Overall we had a lot of appointments fall through, mostly because we had so many potential investigators but most of them fell through or turned out not to be interested. Me and my companion have resolved to start seeking out a lot more part member families and to build better relationships with the ward, since we don't know a whole lot of people.
Wednesday night we were about to visit a less active but on the side of the street we noticed a pretty nice couch hidden in a bunch of thrown out furniture. I guess I should explain by saying here in Brisbane they have a time of year where everyone throws out old TVs, furniture, random other crap they don't want but could be recycled out in front of their house, and the Council comes around and picks it all up. So for the last couple weeks we were looking in the many piles of stuff for a good couch we could put in our flat, since all we have in terms of furniture is our beds and a couple metal chairs. But anyways Wed night we finally found a pretty awesome couch that we were surprised someone wanted to chuck, but we called Napa and he came and helped us load it into his truck and take it back to our flat. So now we got a couch which is awesome, and we were able to teach the less active we were visiting as well.
Thursday we had Nephi's baptismal interview. Other than that we had dropped appointments and some door knocking. Friday we had several more appointments fall through as well as weekly planning. It was also the day "it" happened.
A lot of times on people's gates they have "beware the dog" signs, but there's usually one of 3 things: 1. there's no dog around, 2. the dog is just like a shitzu or maltese or some tiny dog, or 3. the dog is sitting right there barking at you before you even approach the gate. So in this case, we heard the dog barking from inside the garage, so we figured it was chilling in there, so we went in the gate and walked up to the door. By that time the barking had gotten quieter from the garage but then it got louder as this pitbull (we think) came around the other side of the house and running at us. Now, this has happened once or twice before, but usually the dog is pretty friendly and just runs up to sniff you a little bit and leave you alone. But THIS time, the dog was actually and LEGITIMATELY ANGRY. We start walking QUICKLY back to the gate and then the dog comes at me and bites my shoe so I was like DANG this dog's for REAL so we started to hasten our step towards the gate and I see the dog come at me again from behind out of the corner of my eye and OW the dog bites me on the back of the leg, right in the calf. Luckily it didn't hang on or anything, it was a quick chomp but it still hurt pretty bad. Luckily we got out before the dog could drag me back to its lair and surveyed the battle wound when we got back to the car. There was blood, there was bruising, but after bandaging it up with the car's first aid pack I valiantly volunteered we continue to knock the street, because surely no unhallowed hand could stop the work from progressing. As I limped, suffering, from house to house, it turned out that no one was really interested because there was some other guy door knocking as well collecting charity less than an hour before us, so people weren't all that keen to talking to us. One Irish lady, once we said the word "missionaries" cut us off and said "go away, and never, ever, come back" and slammed the door.
But yeah, it's actually not too bad, I'll include some pictures but it's mostly healed now, just bruised and sore. We visited Jude and invited him and his family to Nephis baptism, and then visited a recent convert, sister Popata and they were talking to us about Pokemon Go.
Pokemon Go has taken over Australia. Almost everyone who we visit talks to us about it. It's ridiculous, I've already heard a couple of the crazy stories that have happened from people playing it. It's insane. Saturday was awesome, because a lot of people came to Nephi's baptism, even the McClures, Jude's family. I was blessed to be the one to baptize him. During the refreshments afterwards, Nephi's grandpa, who was present most of the time when we were teaching Nephi, stood up and gave a speech about how even though he's a Seventh Day Adventist we need more Christians in the world, and that he was proud of Nephi and thankful for us Elders for teaching kids to have good standards and morals. It was a pretty nice speech and overall it went really well. Sunday was good, we had a really productive ward coordination meeting, it takes such a huge burden off of missionaries shoulder's when ward missionaries are willing to do stuff. We visited Brother and Sister Atkinson who had invited one of their neighbors to have the first lesson and we also saw a couple other less actives. We had interviews yesterday, which is why we didn't email, but we got to meet the new president. He's really great, he's pretty knowledgeable. While we were waiting for our interviews we hung out for a few hours with the Narangba Valley and Burpengery Elders since our area was pretty far away from the Burpengery chapel. We had dinner with the Silvas, that was really nice but yeah I'm just about out of time so I'm gonna quick throw some pictures on here before I run out. Love you all
Elder Cummings
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