February 12, 2017

The Weekly Email from the guy in Australia

Just a pretty average week this week. Last p-day though we went to this crater lake called Lake Eacham and it had a pretty cool walk around track. Plus lots of huge trees. 

We had trade offs with the zone leaders on Wednesday. I stayed in our area with Elder Fukofuka. He's Tongan but lived in Morgan Utah most of his life. He's pretty cool and he's been my zone leader for 4 transfers now. Didn't get any pictures though. Doh. We went out to try this less active lady who WOULD be active but she's just so old and frail she can't get to church on Sunday because she lives on a farm like 45 minutes away from the chapel. But we went by and it was pretty cool old farmhouse. She wasn't home though :/ All I could see through the glass sliding door was boxes and boxes of church manuals and books written by apostles and prophets. 

We taught our Japanese investigator Hiroko. Teaching is really hard just because she knows so little English but we figured out she was baptized into the baptist church several years ago but we taught her about how she still needs to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands...we'll see how that goes but she needs to come to church first. 

Did some service on Saturday for some potential investigators. The dad is a teacher and goes waaaaaay out into the australian bush for a couple weeks at a time to teach school in aboriginal communities. He's from Michigan though and his family's pretty cool. But yeah we had an investigator come to church with us. He's only visiting his grandparents for the holidays but he's going to give us his address in PNG so we can send the missionaries over there to him because he's progressing pretty well. 

But yeah-this week is district conference so that'll be interesting. 

Elder Cummings

February 5, 2017

the first book of Fifi

Hey everyone, it's been a really good week this week. Highlight of the week though is our investigator Xanthe's baptism. The family is now all members of the church! (except for the kids that aren't old enough yet) Joey got his priesthood a couple weeks ago so he was able to perform the baptism. Great to see! 

Funny story though, we were filling up the font for like 2 hours and it was only ankle height, so we started pitching buckets of water filled up in the custodial closet into the font. After a few minutes we realized something wasn't right about the water. It was turning brown. Luckily the branch mission leader came and told us that during this time of year the water gets a little murky. We had half an hour before the baptism so we continued pitching water while Elder Bullock went to find a hose to stick in through the window but couldn't find one. However we were able to get the water to about mid-thigh height before it started. By then the water was really really brown. But hey we figured it would be like getting baptized in a river or something. Anyways a couple minutes before the program started one of the assigned speakers came up and told us he hadn't prepared his talk and asked if someone else could do it. Luckily one of the zone leaders was willing to take the fall. With missionaries though it's not like we get scared doing something like giving a talk out of the blue. 

Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures with them in the white baptismal clothes just because we were so caught up getting all the stuff worked out. At the end of the day though, it's not about the pictures, it's about the memories you make.

And it was a really good baptism. The Spirit was really strong and to see Xanthe get up and bear her testimony of how the gospel has blessed her family as they've lived the gospel more in their lives. Joey testified as well about how happy he was to be back at church after years of inactivity and how grateful he was to be able to baptize his wife. I could feel the Spirit confirming to me that the baptism was approved and sealed. I was blessed to confirm Xanthe a member of the church on Sunday. It was my first confirmation but I was really happy to do it. 

Just another funny story, though. On Saturday we were door knocking and walked up to this one guy who was standing in his yard. He looked like the kind of guy who would just wave us off but then he asked us a question I definitely have never in my life been asked before: 

"Did you bring Fifi with you?"

Me and Elder Bullock just kind of stand there, like "Uh, no. Who's Fifi? A dog?" 

And he said "It's in your bag, isn't it?"

I replied "My bag's got book of mormons and pamphlets, no Fifi."

And he goes "Yeah, Fifi's one of the ones in that book of yours. Female, right?"

I was so confused. I had no idea what this guy was talking about. But it slowly dawned on me.

"Wait, do you mean Nephi? There's a man named Nephi in the Book of Mormon."

That's honestly the only thing I could think he was talking about. I couldn't really tell what he said after that because he was mostly mumbling at us but he said something about "Smith" and "fantasy man" so we just kind of awkwardly asked if there was anything we could help him out with and walked away. He wasn't nasty or mean or anything but I think he was just sorely confused. He said he had read the Book of Mormon before but I think it was time he reads it again. So yeah, great week this week and hope it was a good one for you!

Elder Cummings

January 29, 2017

Thank goodness for air conditioning and water
Man my emails must be really boring being so long so I'll try to keep this one short. MONDAY-We taught Andrew. He was on baptismal date, but then dropped us, so we went over a couple weeks ago and taught about the priesthood authority, he accepted it, a week later said he already arranged to get baptized into the Presbytarian church his family goes to, etc etc So we went over on Monday just kind of asking-"So.....what happened to the priesthood? Was there something that we didn't explain right?" And he said the day we went over and shared that his pastor from the Pres. church gave him a DVD...about the Mormons. And Jehovah's Witnesses. That made him decide not to go with the Mormon church. We couldn't get him to say what was on the DVD but GRR I was so frustrated. Luckily he said we could still come over anytime so we'll continue with that.

Overall we worked really hard trying to find new investigators through door knocking...and it has been soooo hot and humid. 

One night we were walking and a couple of drunk guys sitting outside the flat wanted to talk to us, so we did, and a few minutes later their neighbor got home in a motorized wheelchair and asked us to come by the next morning to rake up all the grass clippings in her lawn. So we did. Random highlight. We gave some blessings to some kids in the branch for the start of the school year (the school year runs from January to December here). 

Thursday we went to the senior couple's house with the rest of the zone to watch the missionary broadcast. It was really good, I learned a lot about how important it is to teach repentance and baptize converts. We taught our Japanese investigator on Thursday and she asked us to come by the next day because her internet had stopped working, and the customer service people were going to be calling her on Friday to fix it. So she needed us to talk to them to figure it out. That was interesting but fun. 

A couple Jehovah's Witnesses invited us in while we were door knocking on Friday, thank GOODNESS they didn't want to preach to us like most of them to because then we don't get any time to talk, but these JWs actually asked us a lot of questions about Mormons. They wouldn't accept the Book of Mormon we tried to give them but they did like how a lot of our beliefs are similar. 

Other than that, we're excited for this Friday because our investigator Xanthe is getting baptized and her recently reactivated husband is baptizing her! We baptized their son Ezias back in October so we're really glad to complete the family! Ezias got ordained a deacon last week and passed the sacrament for the first time yesterday. Anyways it was a busy week for us and it went by really really fast. Talk to you again!

Elder Cummings

Oh yes-I have pictures of a cicada that died outside our flat. His name is Cade.