Australia is on fire right now

Hey hey hey! Hi guys! How are y'all? I am doing great!

Australia is on fire right now

So as you may have heard, Australia is on fire right now. In a number of different ways, apparently.... I am fine! The fires are not close to us at all. They are up north of Canberra in NSW. Although, last week we had a heat wave! It was above 40 degrees Celsius almost every day! Today is nice and cool, which is fantastic. But it has been a warm week!

Does our flat have AC? (or Air Con as they call it here) Nooooope. So we basically die in the heat every night. Jokes! it isn't terrible at night. We can just prop open the window, and the breeze helps heaps!

Picture of Australian fires.  See article HERE.

We had a funny experience in the car with one of our members. We were talking about something else spiritual, and then the member who was driving us around said "Man, this country was designed to burn!" And I, being wonderfully gifted with blonde hair, thought he was reffering to things more spiritual. I said "Well, I guess you could say that...." I asked him why he said that, and he said "Everything is so dry, and it is so hot here." I was embarrassed. Good one, Elder Larsen.

So, this member that we happened to be driving with is a guy who is a returned missionary (RM), from a super-active family. He hasn't been to church in ages, because of various things. But a week or so ago, he said he wanted to come and help us missionaries out with lessons! Which was awesome. We know he has a testimony, and wants to go to church and stuff, just his health and other things have been keeping him back. So, we seized the opportunity to ask him to come with us to a lesson. And he was fantastic! He was probably one of the best members I have ever been to with a lesson! So on-to-it!

And it gets better! He finally came to church yesterday!!! Woohoo! And he loved it! We think he may be getting back into it for good! Keeping our hopes up! He is sooo coool and such a good member-missionary! We need him! The Lord needs him!

We should be inside, cooling off!

We had a really cool experience meeting a new investigator this past week. So, we were walking to an appointment, and we passed this woman, and she stopped and said that we should be inside, cooling off! We told her that we couldn't, we had to keep working. We explained to her that we were missionaries for our church. That didn't seem to bother her at all, which was good. We talked to her for a minute or so, in which time Elder Cocker noticed that she had a hat with a Native American on it. Elder Cocker has Native American ancestry, so he got to talk to her about that. It turns out that she was really interested in Native American culture, and just with the United States in general. We asked if we could go to her home and talk more about Native American things etc, and she said that she would probably be busy. So we parted ways, she went to go to lunch, and we continued walking to our appointment.

About 10 minutes later, we realized that we forgot to bring a "Finding Faith in Christ" DVD which we planned to use at this appointment with our investigator. So we had to turn around and go back to our flat and get it, deciding that we would push lunch until after our appointment. And when we were walking to our appointment again, we turned around and saw the same woman walking like 10 meters behind us! So we slowed down, and started walking and talking to her. We went practically the same way as she did to go home, as she and our investigator live in the same neighborhood. So we talked that whole time, mostly about Native American culture. We told her that we had a book (The Book of Mormon) that discusses where the Indians came from, and she said we could come over after her appointment and see her Native American things and we could show her our book!

That was exciting! We went and had our lesson with J___, which went really well, and then we went to her house. She had lots of Indian things and photos from when she went to the states and lots of awesome things to show! It was cool! Then we pulled out the Book of Mormon, talked about the Restoration, and she accepted everything well! We asked if we could come back, and she said of course! It was definitely another miraculous experience.

Wife-points for walking in the heat!

Random, yet related side-note: like 12 people this week have pulled over in their cars, or caught up to us while we were walking, in order to tell us that it is too hot! We need to go home and go inside! We actually found an inactive member who said we could come back and visit him that way. But the work of the Lord does not stop for weather! Humbug! The Red Sea didn't stop Moses from going where he needed to go. The Atlantic Ocean didn't stop Nephi! The freezing weather didn't stop the Pioneers! Never! We are getting wife-points for walking in the heat! :)

Which chapel did you say?

Something funny happened when we were supposed to go on trade offs. So our ward meets at a chapel in Woden, which is probably a 22 minute drive from our flat. There is a chapel that hasn't been used for a while in Queanbeyan that is a 4 minute drive from our flat.... So we were told to meet at the chapel for trade offs. We don't have a car, so we spent ages trying to organize a way to get to the Woden chapel.... When we arived promptly on time at the Woden chapel, we called them to say we were there. They told us they were there too. Which was confusing, considering the fact that there was only our car in the parking lot. Then they asked us which chapel we were at. And then they said that they were at the Queanbeyan chapel, because we don't have a car..... Whoops! So they had to come pick us up and use a bit more petrol (not gasoline here in Aussie-land). Our bad!

Sorry I don't have any photos of my week. I sent my camera card home with a package that has all of this weeks pictures....  So those are the highlights of this week! I realize it is a bit shorter than normal, but hey! I am writing something!

Time for some questions.....

Fisher dudes? Haven't seen them in ages, since they left for Wollongong....

The Caravan Park family are great! We passed by their place this week, and they were so happy to see us! They said that they have a place and they are moving in Tuesday. And they also said that they are going to have us over for dinner this week! He is cooking his specialty! Woohoo! We weren't able to teach them, but we will have many opportunities in the future. I can already tell. He expressed to us that he recognized that after they met us, things went consistently better every day!

The K____ Family return this week from Holiday! So next week I should have a better update on them. We are going to go and finish some of the service things they have been having us do with them sometime before they get home. So hopefully that makes them happy!

Kaysie, Australians love American accents. They think we sound good. They all wish they had American accents, and some of them can imitate them pretty good. My imitation of an Aussie accent is getting really good! New vocab for y'all: Fairdinkum (pronounced in Aussie-land- Fai-dink-come) It basically means nothing. It can be used as an exclamation like "Holy Cow!" or something. For example, "Well, Fairdinkum there, mate!"

Uke lessons are good! I can now play all of the hymns from the Simplified Hymnbook because it has all of the chords above the music, and all of the Children's Songbook stuff too! Next time I send home a memory card, I will record myself playing something so you guys can see what I can do! Yes I can still play surprisingly well with my drum pad. Which I am pretty happy about.

Elder Brown is home! That is awesome that you guys sent him off with a good meal!

Okay! Well, I had better get going! I hope yall have a great week! Oh, I found out that Elder Hammond and Elder Perkins from the MTC (who had experienced VISA delays) finally got here! Yay!

Ofa'tu!

Elder Larsen