Tuesday, December 13, 2016

December 11, 2016

When training is kind of anti climatic

This week wasn't as exciting as others, but that's okay, because things are still going great! Spent the first few days of the week in Cairns waiting for Elder Bullock, my son (missionary lingo for the missionary I'm training). We drove up to this area called Port Douglas. It was an awesome drive because the road ran right along the ocean but since I was driving I didn't get any pictures :( Elder Hausia flew out on Monday and Elder Bullock flew in on Wednesday, and we drove back to our area Thursday morning. Elder Bullock is pretty cool, he's a farm boy from Alberta, Canada. We get along well, which I'm really glad about because otherwise it would be a long 12 weeks. It's weird though because I honestly thought I was going to get a Filipino companion. That's okay, though, I'm really glad I have someone who speaks English. Most of the week we just went around making visits to people. We found a couple new investigators, which hasn't happened in a while but it's a Fijian guy and his cousin. We taught about the Restoration and gave them a Book of Mormon, and as we were walking out the door the cousin had already picked it up and began reading it. So that was cool. Saturday I got a spiritual prompting to visit this former investigator family I found in the area book, and we talked to the dad for a while and found out the rest of the family lived in another house in town but they were still married and together and all that but they just wanted space. The dad was really glad to see us and we talked with him for a while but from the teaching record it was the wife and kids were the ones who got really close to baptism but the dad shut them down because he got anti-mormon bombed...he was a nice enough guy though but no matter what we tried we couldn't get the rest of the family's address out of him :( Hopefully one of these days we'll come across them. Sunday at church I gave a talk about how the Savior made people better because of the things he taught. We taught the Gospel Principles class off the cuff which happens every week but it was still a decent lesson. Other than that, I don't have much else. 
Elder Cummings








December 4, 2016


I don't normally include on his blog my personal emails to him and his responses.  But this one was too funny not to include.  I guess I should be more careful!

Here's my email:

November 27, 2016

what's a thanksgiving?

So first off: Yeah, they don't celebrate Thanksgiving here, so actually forgot about it existing until Friday or Saturday and it hit me suddenly that I could have been having a big feed on Thursday but missed out! Oh well. I did get my Christmas package though so that's pretty cool! Got here waaaaay earlier than I thought it would, though. I had shipped a couple packages from Australia to Utah before and it had taken a month and a half or so. Not complaining though! Got some slacks in a bigger size and some candy, stuff like that. Monday we didn't do much for p-day, like usual. But today we're doing p-day with the Innisfail missionaries for a district p-day! Noice! Tuesday we watched the videos of zone conference. Since we live so far away from the rest of the mission (a 2 1/2 hour plane flight away) they just recorded the trainings and things and sent the videos to us. They were good though, and President McSwain gave a training about the Church's Christmas initiative this year, which I am SO excited for. They gave us heaps of pass along cards to hand out for it and basically every day in December they have a different suggestion on how to serve somebody else. After watching those we helped a guy in our ward paint a gazebo for a couple hours. Wednesday we had service as well but the investigator we were doing it for wouldn't answer his door because he was sleeping so we just found something to do and left, haha. That night we had a BBQ with the Clarks, the family with the son we baptized recently and the mom's investigating the church and the dad's a returning member, had some delicious meat and a good lesson about prophets. So Wednesday and Thursday we had really productive days but Friday and Saturday really slowed down because no one was around. But we continued to be diligent and things. Overall good week. The music organizer sister asked me to play for sacrament meeting next week because the normal lady is in New Zealand for a few weeks. Yikes! But yeah we're doing well and hope all is well on your end as well! 
Elder Cummings


November 20, 2016

A story about waiting

November 13, 2016

Like that one Bananarama song
It wasn't too much of a cruel summer but it has been SCALDING hot. The last few days of the week it got up to 40 degress Celsius (which I think is 100 degrees farenheit or something. So we tried to avoid door knocking when we could but in consequence we didn't have any new investigators! That's how it goes I guess. This week we're just gonna have to sweat it out if it continues to be this hot. But Sunday started out pretty out but got really cloudy and rained HARD for the rest of the day. Apparently Mareeba had lightning bolts everywhere and wind blowing trees down. But we didn't get over there until most of the storm had subsided. Wednesday we had interviews with President McSwain. He is just the coolest. 
We found out Billy Jo, one of our investigators, can get sealed to her boyfriend Tony and their kids in the temple even though they weren't married and stuff. We thought she was going to go head over heels to learn that, but when we went by Sunday to teach their family she just kind of sat there. We asked her if she believed us but she wasn't sure, and we asked her if she wanted to know, and she still wasn't sure. So she's still got some obstacles, as is evidenced by the fact that she's been investigating for over 2 years now but we were able to get her permission for her son Cody to get put on baptismal date again. A couple of our other investigators Xanthe and Kaysan are progressing well though, they just need to get married. It's a long process in Australia but it'll be worth it! We also set a baptismal date with our investigator Paul, because he really wants the priesthood to bless his home and family, and eventually he wants his family sealed in the temple , however the major roadblock there is that his wife is a super devout SDA, which is a very popular religion among the island people and very traditional, kind of like Catholicism in other cultures. We'll see how that goes. All is going well. President McSwain advised me to study HARDER which I have no problems with. Good deal.
Elder Cummings


November 6, 2016