Australia Day

So on the 26th of January we had Australia day! I guess it's kind of like independence day? It's the day when the Australians landed, or "invaded" Australia. The aboriginals don't really like this day though because it's pretty much when the foreigners came and started to take over. But anyways, many people got the day off and were very patriotic about their country I guess. For us missionaries, we got to gather as a mission and watch a missionary broadcast from Church Headquarters. Maybe I'll share something I learned from it at the end of the email, but it was really good and included some changes to our schedule and what we report to our leaders.

These past, well, nearly two weeks, have been pretty good. We're getting fed pretty well, and we even got to have dinner with the bishop and many other members who don't normally get to have the missionaries over, which has been a blessing. We've also been visiting many less active members, in hopes that we can help reactivate them and maybe even start teaching some of their nonmember friends and family.

We also went bowling again for our P-Day, which was really fun, and we got to go to the temple too. Other than that, things here have been pretty much the same as usual.

Something that we learned during the broadcast that I guess can really apply to everyone is about faith and action. An investigator needs to have a desire to know more, and a willingness to act, in order to receive and answer from the Holy Ghost about the truthfulness of the gospel. That applies to all of us though. If we are praying but we're not really willing to act on the answers or guidance we receive, then it's probably in vain. Sometimes we might not be happy with the answer we receive, and it might not be what we wanted, but when we are willing to follow the will of God regardless, then He'll bless and guide us and we will receive our answer through the Holy Ghost.

Thank you for all your love and support, Happy (late) Australia day!

Elder Ho

The Quarter Mark

So I've finished my fourth transfer in the mission, which means I'm officially a quarter done, which is kind of scary. It really makes you reflect on what you've done so far and wonder if you're truly making the most of it. So I'm still with the same companion, but anyways, this past week...

So one cool thing that happened was I went to a members house for dinner, and when we knocked on the door our convert back in my last area answered! with her husband (the husband was the son of the members we were eating with). It was an awesome dinner and we talked about how the Capalaba ward was (the last area I was in), and how her friend got baptized too now, and about her husband's mission, and it was a pretty fun dinner. We also taught a lesson at the end, and they pretended to be investigators, to help us practice teaching, and it reminded of me of when I got to teach her around 5 months ago, it was pretty cool.

As for the temperature here, it's still rising. Every day seems hotter than the last, but that's alright. We got to do service for nearly four hours straight on morning in the sun, but it was a really good experience. We did it for an older man named Brother Ball, and he's really awesome. He loves the missionaries and we often get to do service for him. This time we got a truckload of soil and moved it all around his front and back yard, trying to fill in the holes and make the ground even.

I guess today I'll leave with a cool lesson I learned from my district leader, Elder Tai. He's awesome, and I got to go on tradeoffs with him and experience his awesomeness. He was teaching an investigator about overcoming the natural man, and I'll just kind of share what I took from that lesson. Basically, everyone has the natural man. Unfortunately, there are many people that are overcome by it. We often wonder why certain people are successful in life, whether it's our peers or maybe people we hear or read about. For many of them, they were given the same chance as everyone else, but the only difference between them and everyone else is that every day they fought to overcome the natural man. We all have goals in life, and the way to reach those goals is to constantly fight the natural man. our ultimate goal is to return to live with our Heavenly Father again, and the only way to do that is through overcoming the natural man. It's a fight every day, and usually the small fights are the toughest ones. It's so easy to skip reading scriptures for a day, or to skip our prayer at night or in the morning, or say a short one. Its easy to do the bare minimum requirements for our callings, or cut corners. But the natural man is an enemy to God, and our Heavenly Father knows our potential and who we can become. By overcoming even the smallest temptations from the natural man, by reading scriptures every day and saying sincere prayers, to even some of the tougher challenges, like magnifying our calling and devoting all our efforts to the Lord, we can reach that potential that He knows we can reach. 

Thank you for your love and support,

Elder Ho

My first zone (when I was in Capalaba)

My new zone (my comp is all the way on the right). We're missing the district leader and his comp though.

Service

Meeting my MTC roommate at Christmas

District leader (at Christmas conference)

Bush

Nearing Six Months!

So this past week was pretty good. For P-day we got to go bowling with the district, and that was pretty fun. I'd send some video's but it takes ages for that stuff to upload using this computer. So this past week, we did more door knocking, and while I was door knocking on tradeoffs with a zone leader, we found a little area where all the streets were named after states. No Hawaii st, but there was a Utah court which was pretty great. Nobody there was really interested though, unfortunately.

We also did some service, which was laying a bit of concrete for a part-member family. They had a pool nearby and I was tempted to accidentally trip and fall in, or offer to clean it for them from the inside, but I resisted temptation.

We also were finally able to set up an appointment with an investigator that we have, Morris. He's been coming to church, but hasn't been able to meet with us outside of church. His wife is atheist I think and doesn't really want us coming around, but he's really nice. I think he had a stroke so he's physically pretty slow, but he enjoys talking to us and coming to church. He told us that his father, around 40 years ago, had been taking the lessons, and before passing away had told his son that he knew that the church was true, and now we invited him to be baptized when he gets his answer, and he said yes!

Anyways, that's my week down in Australia.

Thank you all for your love and for your support!

Elder Ho

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! Sorry I haven't been able to email recently, the mission had been moving and changing a lot of our P-Days, and telling us we couldn't email on certain ones, etc... so it's been at least two weeks I think. Everything has been good though! Just the normal, door knocking and trying to find new people to teach. We have been able to do lot's of service for many different people though, which has been good. We've helped some people cook, we've pruned bushes, cut grass, pulled trees from out of the ground, and much more! It's been pretty fun.

This Christmas was pretty good. We didn't have much going on during Christmas day, just a lunch with a family and then skyping afterwards, which was pretty good, it was a relaxing day. And for New Years Eve, we had to be in our apartment by 5:30 pm and couldn't leave, since it would be dangerous one the roads during New Years. It was pretty quiet in our area though, and I didn't really wake up to the sound of any fireworks.

Anyways, during a district meeting we talked about goal setting, and with this New Years coming up I'm sure many resolutions were made. Hopefully we can all remember these resolutions past January, and I know that setting and striving to achieve goals can really help change our lives. I'll just end with a quote from Elder M Russel Ballard that was shared during the district meeting. He says, "I ams o thoroughly convinced that if we don't set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potentials. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life". 

Love you all, thanks for all the prayers and support!

Happy New Year!

Elder Ho

A Surprise Text!

A friend texted me from Arizona.... her friend in Australia took a picture of the handsome missionary who bore his testimony on Fast Sunday!  She said he sees happy and her family was going to have him over for dinner.

This text made me smile!  :)