One of my favorite zone conferences I've had in my mission!

Email #83
Area: Oaklands Park
Companion: Elder Turcotte

Excerpts from Mom's email:

Hey Mom!

This week had a few trials to get through, but I am happy with how things turned out! It was also full of some really good times and a few funny moments.

The beginning of the week had a really great start with our District pday. We went to go and hike mount lofty again! It is one of the best hikes around and I really enjoyed it. It is a little bit difficult especially the trail we had to take this time around due to others being under construction. At the end of the hike, there were a couple of sore missionaries haha, but it was a lot of fun! We saw some wildlife as well which is always nice.

Through the week we have been trying to use more public transport which is so strange to me because back at home, I never road a bus besides a school bus haha. It has worked really well though honestly! We will be headed to one part of our area to follow up with a few people and on the way we found once 3 people in like 30 min which is a very good rate here! There are some days where you find 3 potentials in a whole day, so I really like this bus finding! People can't slam a door in your face or run away from you haha! Gives the spirit more of a chance to do it's work! My favorite bus to catch are the ones with the "Meet The Mormons" sign on it because it's like we are giving them a fair warning before they hop on!😂

After Pday on Monday we went to the mission home at the request of President Marquis. Turned out we spent the rest of the night there with President and Sister Marquis and the STL's in the zone and the Assistants. We had dinner with them and discussed and planned an event for Thursday. It was a Marion stake leadership training. So that was cool to plan out and put together with all of them and good to be in the mission home again for the first time in ages! Then on Thursday we gave the training to all the leadership in the Marion Stake even over the internet for those in outlying wards. The training was on what our mission plan is (circles around family history and the temple) and gave a training on how we can do it together. It was pretty nerve racking at first because these were not a bunch of missionaries, but ward and stake leaders we were training. It turned out really great though and was a great experience to be a part of.

Then on Tuesday we had our Zone conference! It was another really great one and we had some great training! Honestly was one of my favorite zone conferences I've had in my mission! President did this segment on proper studies and studying by topic that I feel will help so much! As well he answered a doctrinal question in depth because it is one people ask us quite a bit. He didn't give us this knowledge so we could bible bash, but so we know for ourselves. Now I completely understand in some detail how to answer the question "How do you have additional scripture if it says in the bible not to add on to these things?". I knew to a degree before, but now wow you taught us a lot so nicely and fluently. Also taught me a few concepts of master teaching.

We got some clarification now with the new mission rules and what they are. We got a new binder that has all of our mission policies in it and there are a few that many missionaries are having a hard time with. One being the music not being able to listen to it except at certain times. Not even in the car which is the only one I've had to accept because driving far distances suck with no music. It is okay though we just talk a lot now lol.

Love you!


Excerpts from Dad's email:

Hey Dad!

So we played what are the odds a few times this week for some reason or another and I am sending a few ridiculous videos home, but I think they are funny. Elder Peckipaki kept losing, so it made it funny to us. Jaela can probably explain what that game is I am guessing.

Today we are so dang busy! We have a flat inspection at 5:30 today which has made us have to clean like crazy! Having 4 Elders in one flat makes it really hard to keep clean when only one or two of you try to keep it clean! Plus we don't have a lawn mower, so we had to use a push one. Maybe I can send the vid of that to of my companion. I used the whipper snipper.  Then at about 1:00 today we have district Pday with the other district over in the sisters area near the beach. I think we are just playing sports and stuff for this one.

This week work wise was really slow. Not much progression with those we teach and didn't find anybody new this week:((. Was a hard one, but it was spaced out with some meetings and things we had to go do. For example, there were sisters in the zone who were riding their bikes and one of their skirts got caught up in the chain and ripped it to shreds. So the senior couple in charge of that stuff were to busy and asked us to go and try to fix the bike. So we get to their flat and take apart her brakes because it was REALLY stuck! So that took ages, but got it all fixed up!

Love you

Family Dinner

Pavlova

Slow cooked beef

Fixed the sisters bike like a pro

Bus finding

Meet the Mormons bus

Mount Barker District

Our shortcut

Caught sleeping again

Cutting our lawn

Elder Peckipaki lost the "what are the odds" challenge and had to eat an onion

Elder Peckipaki lost the "what are the odds" challenge and had to eat a watermelon rin

My favorite part of missionary work is the opportunity to bare testimony of the gospel

Email #82
Area: Oaklands Park
Companion: Elder Turcotte

Excerpts from Mom's email:

Hey Mom!

I thought just for fun, I would write a little bit about the daily schedule I have had basically for the past year and a half. It might be boring idk haha sorry of it is.

Each morning, we begin the day with exercise! I like to get outside when we do exercise because when I'm inside I don't have as much motivation to get moving. It is difficult to just get started at 6:30 with simple push ups and things. I'd much rather go outside and go for a run or play basketball or something. Recently we added weights to our workout, but don't really go hard out with it because we got too sore last time and it slowed us down the rest of the day. Baby steps haha. I also try to have as healthy of a breakfast as I can. I do only cereal maybe once or twice a week. For the rest, I enjoy having a smoothie (strawberry, banana, coconut, ect), often have eggs in some form, and even once a week I like to do pancakes and bacon.

Then our studies, which I have come to cherish every second of! In the beginning of my mission I was asked questions that I had no clue how to answer. It was so scary to have to teach about something that I had no idea how to explain having little to no teaching experience in my life. That is when I "gulped" the scriptures, underlining and note taking anytime I had a spare moment. My Preach My Gospel has become my study project for the last few months, slowly adding my favorite quotes and teachings that I come across. I've been slack on my study journal lately because I've been focusing more on my Preach My Gospel and often take quick notes on my phone now. I'm so grateful for my study time and I try my best to find as much time to spare to study even more. I had no idea I would enjoy it so much, but I guess that is the effect of the gospel. I know every missionary says this, but I so badly want to continue these habits following my mission.

My favorite part of missionary work is the opportunity to bare testimony of the gospel and to teach the principles that I have learned and loved. Sitting done face to face, a lot of the time with a complete stranger, you are able to feel who this person is. Each person is different and has so many unique things to them that make each and ever lesson different. That is such a thrill! I couldn't tell ya how many times I have begun answering on the spot a question and give an answer that I didn't even realize that I knew or begun teaching a principle and realize that I just learned something from what I had said! The spirit is real! "For it shall be given you in the very hour, yea, in the very moment, what ye shall say." (Doctrine and Covenants 100:6)

One of the most difficult parts of the work is finding. I struggled with that in the beginning, just walking up and beginning a conversation with a stranger on the street. We often times will find by street contacting in areas with lots of people (like at the jetty in my current area during sunset), door knocking where the spirit has directed us to go for usually an hour and a half at a time, and even now we will take public transportation and talk to people in that setting. Some missionaries, especially those in the city, have such a fast passed, almost startling approach that yes works for them at times, but I never enjoyed that myself. I felt that a wrote, fast, repetitive approach isn't me and not at all the way the ancients did it. I have found that a genuine approach, being myself as I would talk to a friend, has been the most successful way to find genuine people. However, not many Australians like to be bothered haha especially if it is about religion. Over time I became used to the rejection and discovered the secret. I realized that I was not there for those that rejected me or the church. I was there looking for the one who is prepared. Each day as I remember that, even when I have another door slammed in my face I think the words "that's not the person the Lord sent me here to find" in my head and quickly move forward. I feel the same as Alma when he said: “O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people!” (Alma 29:1).

Pdays are always exciting, but often times packed busy especially with my some of my current leader assignment. We will start off first thing at 8:00am, take off to the mission office to grab all of the zones supply needs, packages, mail from family/friends, and almost every time something unique like last week taking and Elders bike in to get replaced. Following that we head off to email as soon as we can because we know you are waiting haha. Emailing time includes emailing President a detailed report of the Zone, filling out the baptismal trackers for all those in the Zone who are progressing toward baptism, and emailing everyone I possibly can in the time I have. A huge blessing now is the smart phones that have allowed us to read our emails during the week at lunch time so that we have more time to email others back. Opens up our time much more which has been a huge blessing! After Emailing, we go shopping for our food and all other needs and sometimes a few wants haha. The rest of the day is ours to have fun! My favorite pdays are ones with districts because it's more of a group activity. Today we are for example going to mount lofty on a hike! I believe next week we are going to a national park where I can hold a kawala and maybe feed some kangaroos.

I love my time here in Australia! It is difficult at times, but has been overwhelmingly joy filled! How do I feel at this very moment? I feel eternally grateful for the life I have been blessed with! To be born of goodly parents, being raised in the gospel. I never realized before how lucky I am. I am grateful to have the privilege to serve the Lord and to be in the exact place where He wants me to be! There is no other place I feel that I could have grown more than here in Australia. I'm so grateful for the lives that I've had the blessing to touch. It's not about me, but it's about the children of God that I meet. Most importantly, I am grateful for my Savior! He means everything to me! I never understood before why he was on that cross. Now that I do, I have been changed and pray that I will become who God wants me to be!

I add my testimony to that of the Prophet Joseph Smith: “And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives!” (D&C 76:22).

Excerpts from Dad's email:

Hey Dad!

My week sounds like was much faster than yours! It went so dang fast again! We did quite a bit! Started out with our district meetings as usual, but following the one out in Mount Barker, we helped the senior couple finish the sisters flat over there. They have been out of there area this whole transfer so far because they have not had a flat and the sisters have been super anxious to get over there! Well on Wednesday, we get there and put together all of this furniture and things like wardrobes. Well the craziest thing was how nice their flat is! It was the only one the senior couple could find, and this thing is nice as!!! I mean they have even a room just for their clothes basically! Well that is what they decided the extra room is for lol. They are finally over there though after we finished it up. Then right after that, we went on a half trade off with the Elders in Murray Bridge. It was good to see the members again while visiting and the cool thing was at the Pecks, the family that fed us dinner, they had her brother from Samoa just arrive. So, we ate with probably 15-20 Samoans and it was a lot of fun to talk back and forth and refine my Samoan. I haven't used it very much in ages, so it is good to so I can retain it. It was funny because the brother that was visiting was joking about my Samoan name, Vamua. He said "oh you are the short grass and I am the long grass" basically. Probably sounds super strange to you but for some reason, Samoans have a way of making things super funny! The best part was when I talked back to him in Samoan, he was super surprized!

We have found a great place to go finding at night when we can't door knock. We go to this jetty right around sunset and it is always got lots of people there! My companion served in the city for ages, so he has some very good street contacting skills! I've learned a lot from him for sure! I've taught him a few things as well about how to approach someone who looks busy. There are a few tricks that I have learned in contacting that are very helpful. It is interesting the way people think and how subtle things make a difference.

One person that stood out this week who we are teaching is B...... He is from Napal and he has super strange questions like "why do we need to breathe" and things like that. Well that is what we thought he was asking anyways. We figured out that because of the language barrier, we misunderstood. He was explaining how he 100% knows for example that he needs to breathe. He does not however know that there is a God in the same way. That is what he desires. Before we honestly thought this dude just wanted to know why we need to breathe in the first place because he kept going on about breathing lol. Now we are on the same page and can move forward with his concern.

Tomorrow we have zone conference and my companion, and I have been having a hard time putting together our training. We have a good direction we want to go, but we can't seem to make it flow. We want to explain how to ask better questions or "inspired questions". The principle is how to help those we teach become agents to act instead of objects being acted upon (2 Nephi 2:14). Sometimes we seem to almost drag people to baptism, but the idea behind this training is to help us ask questions in such a way that allows them to ponder and figure out doctrine personally. We are just having a hard time figuring out how to apply our own training in our training basically haha and that is the hard part. We are going to do it through! Just last night we were super exhausted from a long day and just could not get it together to make the training work. Wish me luck for tomorrow!

Sorry my emails might be become more and more boring haha but I am trying.
Love you!

Elder Bryner and Elder Turcotte

Breakfast

Nachos

Putting cabinet together for the sisters

This is all about Jesus Christ

Email #81
Area: Oaklands Park
Companion: Elder Turcotte

Excerpts from Mom's email:

This week went by really fast and I'm having a hard time recalling what even happened this week lol. There were a few cool things though I think.

To start off the week as always, we had our District Meetings and this time around we set some Action Items for the zone! I'll send the Action Plan to ya so you can have an idea of what we are doing. So we went to each district and had them give ideas for things they have done to for example find new people to teach. We wrote all of these on the board and each district voted on three things they want to do. Then we went to the next district, showed them the three the last district decided apon, and then got more ideas. In the end, we had a few to decide upon but the ones on the list is now our action plan! It was pretty fun making this and putting it together with each district. In the end, we simply put this together in my phone and sent it out! The goal is that we stay accountable to these action items as a zone so that we are doing as much as we can to achieve more! These are things that have worked in the past and as. We'll a few new ideas that we haven't tried yet, but we have already seen increased success this week!

We then had MLC this week on Friday and we counciled for the whole morning and into the afternoon about what the future holds for the mission and helped President Marquis have a better idea what direction we as a mission can go. Things like the future rules of the mission (because many of them have either been done away with except the whitehandbook of course), new ideas for family history and English classes being implemented here, ect. It has been a huge learning experience for me being able to be apart of this. There were a few occasions where we were pretty clear what we wanted to do, but president then asked us to give an argument for the other side of the coin even if we didn't fully agree that we should do that to get better perspective. Looking at the bigger picture and looking at both sides and outcomes. He was a CEO before for BTU so he has some experience on counciling making decisions with a council. I definitely felt very taught and am greatful for these experiences!

There is this member in the ward that I have to tell ya about! His name is "Chief Captain Romano"! Haha he is the man! He is this old man that is just so interesting! He wears a captain hat and has some unique features! Well on Wednesday every week we make pancakes with him and French toast, then in the weekend he feeds us the hottest food you'll ever eat! Seriously your mouth is on fire! Haha kind of fun!

Something that is still blowing my mind is this whole Mormon Musical thing! There are signs all over the place about it saying "The Mormons are Coming" and stuff like that! I didn't realize that it is this big of a thing honestly! It is pretty funny though and it's getting the word out in its own way. I've had a few people ask if we like to dance or sing and stuff like that hahaha, but people are really cool about it! The tickets are expensive as I hear so probably not going to see it haha.

We have been teaching this couple from Africa recently who are super good! Their names are L... and S......! So they are super genuine! I think they hold real solid potential based on what she was saying. She said that she wants to look more into the Book or Mormon because when she first met us, she prayed and asked God if she should still meet with us and the response she got was "Yes, this is all about Jesus Christ" which was perfect for her because they are both strong Christians. The only concern for them is that we believe a little differently then what they do and she told us that she will have to received real answers from heaven for her to believe different. Not really a concern, but we will be praying heaps for them!

Sorry that is all I got for now.
Love you!


Excerpts from Dad's email:

Hey Dad!

Sorry I probably wont have to much else to tell ya then what I told mom already haha. Well my companion and I get along great still! We have a lot of fun and seem to have the same interests! Gives us heaps to talk about for sure. He has been out for I think 10 months now. He is 19 years old to answer moms question. The weather here is getting nicer as time goes on, but I am not looking forward to the summer months!

This morning was great because we went to the mission office to get the zone's supply needs and while we were there, I got this nice chair for my desk that is really comfortable because one of the senior couples went home and left his chair for me! Made me super happy haha. Plus we got a blender for our flat finally so will be smashing the smoothies again! Did I tell ya about the weights? I don't think I did. So we can lift weights now but if we buy weights, we can't take them with us during transfer. So an inactive member that we met door knocking said we can take some of his weights to our flat and borrow them while he is out of town for a couple of months. So now I can get big 30 min every morning haha. At least might be able to get back some muscle mass I have lost a little bit!

Sorry I don't know what else has happened besides that haha.

Love you heaps!

Evening door knocking

From last transfer

Beach by sister's flat, how luck are they?

Another sisters view

Chief Bryner

I'm just a chief

Breakfast

Chief Bryner part 3

Just having fun with the camera

Mexican dinner

My holey socks

Zone Goals

God hit me a little...we were angels sent from heaven!

Email #80
Area: Oaklands Park
Companion: Elder Turcotte

Excerpts from Mom's email:

Hey mom!

Well this week once again in Adelaide has actually been very good! Still each day is an adventure and have different things that you wouldn't expect occur. Once again having a zone leader assignment, but this time around it is a little different! It feels more natural then before and doesn't feel as demanding. I can still fully focus on my area and purpose while still having my other additional responsibilities. I also have my new companion training him how to be a zone leader. Something that president said I'm leadership training however is that most likely, nobody will finish their mission as a leader, however will finish fully in the field. He makes no guarentee that say I won't finish as a leader, but most likely this transfer or my next will be my last as a leader. It's been such a blessing to learn as much as I have in these experiences here! I know they will continue to come! Man time is flying by to fast though.

This past transfer was so crazy that we are still trying to figure things out! Almost everyone was flushed in so everyone doesn't know exactly where to start. It was a slow week figuring out what the last elders did here, because I know they were having more success then we have right now haha. The smart phones are helping a little bit with following up. On Friday, we  texted over 100 people that were in record, but not to many replies as of yet. We probably will be calling heaps of them this week and going by there homes. The biggest help is the map on the phone that shows us where everyone lives! It has made planning a lot easier, but still building the area at the moment.

Something that came to a surprise is that the assistants are in our ward and district now! So we work really closely with them and hear from President much more as well, even saw him at church this week. It's good to be working with them. More because I'm good friends with Elder McDonald (who is from South Africa by the way) because we came in together.

To answer your questions, I didn't know that many areas closed, but it doesn't surprise me it was a crazy transfer for sure! Over 80 of the 110 missionaries here moved areas! That won't happen again for sure though! A missionary I know that owned a company back home and is a CEO explained to me that often times when someone takes over a company they take down a lot of things and build it the way they want it to be. I think that is kind of what president is doing now, but if course the way God wants it to be instead.

Love you heaps!


Excerpts from Dad's email:

Hey dad!

Sorry I am so late to emailing, we decided to go to the mission office first to get all the business we had done there, but it took longer then I thought haha. Yeah I am loving it this transfer! I can tell it will be a fun one and won't have a boring moment at all.

A cool experience was this week when we were riding back to the flat before the close of the night, we saw this old lady pushing a cart seeming like she was struggling with it. My first thought was to go and help her, but then second thoughts like "we are gonna have like 10 minutes to eat dinner" and "she will be fine" cake to me. I think God hit me a little (I hit a low tree branch) and that to me was God saying "think straight and help that poor lady". So we crossed the road to see if she needed a hand. At first she was startled and wondered what the heck we were doing, but after a second or two she understood who we were. She talked to us for a couple of minutes and began to cry. She has been struggling lately really bad and has been praying that she may know God still cares or if he has forsaken her. When she saw Jesus Christ on our badge, she just opened up like we were angels sent from heaven! It is one of the most powerful feelings to be an answer to someone's prayer! Just humbling to know the Lord can use someone like me, as stubborn as I can be to follow prompting sometimes, to answer this women's prayer. We should always follow promptings even though it may not be exactly what we want to do at first! We referred her to the sisters and hope to see her progression soon!

Well all I got for now.
Love you heaps!