April 25, 2017

temple p day

What the heck, I wasn't even done looking through my emails when I looked at my session timer and the library computer says I only have a few minutes late. It's a 75 minute computer but it's only been like half an hour. So this'll be quick.

This last week has been good. We found a family with 3 unbaptized kids and they're all really keen so we're excited for that. Friday Elder Gifford S Nielson of the Seventy (and Pacific area presidency) came to do a mission tour. He spoke about who we are vs whose we are and repentance and all sorts of stuff. Saturday we went to the bishop's daughter's baptism. We were hoping to see our investigators this week but we didn't catch most of them. Oh well. Monday we drove around the bush trying to visit people but they all fall through. Yesterday was ANZAC day, basically Australian/new zealand memorial day. I freaked out because I remember LAST years ANZAC day, and almost everthing we did, and I can't believe it's already been a year. Today we went to the temple for p-day. It was good, of course. No funny stories to report but yeah I've gotta email president so talk to yall later
Elder Cummings

April 17, 2017

Easter week

Yeah so the reason I'm getting around to this on Tuesday is because they changed our pday. Monday was a public holiday so they wanted us to get out and work since people would be home....or at least, they THOUGHT people would be. We went tracting for a couple hours and only talked to a couple people, everyone was out. Not a whole lot to report this week, other than we found a part member family. They live kind of out in the bush so when we drove out there there was a big fence around their property, we yelled out to see if anyone was home (because you never know what kind of dogs will be lurking inside) and we were about to leave but then a taxi pulled up and a couple of kids got out and said they lived there. They invited us in and we talked to their family about baptizing their 3 baptismal age kids which they were pretty keen for. We'll hopefully have a baptism on the 29th. Our investigator had her baptismal interview yesterday and she passed so now we just need her mom's permission. Soooo yeah for Easter we just did regular missionary work besides going to church and had dinner with the Stockman's, a pretty cool family. Their son just got back from his mission in Sydney North, he was pretty good mates with one of my best friends who's serving there, Eugene Jo. But yeah it would be kind of sad to live in Australia or New Zealand because if you do you have a 90% chance of getting called to somewhere in Australia or New Zealand, and there's only 7 or 8 missions so you have a really good chance as serving in the same mission as other people from your stake, your cousins, or even your sibling, as is the case with Elder and Sister Evans in our mission. Anyways hope everyone had a great Easter!

Elder Cummings

April 9, 2017

This is Scott. Look at Scott! C. Scott Grow. Good job, Scott.

Sorry about the terrible joke in the subject line but I couldn't help thinking it during general conference. I need to repent of light mindedness, haha. Anyways, this week was pretty crazy, just because it was the last week of the transfer. This one FLEW by. I've already been in my new area for 6 WEEKS so I guess it can't be my NEW area anymore. So just for those at home keeping score, here's my mission summary:

I'm now on my 10th out of 17 transfers now. 

I'm in my third area, Park Ridge. I'm staying this transfer so this'll be my 2nd transfer in Park Ridge.

Elder Malobago is still my companion, just like last transfer. Which is good.

And honestly, I don't have a whole lot to say about this last week just because it was the last week of the transfer and we did SO much. Tuesday we had zone meeting and flu shots. Wednesday was normal except for the fact one of the zone leaders went on exchanges with us. Elder Smoot, the one I'm distantly related to. His companion went with the other elders who share the flat with us. We had dinner at the bishops and all his young kids beating each other to a pulp reminded me of how me and my siblings use to wrestle like that when we were their age. Brought back precious memories. Thursday we deep cleaned the flat for transfers, and then Elder Malobago had a dentist appointment in the city so that took a couple hours. We had an awesome lesson with our investigator Revern. He's been making a lot of changes in his life and he's hit rock bottom but since investigating the church things have really been starting to look up for him, so he's been telling us his faith has grown heaps. Still thinks it's too soon for him to get baptized though :/ Friday we had a service with a member, Brother Maire. Actually he took us to do some service for a less active family whose workshop got flooded from the cyclone last week. We also did some service at Brother Maire's house though. For lunch he fed us kangaroo steak he hunted himself. Honestly, it tasted fine, but it was tough as rubber. Saturday and Sunday our stake watched general conference. I really enjoyed President Nelson's talk about letting the power of Christ into our lives and Elder Bednar's talk about the call to serve (obviously, I'm a missionary, come on). So yeah the pictures are of me and Elder Smoot and our flat right before transfers. Elder Ray got transferred unfortunately. He's one of the best friends I've made on the mission even though we only worked around each other for a transfer but he will be missed. Alright well I hope everyone's having fun.

Elder Cummings

April 2017

This is a picture that was posted on March 19th on the mission blog (australiabrisbanemission.com).  It was taken at a zone conference.

April 2, 2017

The FLOOOOOOD

Hey everyone, so this week was a pretty crazy week. For the first time ever on my mission we got confined to our flats because of bad weather. And by bad, I mean SEVERE. There was this massive cyclone that hit Australia farther up north the coast from Brisbane but the rain and wind still reached down to us. So Thursday we got a text saying for all the missionaries to stay in their flats for the day to stay safe. It was a much needed day off. We just laid around and studied, slept, and watched our scanty collection of church DVDs. It was just constant hard rain all day, with no breaks. Fortunately our flat didn't flood or anything.

But the NEXT day was strange, because we woke up and it seriously the nicest weather I've had in Australia so far. And I've been here for over a year now. Not humid, not cold, not too hot, a nice breeze, clear skies. Its just too bad it took a cyclone to get that nice of weather. We had service scheduled for a member but when we tried to get to his house all the roads were flooded. We tried like 3 different ways to get to his house but each way was flooded over. 

It was a great week this week though. Got a lot done. They had a multi stake mini MTC where youth/ysa who are preparing to go on missions went and were taught by RMs for a day. We went to help out doing role playing and stuff like that. It was pretty cool and I got to see a couple people from my first area who were there. Overall pretty A+. We're trying to help our recent convert who got baptized a couple weeks ago get prepared to go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead.

We had an investigator tell us he likes how our church is okay with people getting rich. We tried explaining prosperity is a blessing from living the gospel and not a main priority for members of the church and we help people become self-reliant, but he just kept saying how much he liked that the church doesn't condemn being rich. Interesting guy.

March 26, 2017

Rockin and a knockin

So this week was awesome, but it was also one of those weeks where the Lord tested our patience and our faith. The zone leaders challenged us to hit our hastening the work standard for contacts (basically to get 150 contacts with people) for the week. So to do that we had to hit the streets hard. And I don't know if we picked a bad area or what but 90% of the doors barely let us start speaking before they'd say "not interested" and shut the door. So we had very little success with that but the awesome stuff came at the end of the week.

Wednesday we had interviews with President McSwain. Those went really well. They gave us a little training about the #PRINCEofPEACE Easter initiative the church is doing this year and I got to see Elder Banks again (one of my previous companions) as well as Elder Rossi (another previous companion) who I haven't seen in almost 6 months. President is starting to crack down on obedience and making sure there are more missionaries ready to be leaders.

Thursday night we received a referral from a member, she said a coworker came up to her and told her about how her son has lived nothing but the party life and he finally has been making changes but he wants a faith or religion to help him fly straight. So the member said she would send the missionaries over to talk to her son and that's what we did on Friday. He's a really awesome guy and he was asking us all sorts of questions like what the commandments are and who Jesus Christ is and why He's important and all this stuff. He asked if he could come to church to check it out, which he did, and his parents even came as well. They knew a few people in the ward and even other members were really welcoming and introduced themselves. So please, if you ever see a new face at church, PLEASE go and introduce yourself, it helps so much.

Saturday we baptized our investigator Mason. We've been teaching him for about a month now. It's difficult to explain how he found the Church because it has something to do with something this rapper said. Mason followed the "signs" this rapper said to follow and it led him to the chapel where it happened to be a mutual night, so he met the YM president and the Bishop and since then he's started taking institute, been to church, made lots of friends in the YSA and just lives a purer life. It's been awesome to see. His family even came to the baptism on Saturday and his mom was tearing up. It was cool. We went out to KFC with some members afterwards for dinner.

I got some pictures of some cool as birds called rainbow lorikeets. They're actually pretty common but I finally caught some on camera because they were hanging out on our back fence. 

Love you all

Elder Cummings

March 19, 2017

Half a week

Yeah so since my last p-day was on Wednesday not as much has happened since then. But we had a couple awesome experiences. On Thursday we found a new investigator. She's pretty golden. She's looking for a church to get baptized into so we set her on baptismal date on our first lesson. Hopefully that pans out well. 

Later that day we visited a family where the two teenage sons are keen to learn and investigate the church and the mom likes missionaries but doesn't want her sons to learn about the church so they don't get "confused" between the doctrines of our church and their church. So we went over and I asked if we could share a lesson on the Plan of Salvation and the mom gave this spiel about how she didn't want her sons to be confused, and so while she appreciated if we shared from the Bible, she didn't want the Book of Mormon to be used. I was pretty miffed at that and maybe I could've been more bold in testifying about the Book of Mormon but instead in my mind I said "Fine, we'll teach true doctrine about the Plan of Salvation....FROM THE BIBLE" 

So we shared scriptures about the Premortal life, spirit world, three kingdoms in heaven, etc etc all from the Bible and one of the sons pleasantly had his mind blown by the three kingdoms in heaven. Paul mentions two in first Corinthians but we squeezed in a little about the telestial kingdom. The mom didn't even really notice because she went off to make dinner. So that was fun. 

Saturday we went on splits with a couple of youth in the ward, Patrick and Chom. They're really awesome. They're both converts and Chom just got baptized a few months ago. We went to go teach one of their Buddhist friends from school and it was a really good lesson. We invited him to be baptized and Patrick and Chom were pretty bold in telling him he needs to be baptized because our church is the only true church. We also taught Chom's younger sister and their niece because we have his sister on baptismal date and she's pretty keen. 

So yeah I took some cool pictures but I forgot my camera back at the flat. Next week I'll get them. 

Elder Cummings

March 14, 2017

WOAH BRO ONE YEAR

So yeah, I'm in the one year club now. I'm emailing on Wednesday because they moved our p-day to today because we went to the temple today. It's the first time I've been to the temple in over 7 months because my last area was so far from the temple we didn't get to go. But I gotta say it was awesome to get to enter that Holy House once again and feel the Spirit there.

Last week we had zone conference. That was good. At one point President McSwain said something about the sealed part of the Book of Mormon and he said "that was kind of off topic but you know what I'm just gonna go for it" so he went on this discourse about what it contained and even made it to the lost tribes of israel and the second coming. It was pretty intense but it was awesome. 

We have a couple of solid investigators who should be getting baptized this month. One we have to get parental permission for but every time we go to her house her mom doesn't want to come out and talk to us so she just sends her kids out to tell us she's too busy so we just had the lesson without her. That's one of the things I still want to work on though is being more bold with people. 

One night we got back to our flat and we couldn't find the companionship that we share the flat with but we finally found them out back burning black magic cards they had taken from one of their part member families they're helping. That was fun, did that for about an hour because the cards were covered in a plastic gloss that made them hard to burn. That or SATAN WAS RESISTING IT. 

Sunday was the first regular Sunday I've had in this area. It was fast and testimony meeting and they asked me specifically to bear mine, but as soon as they got the chance like 20 people went up to sit on the stand to wait for their turn. It got to the point that one of the counselors said we were just gonna finish up the people on the stand and no one after that could bear their testimony. That's just how solid this ward is. Testimonies are strong.

That's pretty much it for this week though. 

Elder Cummings