Area: Mildura South of the Marion Zone
Companion: Elder Mose and Elder Fala
Excerpts from Mom's email:
Hey Mom!
Well I have about a hundred and one things that I could tell you about trust me! This first week of the transfer has been one heck of an adventure, but first I will answer your questions. Mildura is such a great area! I seriously love it here! It may just be my fav area pretty soon. It is a pretty good sized area for sure! Will get to that part later. The ward is really great! They are mostly Samoan yeah. My companions are pretty cool. Elder Fala is really cool dang love him! Elder Mose is finishing up his mission here pretty soon in about 4 weeks. Still adjusting to it for, sure but getting a good grasp of it pretty quick. Yeah it has been pretty hot still, but not as bad yet. The teaching is pretty dang good too!
This past week has been so great! Now being a zone leader we started the transfer with a few meetings. MLC was a first for me. That is the leadership meeting for the mission where we discuss upcoming things in the mission and where all the mission changes happen. That was especially interesting since Mildura is an outlying area, about 5 hours out, we Skype in for all the meetings along with Darwin and Alice. That was the case for all the meetings for this transfer, so that was pretty different. The responsibilities out here as a zone leader are pretty different as well especially the fact that I have another companion who kind of helps with the responsibilities for it all.
As for travelling... Yeah we travel a little and will start to a lot more too. So I bet you have been wondering why we are in a trio. The main reason for it is because Elder Fala speaks Samoan. We go to a pickers camp that is about 45 min away where Samoans come here from Samoa for about 6 months to pick grapes and stuff like that. The boss there is a member, so she allowed us to go in and proselyte there. That is where many of our investigators come from because they are a humble people. Not just that, but our baptism this week was because of there. His name is Simi and he has been investigating for a little while, but this past week he made the decision to be baptized. We moved quickly and arranged everything because he heads back to Samoan in a few weeks, but in his testimony he said he is going to bring the gospel to his wife and kids there. The baptism was such a great experience. He had 18 of his friends from the camp come as well and most of them said they felt the spirit and want to learn more. Here is the bad news. Most of them just got moved to Renmark which is about 2 hours out. The good news is we called the assistants and president about it and it is now our top priority is going there and teaching them. It is hard to fully explain what the pickers said over email, but I know that there is so so much promise in each of them. We will be headed to Renmark 3 times a week for the next few weeks because they all head back to Samoa in 4 or so weeks. Pretty exciting!
Love you Mom and have a good week!
Excerpts from Dad's email:
Hey Dad!
In this area we are a half hour ahead and email about 8am. Idk if you know, but we are in Victoria so different time zone.
Well like I told mom, this area is awesome! We are working real hard let me tell yeah, but it is the best! Mom reminded me that it is almost my year mark, but it doesn't really feel like it and at the same time it feels like I have been serving my whole life haha. It is a weird feeling.
We just started working with a kid named W...... who is a good friend with the youth in this ward! He lives with members as well now. So his birthday is coming up on the 19th and as we were talking to him about baptism, he said he wants to be baptized on his birthday! Elder Mose has served in this area about a year ago, so he knew the kid and he challenged him to think about it back then. This year W...... went to FSY which changed him. He said he is sure now that he wants to be baptized. So we have to teach him all the lessons in the next few weeks really quickly. He is such a good kid, for sure with temptation in his life, but he has a willing heart which is so nice to see! We have already gone through two lessons with him and going really smooth.
The work here is going really well and we are really excited for this transfer! Especially with all the Samoan pickers! They are just so cool! They speak a little English, but most of the teaching is done is Samoan. For when Elder Mose and I teach, Elder Fala translates it for us! It is a different experience to any lessons I have ever had, but they are so powerful! It is in basically a higher language in Samoan because when talking about the Gospel you have to speak the higher language, so Elder Mose doesn't know how to teach in Samoan. I am trying to learn as much as I can and doing well with it. Pretty much all of language study now, Elder Fala is teaching us Samoan. I have my whole testimony memorized and know many words because of past companions. I think that is part of the reason I came here is because I've been around the Samoan people so much on my mission. Most of the ward is Samoan as well, so we get fed big feeds. You will be able to see that in the pics of the baptism! The ward is so supportive of it! I mean the turn out for the baptism was awesome!
Something really cool that we do in this area is we go street contacting at a plaza. We contact so many people there. Just within an hour we got 8 potentials because we can split contact people. Something really new to me, because it has been mostly knocking doors in my mission. I really like it though it is very effective! It is also nice to have a senior couple out here that help us with so much! I am really excited to serve here!
Well love you heaps and have a good week!
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