Light the World

We had our p-day moved to Wednesday this week, hence the reason for me taking so long to get an email out. Anyways, this past week was a busy one! We've been doing a lot of door knocking too, and we actually found a pretty weird looking place to go door knocking at. One of the YSA showed us some pictures of a place called "the heights" in an area called pimpama, which is a circular neighborhood where all the houses are exactly the same, and look like something out of a futuristic movie. We did go door knocking there though, but had little success. We also met this guy who races super-bikes and he talked to us for a bit, and showed off his bike that he was working on. We met another lady who was excited to see us! We thought she was a member at first, but she explained to us that she used to be athiest, but met with us missionaries many years ago. Then she ended up joining the baptist church, thanks to the LDS missionaries helping her find her faith in God... we'll be having dinner with them this Sunday though so that should be fun! 

I also got to go on tradeoffs with Elder Cadiang, an Elder who is serving in my old area, Windaroo! Unfortunately, they didn't have a car during the time of our tradeoffs, so we ended up biking for an hour to get to where we were going to start working! It was a bit crazy; there were a lot of hills, and we were biking on a road while large semi-trucks were zooming past us. Some of them were close enough that the bikes swayed and shook a bit when they drove past. We got to have some awesome lessons in that area though, and I even got to meet a few of the members that I knew when I was in Windaroo ward, so it was really weird being in that area again, but fun! That night my legs were in a bit of pain from the biking though, it reminded me that I was a bit out of shape and helped me to have a greater respect for all the biking missionaries out there.

Among the other interesting things we did this week were getting free meat-pies from a restaurant owned by members called "Kai Kitchen", meeting a man who has a computer screen that's bigger than most flat-screen tv's I've seen, door knocking and talking to people in an old caravan park, and singing happy birthday in Samoan for part of district meeting.

Lastly, on a more spiritual note, I just want to invite everyone to 'Light the World' this December - once again the church is doing the #LightTheWorld Initiative where we serve people for the 25 days leading up to Christmas. As missionaries we've been sharing this as much as we can with everyone we meet, whether it's after dinners or while door knocking, and it's just cool to see the effect that the Light of Christ has on people, even nonmembers, especially during this time of year.

Thanks everyone for your love and support!

Elder Ho

the 70

First off, sorry! Normally I write down what I want to email about before I go into the library, but I didn't have time for that this time, so I have no idea what to email about... so this will probably be a short one!

One thing that was cool is that we got to have a mission wide conference this week, because Elder Uceda, Elder Haleck, and Elder Walker came to visit us! They all had an opportunity to speak to us, but Elder Uceda was the main speaker, and he was pretty awesome! He talked a lot too about how we're not here to baptise people, but to baptise converts, which I thought was pretty powerful. We need to be making sure that the people we teach are converted before they get baptised. He also talked a lot about how we're here to help establish the church, and how we can go about doing that.

Other than that, Elder Banks and I have been teaching, door knocking, and trying to get to know all the members, so we've been kept busy! Well, once again, sorry for slacking off a bit, but yeah my mind is blank at the moment, so I'll end my email here!

-Elder HoThe

Ziggy

I think the hardest thing to do on the mission is to think of a creative title for emails, so I decided to title this one after the name of a dog that we met. While visiting a family in one of our wards, we heard a dog hitting the door downstairs, wanting to get in. So the family showed us a picture of this cute puppy, and said that it's name was Ziggy, and that he is about 1 now. Then they let him in and bounding up the stairs came this MASSIVE dog, I'm pretty sure it weighed more than me. It then proceeded to lick us to death, and chew on our arms and hands. It tried to sit on our laps too (It doesn't realise that it's no longer a pup). And now I have a new best friend. They were told that it wouldn't grow to be very big, but then realised that it wasn't the breed they thought it was. So, that's how I got that creative title name...

Well this week was busy! Lot's of driving around! And we cover two areas (and we're kinda white-washing one of them) so it's been a bit overwhelming trying to learn everything and remember everyone, but it's been fun! Trying to go to both wards on Sunday was a bit tough, with trying to balance ward two ward council meetings, and make it to each sacrament meeting since both wards overlap a bit. One awesome thing though is that I got to see a lot of members from an old ward I served in, Windaroo! The stake had some recent boundary changes, so part of that ward got moved to one of the wards we cover! And I already got to have dinner with a few of them!

The AP's that travel the mission also came by our area, and we got to go on tradeoffs with them, and so I was put with Elder Fukofuka and we went and tried to visit a bunch of families that neither of us knew! We ended up running into a lady who had some crazy hair (it looked like there was icecream on her head). We also did some door knocking and found some cool potential investigators, and also a less active who wants to come back to church! We also got yelled at for making too much noise in front of one guys house who was sleeping. Apparently he was a chef that works at night or something, but it was kinda hard to understand what he was saying. In the meantime my companion and the other Elder were able to see a family and set some of the kids on baptismal date! So we'll be working hard to make sure all of that works out, but we're really excited. So it was a good tradeoff day.

Also we've been able to meet some cool people while door knocking! After my companion and I followed an impression to go knocking in this one area that we haven't been to, we drove there and saw that many of the houses were still under construction and we were kinda hesitant to knock the area. We decided to do so, and we only knocked on 5 doors, because pretty much all five of them were willing to have a chat with us! One of them actually visited America and played baseball! He was really chill, and it was kind of random because nobody in Australia really plays baseball. At another door we found someone from Tennessee! We didn't even catch the American accent. And throughout the rest of the week, we also met two different people, who we're pretty sure that they were both high on marijuana. Although they weren't interested, we're glad that they were nice and happy. Unusually happy. Anyways, we've decided that we're going to start counting how many high people we meet. So far 2 this transfer.

Anyways, thanks everyone for your love and support!

Elder Ho

I'm Back...

I'm back in my last zone again! So I started in Cleveland zone, got moved to the Coomera Zone, then got moved back to Cleveland again, then just today I got transferred back to Coomera Zone again! I think that I'll probably finish my mission in one of these zones... 

Anyways, it was an exciting week! It was quite a hectic and busy one too. We were able to see some cool miracles though...

The first one is when we went door knocking one day, we door knocked for about 40 minutes and only talked to two people... because we ended up teaching both of them! The first was a young Australian guy who's actually a Muslim, but says that he's not a practicing one, more just culturally, but he's really cool and invited us in to have a chat. He was really interested about what we and the rest of Christianity believed, so we answered a lot of questions and helped clarify the Godhead. We left him with a Book of Mormon and a few pamphlets to read, and hopefully my last companion goes back to follow up and see how it went! The second door that answered was a guy from Zimbabwe, Prince, who's also around our age. He actually vlogs and travels, and was really open to hearing what we had to say, and we also left him with a Book of Mormon too!

We also got a new investigator from our Zone Leaders, who had a member in there ward who was just about to leave on a mission. The day before he left he introduced his friend to the missionaries and they taught him the first lesson. Then they introduced him to us and we taught him the plan of Salvation, and he's a really awesome guy with a lot of potential!

And lastly, we also visited a family for dinner, and they had an exchange student from Japan there! Unfortunately, she couldn't speak very much english at all, and didn't understand anything from the video we shared. We tried making a few calls to find someone who could translate over the phone, and ended up calling our ward mission leader. Turns out he was visiting a member just a few houses down the street, and not long after that he came by and we had a really cool spiritual experience as she explained her background, her religious history, and her desires to learn more, while we explained a bit about who we are and what we do.

Anyways, my new companion is Elder Banks from Salt Lake City, and he's an awesome missionary! I've only got a transfer with him though, because he goes home soon, but I'm looking forward to it!

Anyways, thanks for all your love and support,

Elder Ho