My last transfer

Email #97
Area: Alice Springs
Companion: Elder Richard

Excerpts from Mom's email:

Hey Mom!

Yes I am doing great! So yes, my final transfer will be in Alice Springs! The interesting thing is that Elder Olsen got transferred to Adelaide! Really sad to see him go, he was a awesome companion! Well my new companions name is Elder Richard's from... Holladay Utah! Yeah he went to Olympus High school, but I've never met him before. I guess he was good friends with Matthew Hansen and those guys! Small world! He seems really excited to be here as well, so should be a fun transfer!

This past week has been so awesome! Just loaded with fun things and yes Uluru was awesome! We spent Christmas together and that was so sweet! Went to members homes, had multiple meals each day which killed us haha, but so much fun! We even cooked some kangaroo tail the proper aboriginal way and it was pretty good! We also went to the Clark's Christmas day and made gingerbread houses, ate breakfast for dinner, and watched Beauty and the beast along with the Incredibles 2. Was a fantastic night!!!

The next morning we woke up and drove to Uluru at 5am. We stayed the night over at the other Elders Flat and carpooled the whole way alternating drivers when needed. Got there at around 10:30 and went to see all the cool sights. It is crazy how big this thing was! It is literally in the middle of nowhere and is just this huge rock with amazing features. We walked around it and saw some awesome rock formations and cave paintings. No we didn't climb it though. It was a pretty amazing place to behold!

Getting to know the other missionaries is always such a great time especially in outlying zones! This is such a small zone, so we all have got to know one another this past week! Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Elder Olsen and Sister Standage who we will miss here dearly! Crazy thing is it was Sister Saoloto and I's last time seeing them because both of us go home end of this transfer. I know both of the places they are serving now, so was able to explain where they were going and even Elder Olsen is going to be with Elder Siaosi! We said goodbye to them this morning as they boarded the plane and it was really sad for sure!

I'm really curious how this next transfer will go being the last one! I hope to be the best! A lot of the members are now out of town for a few weeks which is to bad, but besides that I hope there will be more success that we can find! Want to go out working my hardest!

I'll try to go into more details of things in dads.

Love you heaps!!!


Excerpts from Dad's email:

Hey Dad!

This week was as well with everything else a really hot one and this one is supposed to be even hotter! Hitting 42° every day! We will servive!

Man it is so strange, but I have come to really care about the other missionaries here! We've become like a family! Even though all of us come from different backgrounds with different personalities, we all get along so great! I'm so glad I got to stay, but to bad others had to leave. It will be cool to finish with Sister Saoloto though, she is really cool. We will most likely fly back to Adelaide together at the last week of the transfer.

I'll kind of explain the pictures and videos. So some of those are photos and videos of our meals such as trying the kangaroo tail and things like that. Thought that I would video the sisters reactions to it, but wasn't even good reactions haha. We got a selfie at these members house randomly that's in there. Hope you like the Uluru photos! We spent all day there so there was a lot and more photos to come because elder Clark has to give me all the ones he took. The ties in our head was for this music video that we all made, but I will show you that when I get home haha it's pretty funny. Oh as well we got a video after we set up these kids trampoline for a service. It took us a while and was very hot, but chillin with them after for a bit is always fun.

Just waiting to see where we go from here. We have some people we are teaching and the one I am always working for is Mack. He just has so many health complications not it is getter harder. We care about him a lot and the Clark's are working with him to to see what we can do about it all.

This week we also put on date one of friends whose name is C..... It was a cool experience because it was elder Olsen's first time honestly leading a lesson and even he invited him to be baptized! That is one of the most rewarding things is watching someone you are training grow so much! Elder Richards, my new companion, is the same intake as Elder Olsen. He has been telling me so far today that he has a lot that he wants to learn from me. I look forward to this one and see not only what I can teach but what I can learn!

Going to have to work my hardest this one to get any further! I want to make a difference her in Alice all that I can!

That's awesome to here about Jackson! He will do a great job!!! The best advise I can give is to find joy in the work because there is a lot to be found there!

Love you heaps!!! Have a great week!

Kangaroo tail

Kangaroo tail ready to eat :-)

Our Christmas tree

The dogs got me

Email #96
Area: Alice Springs
Companion: Elder Olsen

Excerpts from Mom's email:

Hey Mom!

This week was just chalk full of cool stories and experiences that may even have to wait until I get home, but I will try to include all that I can! It is Christmas time here in Alice springs to even though the heat has exceeded 42°C some days haha. We have really been enjoying our time here with Christmas around the corner and I know that the next few days will be so amazing as well.

First here are the Christmas plans for the next few days!! This morning we went on a hike as a zone which was great. Later today we are eating dinner at a members home at about 5pm as a zone as well! Tomorrow we will be skyping home at the Clark's house between 8-9pm. Anywhere between there, but I will have Elder Clark message you to give you a heads up when we are about to get on. If you have any questions email ................. just let him know who you are. I probably will use his profile or mine. The call is supposed to be around 45 min this time around, so sorry that it may have to be a bit shorter this time around! Be sure to come ready with questions and things because I probably won't. Know what you want to talk about haha.

Then we are going to another friends house as a zone and having lunch for Christmas day at around 1pm. Then we are going to another members home for dinner around 4pm. Then at about 5pm, we are going to the Clark's home until late to watch movies (the new beauty and the beast and Incredibles 2 I think), play games, and have breakfast for dinner!! Then the next morning, we arise early and drive to Uluru!! We will get there at 10am and spend 5-6 hours there and head home. This is going to be a big three days and should be heaps of fun!! I'm really excited about it!!!

Well that's the plans anyways for the holidays! This past week was good to! Started last Pday going to the reptile center and got to hold some reptiles! I held a few lizards and the really cool one was holding a Python! None of course were dangerous and was a cool experience doing that! That same night they had this basketball game they asked us to play in just to keep their players in practice during the holidays. A lot of the really good players were gone, so I didn't get schooled like I usually do haha.

We found this lady who is friends with one of the members and we're able to do some service for her. We spent about 1.5 hours out in 40 something degrees right next to a swimming pool. We removed some bricks, so they could install something for their pool and then helped with the weeding as well. Just was so tempting to have a pool right there and not being able to swim in it! Best part was though was the dogs there were so cool! Just so loving and super well trained! They kept us good company as we worked! We've done a couple things for service as well this week like putting up a new trampoline for these kids.

We had a trade off this week with the other elders here to and man we ate super well. One of the elder's mom ordered all of this food for him for Christmas through the Coles here. So we had all go this good food to cook during the trade off and it was so good! Speaking of, we just heard that President requested to SLC for a raise in our funds! Now we can actually get better quality food for ourselves starting Jan 1! To bad this is just happening, but still grateful for it! Anyway on the trade off, we taught this part member family who is preparing for baptism in Jan! I was with one of the newer elders and he has never taught any of the commandments before, so they asked me to come and help teach. It was pretty fun, because we taught the law of tithing with cookies that they made! One of them is a little 10 year old girl and the other is her dad. We all really enjoyed it and they even had us over for dinner before the lesson.

We found another friend this week named C.... as well. He grew up Jehovah Witness, but has since lose his faith in God in general. He let us in to teach him, because he wants to find God again in his life. It was a little different teaching him because he grew up believing so differently to what we are teaching him, but he is also so mold-able in what he is willing to learn. He even invited us over during the Christmas break! None of his family really lives here I Alice, but his room mates have kids and that is who he is spending his Christmas with.

Just yesterday we went Christmas caroling! We first went by Mack's house. Us elders were actually a bit nervous about it, because we knew he doesn't really like surprises. After serving in the army so long I am sure surprises aren't the funnest thing. Anyway, we sang in the front and he came out with a big smile on his face! It surprised us more then him I think haha. We gave him cookies and just felt special. Then we went to the old folks home and even Jordan Mcween, his wife and kids all joined us. He has two little boys really young btw. So we sang and after about 40 min of doing this, our voices were done haha. We finished last night with watching the mission slide show from this past year. Unfortunately I can't send that to you or even get it myself, because I guess that is one of the things they give you in your leavers package. The Clark's fed us last night though and we just sat back and watched this video. They had this one massage thing there as well that I just loved! Some head massage thing haha. Good time!!!

That's basically my week! There is heaps more that will have to be told another time! Love you heaps! Talk to you tomorrow!


Excerpts from Dad's email:

Hey Dad!!!

Most is in Moms email about skyping and all that just so you know.

That's really crazy what happened to Noah!! Peru must be a pretty dangerous place! Hope he is okay, let me know what you hear! Here it is not dangerous like that at all!

I don't know if I told you about how the aboriginals treat us here. Basically they love us and will defend us if anyone tries to mess with us haha. There was this one guy who barely raised his voice at us and these abo guys yell "hey don't you mess with the Christian people!" (that's what they call us usually). It's crazy how nice people are to us here though! Way different then in Adelaide! We get rejection sure, but in a nice way. In Adelaide people tell us well rude things haha. Another probably big reason people are nicer here is because everyone know the Ford family here! The branch pres family is just super well known in Alice and everyone respects them and they know we are with them haha.

Crazy experience this week that you may or may not want to tell mom yet haha. It's not bad just I know she worries to much lol. You can show her this if you want to or wait until I get back. I don't know how she will react, but sorry mom if you are reading this, I just don't want you to worry lol. Well the story starts with simply visiting these members that I know from Samoa. The dad was gone and it was only his daughter home. She answers the door and I guess she forgot about their dogs. Their dogs are mean as to strangers without the dad's approval of the person if you know what I mean. Basically if the dad is there, the dogs are nice. If not, well this happens...😅 After hearing them bark, she said "hang on I better put the dogs away" but right when she said that the dogs lunge through the door and the first one nips at my knee (the first photo). The other one comes around and bits me on the back of the leg twice. Happened so fast, but we got them inside and calmed down but they got me real good in the leg. So I was wearing those Lulu pants that are super tear resistant. They didn't have a single tear in them! They held up completely! My leg didn't though haha. So I get back and I told the mission nurse and she told the Clark's to take me to the clinic to get it cleaned properly. The clinic was closed, so the only option was the E.R. Well they took good care of me and I'm all good haha. Doesn't even hurt now! Honest, I hiked today and the day after this happened biked around like normal with little pain. Normally dogs are nice or behind gates, so that was just bad luck.  Haha so cool story because they say you haven't served a mission until a dog gets ya lol. These two dogs were about as big as our neighbors, the May's. Good size haha. Anyway, up to you if you want to share:). You don't worry either! I'm fine and safe haha. Feel free to post on blog to its fine.

If you are curious about what the doctors said, basically the dogs mouth is pretty dirty, so they gave me some antibiotics to take for a few days. It's teeth didn't get into my skin luckily because of the pants so that saved me a lot! It didn't get to the layer of skin where they would be worried at all or would need stitches so was pretty easy. They just cleaned it and gave me some antibiotics. It looks worse then it is in the pictures trust me. 👍

Besides that, all is well in Alice Springs! I'm a lot more cautious around dogs, but my companion is even more so! I protected him from these dogs, so he is fine😎😉.

The heat feels great sometimes and other times is hot as!!! I'm grateful for that cooling towel y'all sent me ages ago! Oh I got something in the mail from you, looks like a bunch of candy and stuff I think! Thanks so much for that! I'll send a pic of our Christmas tree I think you will have a kick out of it. As well, yes I know who sent that package! He was a really nice member that loved me in Grange! All the members there loved me I feel like, because I was there for so dang long! 😋 Yeah just hang on to it and I'll open in when I get home. Didn't know he was sending anything and have no clue what it is haha. I was pretty surprised, but I will tell him thank you!

Hope you like the snake photos to. It was cool holding it, because it felt strong as! Wouldn't ever mess with something like that in the wild ever! I also sent some extra pics from camel riding that we got sent to us. There are probably more photos that I will get and send eventually. By the way, did you clear up some of the Google drive because a lot looks like it is missing. I have it all backed up on the TB drive you sent me. Do you have them all saved to? Just curious:)

Come prepared as possible to skyping because I won't have as much time as usual.
Love you heaps! Talk to you tomorrow!

Dog bite

Bandages

Crocodile

Bearded dragon

Python

We had to sing for our food

Email #95
Area: Alice Springs
Companion: Elder Olsen

Excerpts from Mom's email:

Hey Mom!

Yeah I am still loving it here!! Yeah you are right about that, trials actually can become blessings! I am really appreciating my time here right now and I know the Lord placed me right here right now for a reason. Yeah I really enjoyed that movie and now I just want to see it so bad again haha. I think we are watching another movie on Christmas eve or something so that will be cool but don't worry. From what you all have said, I have heaps of movies to catch up on! Plus I am so down to watch the Greatest showman like 20 more times lol! It is up there with one of my favorite movies now. Still not sure if that is just because I haven't seen any movie really for two years haha. Yeah we have been listening to that music since the morning we were allowed to haha even used it as our alarm! Just nice to have a change of music. I gave all the other missionaries in the zone the music as well, because I guess dad sent me the most. Everybody loves it!

So M... and K.... are doing okay.. Well M... has been in a lot of pain because of his leg and it is not looking to good. K.... even told us that he was sedated because of the pain. So haven't been able to teach him, but definitely past the anti hurdle. Now just have to get past the health hurdle. We are helping him with his shed in the back this week hopefully when he is feeling up to it and then hopefully having a lesson with the Clark's there as well. I'm just grateful for the chance to teach him really!

This past week was yet another great one! We had a few teaching appointments that went really well, yet the only one close to Baptism is still M.... We taught one of our friends, V..., who is from Samoa and it was cool to use the Samoan language that I have to help in teaching. I'm pretty rusty on it because I haven't used it in a while. I guess if you don't use it, you lose it... The spirit brought a lot back to me though luckily and it really helped in the lesson and I thought it was cool! He is actually headed to Samoa for 4 weeks so we won't see him until January.

We go finding in town a lot because there is usually a good amount of people there and we always meet some characters haha. We have this one friend down there who is always selling her paintings on the street. We call her Big Sister and her paintings are pretty good compared to others who sell them on the street. That is a big thing here for the aboriginals. Some of them just sit on the ground in the middle of town and try to sell their paintings to tourists haha. The really good ones go in the art galleries though and go for a lot ($1000-$5000) depending on size and artist.

Speaking of, one of our close friends, Marie, is really good! She sells her's to these galleries all the time and makes big money. She has been a member for a while and is really cool! She belongs to the Bird family, which is this huge aboriginal family who are almost all members. There are like 60+ Birds on our records. Anyway, so I've gotten to know them well and Marrie told me she would paint my scriptures for me! She is really good, so of course I gave them to her and she went out bush for the week. Well she came back and gave them to me! They are so cool looking now and have to be my favorite thing I've picked up here so far as a souvenir. I'll send you a pic of it, but trust me it doesn't really do it justice. She also is now working on a canvas for me to!!! She is honestly the best! I'm going to give her some money for it just as a thank you when I get it. She makes big bucks for her paintings though so probably won't mean much haha.

On Friday, we decided to make some cookies and do a cookie Drop for members and friends. We ended up making enough for about 10 plates and it really helped us get to know the members in the branch and get our name out there better haha. So that is what the plates are in the picture.

We got into the home of these members on Saturday for dinner and they had us do something I've never been asked to do... We had to sing for our food😂😂. I guess it is a tradition they do with missionaries is to have them sing before we eat. We'll I sang "Mary did you know?" because of the Christmas music we have been listening to and my companion sang another Christmas song to. It was pretty fun, but scary! Just something to remember I guess.

Today should be a fun day, we have planned to go to a few museum places around, so that should be good. Right now I'm just emailing from my phone in the flat, but right before I made some bacon and eggs for us. Gotta love pday!

Well love you heaps and have a good week!

Attached: Top of my scriptures (tree of life painting), Ray and I (one of our friends), and camel riding so you can see


Excerpts from Dad's email:

Hey Dad!

Yeah I got all of the music, thanks so much for that. I shared it with other missionaries in Alice and they all love it too. I had more then everyone because pretty much no one, but me got any sent to them haha. Everyone loves Anthem lights now and they never heard of them. I actually found this Bluetooth speaker in one of the flats I stayed in that a missionary left behind so I use that often with the phone.

For skyping, I'm logged on to Skype on my phone already and use it sometimes because I Skype in a lot for meetings or Skype other missionaries into meetings. It's a big mission, so we use that heaps. President has a sweet set up for outlying areas with special speakers and things we use and projects his slide show to us and everything. He is pretty techy because of his past job. Anyway, yeah I have Skype and yes probably Christmas day at around 8-9ish. Elder Clark said he will call you maybe before to confirm it if we need to. If anything changes about it, I'll just ask him to let you know.

Yeah I'm looking forward to all the movies! It's crazy thinking about all that! Last night my companion was teasing me about dating and all that stuff soon. I'm not trunky, but still look forward to all of that. At the same time, nervous for school and dating and going back to life there. All good though, I don't think it will be any harder then it was adjusting to here. If I can go through some of the stuff I have here, I recon I will be okay.

I'm actually looking forward to telling you all the stories and things because as you probably know, I don't tell you all the experiences in email haha. Some I've saved for home, so look forward to that😋.

One thing I'll tell you about this week that was cool was going to a community again. We were just walking through and all of a sudden, this little dog gets under the fence and comes after us. At first it startled us, so we start running until I realized it was just a small pup haha. I was laughing pretty hard just because it scared us that much. Dogs here can be scary and everyone has them, so then when some abo tries to get in, that dog is handy. Luckily we live on the safe side of town because we can't have a dog.

It's getting hot as over here now. This past week we had a few days hit 40 (104° F), but man this week it's supposed to hit 42(107° F) tomorrow and Wednesday. Finding in that sucks! Yesterday it was getting warm and I drank two bottles of water in like 10 min. We so happened to be near the branch presidents house so I went by there for the first time. They are awesome actually! Pres Ford has been the branch president for 9 years and branch presidency for 17 years... President Marquis told me when I came here how Pres Ford is the clue here. I can see why now! He is one to look up to!

Elder Mattie, one of the Elders here in Alice just went down to Adelaide for his leavers stuff. It's crazy because he is only one transfer ahead of me. He leaves for home today! I hope I can stay here my last transfer as well! It is what I've been praying for since I got here!

Well that's all I got for ya this week!
Love you and talk to you next week!

Alice Springs Christmas card

Back Cover (Tree of Life) 

Spine