Whew, I was afraid I wouldn't get around to emailing until a couple of weeks after my last one, but fortunately I have some free time right now to shoot one off. Since last time, we've done a lot at the office and a lot of driving around. We drove to the shopping center the last week or so a few times because we bought a pile of phones for missionaries, then we realized they sucked so we took them back to return them, plus we also went with the assistants because 2 of the 4 are going home in a few days and they wanted to buy some new clothes to fly home in. And I just think....wouldn't people be a lot more impressed if you came home from your mission all worn through? That's just my opinion but itis tempting to go home in a swaggin suit and arrive in style.
We had a few meals at the mission home the last week or so. I never would've thought that on my mission I would get to be so close to the mission president, so that's a blessing I don't take for granted. Who else gets to have dinner with the mission president once or twice a week??
The 2 of the 4 aps and the McSwains went up north for zone conferences for a few days. That was fun because 1 of the remaining assistants went on trade offs the whole time so the other assistant, Elder Smoot (the distant cousin) hung out with us since he had stuff to do in the office.
There's been a lot of preparation for transfers and the Christmas conference this Thursday. There's a lot of missionaries going home, including a couple of my favs Elder Ray and Elder Banks. But overall the whole outtake I've become good friends with. They've been having their departing interviews so we film their departing advice and post it on the mission blog.
Spent a lot of time organizing packages for the missionaries. We've been stocking them all in a room in the office and trying to keep track of who's gotten one and who hasn't, as the mission made gift bags for everyone who didn't. Plus we've got to send the ones up north for missionaries up there.
Thursday was fun because we went to the mission home and did some departing advice videos, tried helping Sister McSwain with her broken computer, and decorating a tree downstairs. You could say I'm ho ho ho-ed to the max. We had some authentic Indian food at a restaurant which was alright but not great. My companion Elder Sharma (who's Fijian-Indian) said the best way to know if an Indian restaurant is "authentic" or "westernized" is if they sell beef. If they sell anything with beef, it's not "real" Indian food. Fun fact for ya.
Friday had one of the highlights of our week, because we went to lunch at....TACO BELL AMIGOOOO🌮🌮🌮🌮🔔🔔🔔🔔
The reason that's so exciting is because there's ONE taco bell in Australia, and it only opened a few weeks ago. I had been anxiously awaiting an opportunity to go to lunch there and it came! After almost two years of no taco bell it was worth the wait. The menu was much smaller than America's and they didn't have Baja Blast BUT it was still good food, which is saying a lot because Australian Mexican food hasn't been great. Plus they had an open soda fountain with free refills which you never see at fast food restaurants here, but they're so common in the states.
Saturday was also a really good day because the mission had a lot of baptisms, two of which were investigators I was personally acquainted with. One was in our ward, but the Sisters did the teaching. Well, lots of missionaries have done the teaching because he had been an investigator for 30+ years since his wife is a member. Almost their whole married life he's been going to church and being involved with the ward but he only just gained a testimony that Joseph Smith was a true prophet! Super exciting. The other baptism was the in the assistants' ward (which had sisters as well to do full time teaching) but I got to know him pretty well because he would have wings with President and the assistants and us every wednesday. Actually it was more like we were having wings with them but regardless, he had been investigating since April or so and at last came to realize even though there were unanswered questions, baptism is only the beginning of the path to finding those answers.
It's been a while since we've had an actual p day I think. We definitely won't have one for another week or so because of all we've got going on. Christmas conference on Thursday, transfers on Monday, and the new missionaries fly in on Monday as well (usually they do on Wednesday) so we are flat out getting everything ready. Live mas.
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