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