Week 15 - Transfer #2

Zone Photo with Elder and Sister Feil

Sad that the Feils will be leaving our mission soon

Hello beautiful family! 

This week has been absolutely amazing. We ended the transfer, had one missionary transfer, one die, two companionships switch companions, and two new missionaries! Sister Ho died and it was a week full of "lasts" and that was incredibly sad. She is such an amazing example to me. I loved having a HK jie jie. She really took care of me. What was very impressive was that she worked hard all the way until the end. She was not trunkie at all!! I love that I was able to work with her so much this transfer. We also lost Elder Fowler, who went up to Newcastle. Out of all of the elders in our zone, he is one that I learned a lot from. He's so dedicated to learning Chinese. It's incredible. He's always so friendly and so full of the spirit. He just goes out and talks to everyone. It's cool to watch him when we go GQing. He's always encouraging everyone as well. He's helped me adjust really well to the city. The ward LOVES him. His and Elder Dean's recent converts are some of our strongest members. They work with all of the missionaries, and they're just great! Elders Ko and Marshall switched areas, so that Elder Ko can work with Elder Easton since they both speak Korean. Sister Ah Fua and Elder Arnold transferred to our zone yesterday! I love Sister Ah Fua! She's so sweet. she's from Melbourne and is a convert to the church. Elder Arnold is from Alpine and served in Ryde (the mandarin ward) for the past 7 transfers, so his Mandarin is feichanghao!! 

Flat Stanley traveled down under to visit with the missionaries

Giving a missionary kiss to Flat Stanley

I can't believe it's the start of the new transfer. Over the past few days, I've been reflecting on my first transfer in the field, particularly the things I learned and the things I want to improve on. A lot of what I learned are still things I really need to work on, such as being bold when talking to people on the street. Talk to everyone. That is the only way we can invite people to hear about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Another thing was to serve others first, just as Christ would. I was able to work with Sister Ho a lot this past transfer, and she is the greatest example of selfless love I've seen. She always made sure the members, investigators, and other missionaries were taken care of. Not only that, but she endured to the very end. I admire her diligence and dedication to this work and her love for everyone around her. 

So this week we've struggled with one of our investigators, Scott. He's scheduled to be baptized this coming Saturday, but he feels he's not ready and has been avoiding us. Please keep him in your prayers that he'll meet with us and be ready!  Joyce, who's also getting baptized is AWESOME! The Gospel has blessed her life so much. Tom, Ben, and Kat are all good! They come to church...they're basically members but haven't been baptized yet because of parents/girlfriends, etc.  So some exciting news...we have 3 new investigators!! Yan Lin is from Singapore and she comes to our English classes. She's pretty open to everything, so we just started meeting with her. She came to church on Sunday! Then we have Lily and David who are a couple. David met the missionaries before, and Lily is really looking for the 'true' church because she's church hopped and is confused. I think this is it for her!

We did quite a bit of finding this week. Some days were better than others. At DTM on Wednesday, we had a whole training on finding, so I think that really motivated us. Street contacting is HARD! Getting myself to talk to strangers is a bit of a struggle, but I'm getting better. I have people run away from us a lot...it's quite entertaining. We went to Victoria Park and ran into the Ryde Sisters and Elders and then Elders Dean & Fowler within half an hour of each other. I had the weirdest experience. Elders Dean and Fowler were talking to this 'missionary' person from an orthodox christian church, and then we came and had a good conversation about the Book of Mormon and then his 'companion' came with another missionary from another church who started testifying of the Second Coming. It was a mini lesson of 4 LDS missionaries, 2 orthodox christians, and 1 other christian missionary just in the park talking about God, Christ, the Bible and the Book of Mormon and the Second Coming. One of our members was walking by and stopped by as well...

Also at DTM, Sister Ho made chicken feet for everyone to try haha that was funny..most people were disgusted, but some really enjoyed it. 

Tuesday I was on tradeoffs with the STLs...so because one of them is my companion normally, I got to work with Sister Cluff! That was fun!! She's great. Such a hard worker and a great example :) Plus it's nice having another American in the flat hahah

Me and Sister Cluff

Thursday I was on tradeoffs with Sister Ho so that day was spent GQing and then we went with a member during the evening. Her name is Kate and she's an RM! She served in Houston. She's really good though. We had a cool lesson. It was about 7 pm on George street, so super busy, noisy, and whatnot, and she stops to talk to an Indian girl giving out advertisements for her restaurant and she was so full of the spirit. Her name is Rimi and she was really interested in what we had to say. It was so peaceful amongst the craziness of the city. 

Friday we had District Date Night, which was tons of fun! So at Hyde Park, they had a Night Noodle Market going on for about 3 weeks with all different types of noodles and other Asian food. So we did that to celebrate the end of the transfer with our district, whom I love very much. Elder Easton, our DL is just awesome. He's always smiling and cheerful...even when we wake him up at 6 am, haha. He took note of the things we learned throughout the transfer and then wrote a nice note about us individually with a scripture, so he shared those with us at dinner. My scripture was D&C 64:33 (I think) and it's about how through small means, great things can come...so even though I'm small, I can produce great things. I really liked it. The scriptures he chose for everyone was very fitting for each person. That was a good night. The food was good too!! 

Night Noodle Market

Saturday we had to Temple Clean our flat because it's the end of transfers, so that took a couple of hours. Also, we played Lava Monster at 6 am with the district, so that was a ton of fun. We go down to this huge playground at Darling Harbour and they have  jungle gym of ropes and we have to climb and one person is 'it' and has to tag someone... let me tell you, it's a good workout for our morning exercise. There was a baptism that evening, and the service was really nice. Afterwards, we went to a yummy Malaysian restaurant. 

On Sunday we sang 'I Need Thee Every Hour' with Sister Jorgensen as her farewell musical number...it was cool because we sang each sentence in a different language. So we had Korean, Tongan, Cantonese, Samoan, Mandarin, ASL, and Malagasee. It was really beautiful. I also finally introduced myself to the ward on Sunday after a whole transfer of being there. Sister Ho and Elder Fowler also spoke because they're leaving, and everyone was confused and thought I was leaving too. That day was full of goodbyes :( At night, before zone meeting we had a pancake bar to say bye to sister Ho. The elders sang some islander song to say bye and it was beautiful...we all cried. It was quite emotional. Then we had the first mission-wide conference call with President to discuss some things. 

Also, Elder Nolan went to the hospital for surgery (he's a senior missionary in our zone) and he's in recovery. So please pray for him! He's doing better! 

Everything has just been a little crazy, but it's good! Our goal is to smash it this transfer!! We're really excited to do so! I'm trying to be more diligent in the work, less distracted, and fully consecrate my efforts to the Lord. 

I think that's about it...

I love you all and hope you're doing well!!