AUSTRALIA, PERTH I arrived! - Rockingham

May 13, 2012

THE MISSION

So my companion is the District Leader of our little district of six missionaries. His name is Elder Keers, he's a stud - very obedient missionary. Good to have his example.

Our mission is the most expensive mission of all missions actually. Everything is just jacked up here it's pretty crazy. For example, at petrol stations it's a dollar fifty or something per liter, and there's 3.7 liters in a gallon so yeah, you do the math. It's also the biggest mission, but that's like landmass-wise otherwise not so much. Most of it is desert.

Right now my area is Rockingham. It's about an hour South of Perth, I guess. In our district there's one car that we kind of share but Cornon is the biggest area so they get the car every day. We bike; sometimes get the car when we need it for whatever reason.

ABOUT AUSTRALIA

So it's raining like crazy here because it's starting to go in to the winter months. Today actually, we were just walking, I mean biking, and it started raining pretty flipping hard and we figured if we're gonna get wet we might as well have some fun with it so we just biked around and got soaked in our shirts.

It's really trippy driving on the left side of the road. It was weird but it's a lot easier now. They basically only have washers and everything else is air-dried, which is alright I guess. Another kinda weird thing - their escalators are flat. Kinda like airports', but on an angle. That was weird.

Also, something that I think is way sweet are "posties", like mailmen. But the mailboxes are in the middle of their lawns, so they either ride bikes or motorcycles and just drive up on peoples lawns and deliver the mail, it's pretty sweet.

Yeah, really healthy here. It was pretty cool cause we went to Mackers today, I mean McDonalds for yous over there. And mediums are like smalls in America. It's pretty cool, because you don't get fat. Well, you still eat unhealthy, but you don't get as fat as you could.

The spiders here are huge, ginormous,the creepiest spider I've ever seen, the size of a tarantula basically. Yeah I think Keers is just killing a spider right now actually. The story of our life. Good stuff, good stuff.

THE FAITH

Oh yeah talk about a flippin roller coaster -  this mission is constantly up and down. I guess all missions are. Spiritual highs one moment and then  nobody wants to hear the gospel. It's frustrating but you know I'm learning to just let it roll off my back because there are people out there who want to listen. 

There's a lot of either rude or nice people. A lot of people are just like, "Oh no sorry love, don't want to hear that right now." Or something. Most people are very distant from religion and don't want to hear about it. But today we had a good experience while tracting.

I didn't have much faith in tracting but I was developing faith. We knocked on this door and this kid answered, he was in his teens so we were thinking, "Oh great." So we just did our approach and asked if he'd be interested in hearing the message. But He said, "Yeah, you can come in." So we went inside and taught the first lesson.  I shared the first lesson and the Spirit was there, it like hit him right in the face. So that went pretty good. It was a spiritual dance party for a second.

The people are good here; a really good solid ward. It's amazing because at church the wards are a lot smaller obviously. Here, wow people can't wait to share their testimonies and it's amazing... just awesome. I wish people back home were more like that.

We've had a couple dinners with some islander families. One's from Tonga, and the other ones are from the Cook islands. But the ones from the Cook islands - there's about 27 people who live in their home and me and Elder Keers are trying to memorize all their names, so that's a trial in itself but it's good.

And eating their food - you know how islanders do it- they just pile on this massive plate of food. It looks amazing before you get started but once you get going, you just get so full. Today, a little bit earlier, I was eating my meal and you know, I had to eat a lot. I mean, Keers can just put it away, I don't know how he does it, he's smaller than me. Afterwards they had dessert and I'm like "ah I'm gonna die". I was sweating and I felt sick but you don't want to offend them or anything. We eat pretty good during the week, Keers can fix up some mean meals. So that's good.

Stay safe, keep the faith, and we'll talk to you later.