Zone conference was the highlight of the week

Email #94
Area: Alice Springs
Companion: Elder Olsen

Excerpts from Mom's email:

Hey Mom!

Holly cow this week was a crazy one! Some much I need to tell you about and I don't know where to start with it all. First, yes I can Skype at 8 or 9am on Christmas day here at the Clark's house, I just asked them. We wouldn't climb that place as well we are not allowed to. President is still seeking guidance for approval for that trip so it might not even happen we are not sure yet.

Well M... is back on track. We found out that K....'s coworker showed her this Anti Mormon video with all kinds of false bad stuff. One with stuff in the temple and things like that that we completely wrong. So he said he believes everything we have told him so far, but asked what we haven't told him. With multiple lengthy visits with the Clark's, it's been straightened out with M.... K.... however hasn't met with us yet. We even had President come see M... while he was here. M... told him about his conversion story and then his experiences in the past week with anti Mormon literature. In the end he said he has come out of it stronger! So I'm not sure where things will go from here and when the baptism will occur. It has been crazy helping with all of this though and definitely has been a learning experience!

The week started really great on Monday when we went to this cool gap with the other elders. Then the week progressed so great! Most of the week was finding and we even found two new people who are Pentecostal. They are missionaries from their church, so it should be an interesting time teaching them.

On Friday, we had our booth at the Christmas night market. So they often have these night markets where there is heaps of people who come see these booths. We put one up ever time and the biggest one of the year was the Christmas one. It was a lot of fun and pretty much all of Alice Springs was there! It was packed! We set up a Whiteboard that said "What does Christmas mean to you?" and had people write their thoughts. Then we had heaps of light the world water bottles that we handed out like crazy and light the world balloons that drew a lot of kids and their parents over! It was a lot of fun and the Marquis came and saw it at the end of the night to! Along with our booth, there was a lot of other fun ones that we were able to look at and saw a lot of cool things like aboriginal are and things like that.

Zone conference was the highlight of the week for sure! For the first two hours, it was pretty much a Christmas Devotional in the zone and then we went to go get changed into our pday clothes. Then we car pooled to are activity that I was shocked to see! We rode camels! Yeah like the wise men! Something I never would have expected but it was iconic and fitting. Apparently there are more camels here in Australia then anywhere else in the world. So I rode a camel in the middle of Australia! It was the coolest thing honestly!

Following that, they had us go shower and change again into pday clothes and we had a movie night for the rest of the night! We watched a few short ones like Charley brown and then for the good stuff! I'm sure you have heard of the movie "The Greatest Showman"! That is up there now with one of my favorite movies!!! It was so good and was the first real movie I've seen in two years besides church movies! Then we finished the night by watching "The Nativity", a really really good movie as well! I really enjoyed it! The whole day was just so awesome and one I didn't expect! The only downside is for the past day and a half, songs from "The Greatest showman" keep playing in my head haha.

Well yeah that was my fun week. In a nutshell. The Christmas season is just getting started as well here in Alice Springs! It's suppose to keep getting better and better!

Yeah it's kind of hot but all good, I'm getting tan. My legs are still white as because they never get to see the sun. Today we went on a hike to a place that looks over Alice Springs so that was cool and this afternoon for lunch we are all going to the Clark's and playing games and things.
honestly! I love the people here, the member, those we teach, even my companion! It is all just really amazing and it is where I want to finish my time here in Australia!

Love you and have a good week!


Excerpts from Dad's email:

Hey Dad!

Yeah time is flying for me to! Sometimes I am excited to be able to come home and have some freedom and watch movies and all that good stuff, but at the same time I am having such am experience here! I don't know how I feel about it all yet haha.

Well I wrote about most of this week again to mom haha. More details I can muster... Warning, spoilers ahead, maybe read mom's email first... Well I'll admit that it was weird watching the Greatest showman! It gave me feelings I haven't felt for two years lol! Man that was a sweet movie! I'm going to watch it like 20 times when I get back! It might just be because it is the only movie I've seen for two years, but I really liked it.

The Camel riding was crazy because it was like 42°C out there literally in the center of Australia, plus in the middle of nowhere! It was good though because we just hung on and enjoyed it. It was about an hour or so ride and about 5 or 6 k's. It was presidents idea haha and they are doing things in every zone, but he said this is definitely the coolest one so I lucked out!

Sorry for the goofy videos, we were just having fun and I'm sure the heat was getting to us hahaha. The funny thing was later we watched the nativity movie, it gave us a different prospective for the Wise Men.

It was funny to see president in normal clothes. Haha he is such a dad! Wears the same brown belt, tucked in shirt, and jeans😂😂! Just thought that was funny!
Well that's about my week haha. Was cool but I can't think of much more details.

Love you and have a good week!

Water hole

White legs