Happy Birthday?

So it's been a busy week and a half! For the first few days I was stuck with 2 temporary companions, I think I mentioned it last time, and we had a good time together! We did a lot of door knocking, and even had a good dinner at the bishop's house with all three of us! It ended great, with one of the Elders tearing his pants mid-lesson, with a massive hole that he was trying to cover as we finished up the lesson. Lucky for him, the Bishop's wife sewed it all up while he awkwardly sat in one of the bedrooms while we loyally guarded the door, teasing him and laughing from the outside.

On Wednesday all of us picked up our new companions, and my new companion's name is Elder Waqalevu! He's from Fiji, and apparently his name translated to english means "big boat". We're excited to working together and working hard in Holland Park!

Also, within one week it went from pretty cool to super hot! There were two days were it felt like the moment we stepped out of the car, we were stepping into a preheated oven. Fun. Fortunately, the Lord had a little pity on us and probably didn't want us to get dehydrated on fast Sunday, so it dropped around 10 degrees Celsius in one day and Sunday was nice and cloudy. Then it rained, which was great. Australia's weather just a bit bipolar.

So the reason why we are emailing today instead of monday is because monday was a public Holiday! It was Queensland's holiday to celebrate the Queen's birthday - which is actually sometime in April I heard. So why do they have it this past monday? I'd love to know myself. And I think most of the Australians are just excited that they get the day off, not too much talk about the Queen, some of them didn't really even know why it was a Holiday. We had to work that day though, so they moved our pday to today!

And lastly, we had an awesome zone conference! We got to wake up a bit early and go on a roadtrip with our zone leaders to zone conference! We were able to learn a lot and get a lot of trainings! They taught us about the importance of finding people to teach and how we need to step up our efforts, and we also got to learn a lot about priesthood blessings and consecrating oil. And before we went home, they gave us our usb's with music on it! Last week they took them from us so they could check for music and other stuff that we aren't supposed to have, and then at the same time give us some new music to listen to (we have a set playlist that we are allowed to hear). So I went for a week long fast without music, and I never thought I'd be so excited to hear music again! There's some pretty interesting music on there and we got to jam out to a bit of it on the long road-trip back home. Who knew I'd be into country music?

Anyways, for the spiritual thought, I'll just take something they shared with us at the zone conference. They shared a mormon message with us, which talked about how the Lord is always pouring blessings upon us! A lot of us just don't see it, and our sin is like us putting up umbrella's in the rain instead of enjoying the rain. So repent! And don't allow yourself or your attitude to get in the way of the shower of all the blessings that the Lord is giving us!

Thanks for all your love and support!

Elder Ho