Tuesday, September 19, 2017

September 12, 2017

Anotha one

Ok so this last week, the main highlight was golden orientation. Which is when we take all the new missionaries (we call them goldens instead of greenies because of their "golden" missionary spirit) to Kangaroo Point, where there's the temple and a chapel and they get hours of training from President and the assistants, we do some GQing (street contacting) on the way to a restaurant, have dinner, sleep at a hotel, wake up in the morning and do some tough exercise, then do more trainings and role playing before going home. Thursday was when all the goldens came in. It was a lot of fun. I hadn't been to a golden orientation since my own, so it was really interesting because it's with a new mission president and everything. Well he's not new at this point but my golden orientation was with the last mission president a month or two before he went home. So yeah, around noon the trainers came and dropped off their goldens. We office elders gave a training on why we call them goldens but besides that most of the talking was done my President McSwain and the assistants. Then we street contacted on our way to dinner I gotta tell you this funny story though.
So one of our responsibilities is to film, among other things, the goldens GQing people on the way to dinner because we put them in a video. At one point the group has scattered throughout this big park talking to people. Now this was my first time doing anything like this so I probably wasn't as discreet as I should have been filming people with my camcorder. It was hard to make it pretty un-obvious. Anyways I'm filming this one group from a fair distance away, and then the guy the missionaries were talking to turns and looks right at me, turns back to the missionaries and says something, and then they all turn and look straight at the camera. I'm like "crap" and try to play it off by moving the camera and filming other things "wow, what a tree" and "look at those birds" like I was a nature cameraman or something. I talked to that group later and they said the guy was asking them why he was being filmed and they successfully played it off by telling him I was filming the sunset behind them. So-crisis averted. 
I wasn't expecting to stay in the hotel but alas- we received that privilege. Not much to report there other than it was the place we slept for the night and had breakfast in the morning. Oh but before breakfast the assistant led the goldens in doing "snap gravity" (the mission's exercise program). The name comes from the last mission president. He wanted the missionaries' exercise to be so intense it would "snap gravity." Our last mission president was really into being healthy, so that definitely did a lot of good for me because before my mission I was pretty slack with exercise. Our job was to run around and film the missionaries running, jumping, doing push ups, stuff like that. Then after breakfast and everything it was back to the chapel for more training and role playing. We filmed them doing role plays. 
The night after golden orientation we went to the Chinese branch's game night, which was fun because they always have heaps of investigators there that are fun to talk to. We had stake conference over the weekend. At the priesthood leadership session Saturday afternoon the pianist job was delegated to me when we arrived. I don't mind playing for stuff just as long as I play easy enough hymns. Fortunately they were ones that were easy enough except for one. That night was the adult session, and Sunday morning was the main session. It was interesting though, because the Kangaroo Point chapel is the Brisbane stake center but it's one of the smallest chapels ever (exaggerated, obviously, but anyways). So because they don't have enough room for everyone we had the general stake conference we met at the Brisbane city hall, which had plenty of space for everyone. We got to ride a catamaran boat down to it, which was fun (us and the assistants). I have a few pictures for that but it was really windy so that's why I have anime hair.
Yesterday we went outdoor laser tagging again, and that night had FHE at the mission home with President and Sister McSwain and the Eight Mile Plains Zone because they surpassed their baptisms goal last month. That was really fun. But why they have a place called Eight MILE Plains in a country that only uses kilometers is beyond me. Today we moved a flat, which was tough work. That's another one of the things we help out with and I'm surprised how often we have flats moving around. We're moving another one tomorrow. Wow, busy week.
Elder Cummings 







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