Monday, March 6, 2017

March 5, 2017

February 26, 2017

I actually got transferred this time

February 19, 2017

the group email

I'm just inching and inching closer to the big year mark but it just doesn't seem to come! Just a couple weeks away!😫
This week was another pretty average one. Except for the fact that we had district conference (kind of like stake conference) on the weekend. 
Throughout the week we caught up with most of our investigators. Still no progress but I think in the next couple of week we'll start to see some steps forward. Well, that is, if I'm here...I've been in the area for 5 transfers, or almost 7 months, now and transfers are next week, so chances are this is my last week in the good ol area of Atherton. We got the address of our investigator from Papua New Guinea because he flies back today. We got his email and stuff so we could keep in touch because he was probably our most progressing investigator and he doesn't even live here. Saturday we traveled down to the ZL's area, Cairns, for district conference. First they had a District Missionary Training Conference which was mostly for the branch missionaries and branch mission leaders but the full time missionaries from Cairns (theres 3 companionships in Cairns, including the ZLs) presented the trainings. I played the piano for the opening and closing hymns :P And with missionaries we're ALWAYS singing "called to serve" for ANY meeting and that happens to be one of the hymns I have a really hard time playing but for the MTC I just simplified it enough that I could play it well. 
After that I went with Elder Fukofuka to invite less actives and part member families to the district conference. We went up to this one place where you can basically see all of Cairns from. I'll attach pictures. Then we had the adult session of conference. It was alright. A couple of the talks were about marriage. One was about participating in YSA. Soooo yeah. For dinner we bought a ton of KFC and between us, the ZLs and the Innisfail Elders it was gone in like 10 minutes. The Sunday general session was really good. The mission presidency and the district presidency all spoke, as well as the Brisbane temple president, who is awesome. I particularly liked his talk because he got super animated and was all
"Critics will say the church is declining. Anti mormons will say it's failing. THEY. ARE. WRONG. The church has NEVER been stronger. The temple has NEVER been busier." It just hit a lot of things on the head with stuff I've been worrying about lately because to see all the people going less active and things it's really disheartening but President Cowen's talk was all about doing family history since the temple isn't as available to people so far up north. Took some pictures with President McSwain the mission president after but by then half the zone had left.
And lastly the biggest highlight of the week was I got to ordain Joey to the Melchizedek priesthood. We baptized his son last October, his wife a couple weeks ago, and he and his son got the Aaronic priesthood a few weeks ago, and yesterday he got the higher priesthood. It's been so good to see their family take all these big steps. I'm super proud of Joey for deciding to come back to church and to make changes in his life. So yeah, that's my week. Wish me luck for transfers :((((((
Elder Cummings