happen to him and knocks the door again and baptized the person, but I was too scared so I left a kind note for her haha. Honestly though that hurt more than any rejection I've ever gotten in my life- more than the friend zone and being ghosted if you know what I mean.

This week I had some weird meals haha, not too many dinner appointments and we are both trash cooks so heres some examples of food we've made: highlights of food this week: curry, tacos, butter chicken, ramen, pancakes and craft mac n cheese, corned beef and baked beans, more ramen, some weird as quesadillas lol, more ramen, more canned corned beef and potatoes, and lastly, more ramen. Welcome to the mission life . however, 救恩 s/o elder seves relatives for coming in big time with heaps of food. Now we just need toilet paper because all the stores here are selling out on toilet paper VERY fast haha. 

On a more serious note it's been a crazy week because we got a new Bishop! And he is SUPER keen on missionary work, he called us over the night he got set apart and he gave us a lot of stuff he wants us to do. I guess this next week is gonna be pretty productive haha. 

Highlight of the week was when we were door-knocking though. We saw a lady mowing the lawn so we went and helped her, and she was sooo confused why 2 guys in church clothes wanted to mow her lawn. But we did and turns out she is very interested in what we believe in. Hoping some good will come out of it because our teaching pool is still a little dry from the sisters. 

on an unfortunate note though, me and elder seve got a call on monday from an unknown caller. A lady started speaking Chinese and told us that I owe the chinese government heaps of money and if I dont pay them back then I will get thrown in jail or something. So if you all could please help me out it would be appreciated. My venmo is mattensign4 and if you want to send me packages of relief the address is

 7/146 Racecourse Road 

 Hamilton, QLD 4007

 Hopefully I can get through this.

 Elder Ensign

Pictures: include but are not limited to:

Kangaroo steak 

Elder Seves relatives brought us heaps of food, love samoans so much haha

Me and the boy seveFirst day wearing a jacket in a while (brrrr, just as cold as utah right now) just kidding I took the jacket off like 2 seconds later haha could you imagine being in Utah or England right now

The road by our house

Week 34: March 3, 2020

What up what up! 1st week of transfer 5 finished and it's been going well. First off just wanna say that 1 year ago tomorrow (thursday) is when I got my mission call to this beautiful country! Shoutout to all those getting their calls soon, it will be the best 2 years of your life, and you are called to a specific mission for a specific reason! Make sure to shoot me an email letting me know where you're going! Also want to give a shoutout to all the boys on the Ridgeline Tennis Team, season is starting soon!

Also want to tell you guys to go visit a website called thankstohim.org - in sunnybank we coordinated with a high counselor to make it, and I kinda forgot about it until now. It has a sweet video with yours truly featured (not as a missionary, there were too many missionaries so I get a spot at the end where the missionaries are talking to me as a random person on the street hahaha.) Its awesome because sunnybank was a really hard area when I was there, but right when I left it started getting good, and now it is doing very well. That website is bringing heaps of interested people and referrals in. Also speaking of sunnybank, one of the people me, elder hohneke, elder gan, and elder breinholt found when we were in sunnybank, Abby, just got baptized! Me and elder hohneke taught her heaps, it's awesome to see cool things happening in past areas, I love that the work is still going well there. I really do miss sunnybank so much and I am hoping for a chance to go back.

Elder Seve and I set some high goals for the transfer because we were looking at the goals/actuals for when the sisters were here last transfer, and it was not exactly great haha. So we are going to be working extra hard to build up the area again, and I'm honestly excited for all the stuff that is in store. We are definitely going to be getting very creative with the missionary work this transfer. It's annoying because all the missionaries who hear I am in Windaroo always tell me it's a dead area, but I totally disagree. I think a problem with this area was that missionaries were treating it like a normal area, and that doesn't work! Luckily I had a lot of experience in Sunnybank so I know how to work outside of the box. Let's just say I'm so hyped for the next 5 weeks hahaha. I've been focusing a ton on a scripture found in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 which has been my guidance this past week. I've loved being with Elder Seve this past week, honestly everything the man does is so quirky and funny. He's so humble though and I'm learning a lot from him. The other day, me and him spent some quality time in a storm drain saving a baby duck with a member, never a normal day in the field haha. Sorry I should've had someone take pics but I was caught up in the moment lol.

Really awesome highlight is I finally found a Chinese person to practice with. We saw him playing basketball by himself and he was super open to just talk with us, but not really towards the religion. I had prayed the night before asking for more opportunities to speak Chinese because I could feel my chinese starting to get worse, and now I can talk with this guy! His name is 陳 and hes from Malaysia. Super cool guy and balls out. Our plan is to play ball with him every saturday night. So hyped! There really is so much power in prayer and it's a blessing being able to communicate with our Heavenly Father so frequently.

Worst part of this week though was we were about to leave on sunday, so I went into the garage to move my laundry into the dryer. I looked up at the wall and there was a huntsman spider no joke the size of my hand on the wall, man I almost threw up. Luckily elder seve was there to kill it for me but man I hate spiders. I tried to take some pictures of it but my samsung camera wouldn't focus oof. Biggest one yet, hopefully none bigger hahahaha. It was so big that I thought it was fake when I first saw it. My flat is apparently notorious for finding snakes and spiders in it, a couple months ago some elders woke up and found the eastern brown snake under their bed.... pretty sure that's the second most poisonous snake in the world. Please pray for me hahahaha

Aside from that not much except trying to teach and find some people! One of the people we are teaching is going to teach us how to crochet so that'll be way awesome Haha. General Conference is in a month and honestly I've never been more excited, even more excited than watching the 2017 Australian open final if you know what I mean hahaha. Study up!

高长老

A very short video of the spider climbing down the wall and me shrieking 

One of those "little free libraries" my mom loves, unfortunately we didnt have any book of mormons at that time so we did the next best thing- pictures of Jesus with our number on it. 

The view from a members house in windaroo!

Week 33: February 25, 2020

Hey everyone! Crazy good week.

Fun thing was we did a ton of service on saturday; we helped someone move from 8-11:30 and then right when we got back to our flat we got another service call, and ended up mowing someone's lawn and cutting trees for another 2 hours haha. It was fun but I started having flashbacks of tennis season because I started cramping up when I was sawing the tree down haha.

 Another cool thing was the bishopric in bundaberg assigned me to a talk this last sunday, and it went really well! I gave a talk on president Nelson's talk in the april 2019 conference we can do better and be better, and despite what you all are thinking I didnt talk super fast and didnt have to write everything down, it was mostly by the spirit despite a couple quotes and scriptures. It's really nice because I think they are starting to trust the missionaries more (some dodgy stuff happened in the past). Last second the 1st speaker didn't show up so I ended up going from a 10 minute talk to like a 20 minute talk so that was fun haha.

 Which I guess is good but also kind of sad because I got transferred two days ago to a small area called windaroo in the gold coast. It's only about 40 minutes away from sunnybank as well. They completely whitewashed bundaberg and it is a little bit frustrating because I had really been starting to turn the area around, had almost tripled the teaching pool and had a couple people we were planning to put on baptismal date soon. However, it is still the Lords work no matter who is there so we left bundaberg in good hands. But I know that there is a reason for everything and I am where I am supposed to be! So now I am whitewashing into a sisters area! We have a car so that's a plus haha. My new comp is elder Seve, hes from Samoa, hes really big and he snores SO LOUD AT NIGHT. I think I've gotten like 2 hours of sleep the past 2 nights, but luckily thanks to damuni05 and the all-nighters I'm used to it hahaha. his English isn't too great, so it's been good experience for me to get to lead the area though and I've really enjoyed my 2 days here even though I lowkey have no idea what I'm doing haha. I'm excited to go to work here though and get to experience the new places all over Queensland! I've also seen 1 or 2 Chinese people here so I hopefully will have a couple opportunities to practice chinese. On our first day, on Monday, we visited a chinese member but when we got there he made it very clear he didnt want to see us again, kinda sad but it was cool to see a crazy old man yell at me again in Chinese, haven't had that since sunnybank haha. Unfortunately there are no other chinese members but that is ok, I will have to change that. It has been a pretty dry area for the past couple years but it's all the attitude that everyone has about it. Hoping I can start building up the teaching pool like I did in bundaberg, we only got 1 person to teach handed down to us by the sisters haha oof. #makewindaroogreatagain

  I'm also very sad because bundaberg was lowkey my home. It had a nice cache valley feel and I was expecting to be there for like 4 transfers at least but I guess not. I'll always miss the bundaberg ginger beer at most of the dinner appointments and of course my man patrick! Despite only being there for 1 transfer it was the hardest for me to leave. I really did have a special bond with the people there. Hope you all have an awesome week and keep in touch! 

高长老

and a video of some kangaroos in bundaberg (couldn't upload video)

the view in windaroo  (kinda nice cuz bundaberg didnt have a single hill) #MP,

The man patrick