Week 15

Hello everyone. How is life in Salt Lake? Things are pretty much normal here. We had a pretty good week planned out but one by one, our appointments would fall through. Few things are more frustrating than making an appointment with an investigator that lives way out in woop woop and then using our precious kilometers to drive out there and then no one is home. I guess thats what happens when your flat-mate is a professional boxer. Hahaha all good though.

We have a sister in our ward named Diamond Langi. She is a professional model and she was going to represent Tonga in the Miss World Competition, but she won some other beauty contest and I guess they don't let you win everything in the same year so she's not going to the miss world competition. So thats our claim to fame. We've been trying to go visit her because her parents are less active, so maybe we will get a picture with her. hahaha

Here are The questions of the week:

"How long has your companion been on his mission? Do you share the apartment with any other elders or is it just the two of you? What door do you use to go into your apartment? Does it face the main street or that side street?"

Elder Grant has been on his mission for about six months now. I am his second son. It is just us in the flat. No other companionships live there because there is not enough room. (i'm pretty sure i have answered that question like three times now) The door i use to get into my apartment is on the side street. It's just a door in the wall with a handle right smack dab in the middle of it.

On saturday they did this big festival to Light the Christmas tree in Camden and they closed down the whole main street to do it. It was cool. They had fireworks that we could see from our balcony. Hopefully that wasn't too big of a sin for us to watch...

This week we have our Zone conference and Since President Lew is coming down he is going to Interview our investigator Dean and he might clear her for baptism! It's not a for sure thing, but i'm praying for it! If he does clear her, we would try to do the baptism this Saturday. She is so ready for it. She has a stronger testimony than some of our members! Pray for her!

Sorry i don't have a ton to say today. Mom is going to be mad at me. But i'm loving it out here. It's been raining a ton this week but its nice cuz it keeps the temperature down. We've got an appointment with a potential investigator this week so hopefully that doesn't fall through. Her name is Kelly. She's keen to learn and i have high hopes for her. Every other time we've tried to meet with her it has fallen through so i'm prayin for this week to be the week! Transfers are coming up and i'm scared i'm going to have to train or take over the area or something. But i guess if i do train, i'll get to see Elder Randle! or even train elder randle! Can't wait to see him.

I got two packages this week from sarah and from Mum! Thank you sooo much! Happy birthday to me and happy halloween! hahaha just a little late... also i have gotten the letters that were written on the 14th and 21st of october. I will probably get one this week at zone conference so we'll see how that goes.

Love you guys! Chuch is true! I feel like the front lines of the church sometimes, and it's weird but awesome at the same time. Remember to send me questions that you have so i can answer them! (and have something to write about because i don't really know what to write like ever)

Love,

Elder Tingey

Not yet, but its gettin there....

This is the Burragorang Lookout over the Wollondilly river. Beautiful Eh? That was what we did last P-day. Dont worry, it's in my area. My area goes from Glen Alpine to This national park, and then from Leppington down to Picton. THATS why we have a car.

Our November Calendar from our wonderful Zone leaders Elder Whiting and Elder Williams

Here's my district. More sisters than elders, i know. From left to right: Sister Tejada from the Phillippeans, Sister Pagnin from Italy, Sister Zeigner from Germany, Sister Imamori from Japan, and Sister Burnett from Utah, Some Stud, Elder Arbado from the Phillippeans, Elder Fiu (district leader) from Melbourne, and ELder Grant from melbourne (Sister Burnett pointed out that this looks like a wedding photo and then things just got kindof awkward...hahaha)

Week 14

To those who have not yet forgotten me:

I have been chastened by our dear mother because my emails are not up to par. For this I appologize, and i blame becca. How can i compete with Hermana Tingey's emails? I just can't live up to the standard. SO we are implementing something. If my email does not live up to all your expectations, send me a quick email with questions you have and i will do my best to answer them the next week. Mother's questions from last week are as follows:

"What do you do in the morning? what time to you go out and when you do go out what do you do? Do you just knock doors or what and what about Halloween? did you tract? do they celebrate Halloween over there?"

In the morning i wake up at 6:30 like a good missionary should. I excercise for 1/2 hour and weigh myself. Excercise usually consists of some sort of ab workout and some push-ups. At my current state i am weighing 92.2 Kilos so you can go do the conversion if you really are desiring to know how much i weigh. My goal is to never go about 100. Personal study starts at 8:00 so i shower and eat a bowl of Wheat Bix (cereal) and get ready between 7 and 8. Personal study goes for an hour, then companionship study for an hour, then 12-week training for new missionaries goes for an hour, then language study goes for an hour and then we usually have lunch and leave the flat about 1:00. Halloween isn't really celebrated here. our ward did a trunk n treat but it wasnt' a big thing. We just went on business as usual on Haloween. Something about "We are always missionaries" or something like that.

So this week was a good week. We picked up 2 new investigators. one's name is jimmy. He's a 300 lb Samoan that lives with one of our Less active members named Emosi Solitua. Emosi is a professional Boxer and he's 18th in the nation in his weight division. He had a fight this weekend and i'm hoipng to find out how it went. But we stopped by to visit emosi and met Jimmy. We gave him a samoan Book of Mormon about a week and a half ago and he said he read a quarter of it! He's toatally keen to learn more so i'm really excited. But we need to reactivate emosi because i don't think either me or elder grant could baptize jimmy, but emosi has a chance.

The next one's name is Ken. We met ken of a referral for his wife, actually. She wanted a blessing so her mormon friend referred her to us. we gave the blessing and she turned out to be a religion hopper that wasn't really interested in finding a religion right now but her husband is so we are teaching him and he said he's been looking for a religion for 10 yrs now.

This sunday in our gospel principles class our investigator Dean said something that i thought was really cool. When asked what the Atonement did for us, she said, "it gives us a choice". So true. Christ has laid down his life for us in order to give us the choice to either follow him or not.

Yesterday on our visits we gave two blessings that were unplanned. It was cool. One was the grandmother of one of our members. She was tongan and couldn't speak much english so she couldn't understand the blessing at all but it was still a cool experience and the spirit was strong. Did you know that in tongan culture, missionaries are like royalty? Haha its funny cuz this old tongan woman was getting mad at the little kids for running around and talking in front of us. hahaha if only everyone thought like that.... The second was the less-active daughter of one of our members. She wanted a blessing because she has a test today for uni so i gave her a blessing and she was crying when we finnished. Not sure what i said but the spirit was strong.

Love you all,

CHurch is true.

Love,

Elder TIngey

A bad picture of most of our zone. sorry i tried to do self-timer. This is at district training meeting.

Week 13

To whom it may concern,

Hello family and friends that are lucky enough to get this email sent to them! Hahaha how is everyone??? Love you all. This week has been nuts and it feels like i just emailed you like yesterday since it was Wednesday when i last sent one. I say things have been nuts, but what i mean is, all our plans have been falling through. Hahaha its been all over the shop. We had an elder go into the hospital last week and on wed night we were trying to plan the day, but just had the hardest time coming up with things to do. We finally figured out a plan that seemed a bit dodgy, but it filled the schedule so we called it good. The next morning our Zone leader called us and asked us if we could go spend most of the day in the Hospital with this elder because his companion had to go to district leader training in Mortdale. Hahaha the lord works in mysterious ways! We went and sat with this elder and i read my pinyin book of mormon for a good two hours. Oh yeah, i'm a chinese speaking missionary! sometimes i forget. haha but its fun. Yesterday we had a lesson with the Sika family. They are members, and totally active, but its a single mother situation and she needs a boost from the missionaries every once in a while. But she asked me to give the closing prayer and i said it in Chinese and all the kids thought it was the coolest thing they'd ever heard. Haha if only they knew how bad my chinese really is... but i'll just let them think i'm pro. Don't want to crush their hearts. haha

We met a woman named Kelly that is a single mother (why is it that our whole teaching pool is women?) She is a truck driver and she just got back from a month-long, $10,000 holiday in Hawaii. Ya, she told us ALL about it. but it was kind of a miracle that we bumped into her. Elder Grant met her before she went on holiday, but she seemed interested so she told him to visit when she got back. that was about a month ago. So last week we were short on our Kilometer allotment for the month since it was near the end of the month, so we decided to park the car and walk one day. We had planned to go check and see if kelly was home but as we were walking to her house elder grant said "wait a second, she works all week during the day. what are we doing?" I, from the depths of my kind and faithful and sympathetic heart said, "well, maybe she lost her job." haha we knocked on the door and she answered! i though i had just made the biggest call of my life. but she had only just got back from holiday and she didn't start work for a couple days which was good. haha but the cool thing was that she had only just gotten home like fifteen minutes before we knocked so if we had been driving that day, we would have missed her. So that was cool.

Things are going well. The bush fires are under control now so i guess i can tell you about them... We were never in like a TON of danger, but a lot of people had to evacuate their homes. we never had to. I didn't want to tell you guys about them until i was sure that you didn't have to worry... Haha MOM, I'M FINE. A man in our ward gave me a book called "southern Cross saints." it talks about great grandpa Tingey a lot in there. It was cool. We are getting a NEW CAR!!!!! Its not a corola either! It's a Holden Cruise. They don't have them in America. That's probably the most exciting thing in my life right now. Nothing much else has happened this week. Our baptismal date is off so that's disappointing, but she is still doing well. She will get dunked yet! Let me know how everyone is doing. I love emails, letters, and anything else from home! 

Also, make sure my mailing address is correct on like facebook and stuff.

Australia Sydney South Mission

PO Box 456

Mortdale, NSW 2223

Love you guys! miss you guys!

Love,

Elder Tingey