Week 71

Transfers!!!! 

absolutely nothing happened. haha only two elders got transferred from our zone and there was a little bit of drama behind it, but nothing big. but they DID switch up the districts so i went from a district of 3 companionships of elders to a district of 2 companionships of elders and 2 companionships of sisters..... good news is i still only have to give a training once a month! haha good stuff. so i will be here in mudgee for Christmas! should be fun. Our neighbor is way into the christmas spirit. i'm pretty sure if this were utah he'd have the Tingey mobile packed with kids and driving past to look at it. hahaha i'll take a picture and send it to you. 

Also, the reason i'm emailing today is because ELder Stewart called president and got permission for us to have P-day today since neither of us are getting transferred and we're out here on our own. So i'm not breaking rules. don't worry.

It was a pretty slow week. we had trade-offs with the zone leaders, which was good. i was down in orange for the day and i asked about the family Grandma tingey asked about and the members said that they moved out of orange. orange is like the size of mudgee now. they get like 10-15 people every week. That's a cool area. its a lot more diverse there than mudgee. Here we pretty much have white, a couple aboriginals, and some philipinos. It was a good trade off and i found out the the elder i was with knows Erik Smith! He grew up in Kamas and was friends with him apparently! his name is Elder Weller and i'm pretty sure his first name is Brett. He's the man. 

We had a funny experience with Greg this week. We were teaching and using the pamphlet to explain and we each had one and he was looking at his pamphlet and then looking at mine and then back to his and then he stopped me and said, ''why does mine have the black people?'' haha it was really funny because the pamphlets are tailored to race so some have all white people in the pictures and some have all black people. we laughed for a while. he's doing good.

Nothing else much happened and i'm going to have to cut this short. sorry but i'll talk to you all next week!

-Elder tingey

Week 70

Putting my best side forward...

Good morning from beautiful Mudgee! It really IS beautiful right now because it's been raining all week and the landscape has gone from all yellow and brown to green and it's awesome. It's a true answer to prayers because it hasn't rained for a long time and the farmers were suffering big time. There wasn't much for the animals to eat. and that's all anyone would ever talk to us about when we contacted people. haha but now we've gotten the rain that we needed. Last night was crazy. It was pouring rain and the lightning was nuts. i don't know why but we get heaps of lightning here. if it rains, there will be lightning. and last night was the coolest thing ever. we both woke up to a huge boom of thunder that sounded like it was right above our roof, and then we sat awake for like an hour watching the flashes of lightning. haha good thing our flat is dedicated!

Last monday our branch president called us and asked if we could come over for dinner and FHE so we went over and had dinner and then our man Greg Barto came over for FHE! it was really good. Greg is the man. He's like the busiest man i've ever met, but i think we're going to try to go help him out on the farm and hopefully free up some of his time so he can do things like come to church. I really hope something happens soon.

We got a young men's president for the branch last week and he's gun as so i think that will be a really good thing. we've only got 2 young men, but they're pretty keen to get their friends coming to activities and church and stuff so i think something will happen with that.

At our ZTM this week they introduced the "He is the Gift" initiative. Are they doing that back home? haha i guess it would be less likely for you to know because you only have one companionship for the whole stake. but if you haven't yet, go to christmas.mormon.org and watch the video! It's pretty sweet. but we have all these special He is the Gift pass-along cards that they want us to hand out all of them before christmas. so we've been trying to hand all those out. Apparently it's supposed to be a church-wide thing.

I got my christmas package on friday! hahahhahaha good thing you sent it early! haha thank you i opened it and i love all the presents! hahahaha Just kidding! i just get to stare at it for the next 3 weeks. haha so i put it in one of the closets we never open.

It's weird to me that this is the last week of the transfer. I can't decide if it's gone by fast or slow. It's interesting how the Lord works. i've constantly been growing on this mission, but i feel like each area has shaped me differently. Some areas help you become a better teacher, some a better planner, some a leader. I feel like this transfer was meant to help me find where i stand in life and what kind of person i want to be for the rest of my life and ultimately eternity. I'm extremely grateful for the Holy Ghost that can help me distinguish between truth and people's philosophies. haha not sure if that makes sense, it does to me, but it's hard to explain.

Yesterday we fasted as a mission for every companionship to get a baptism in January. It's gonna take a miracle for us, so it's a good thing we're in the industry of miracles! haha Love you all. have a wonderful week and if you go to Winder Dairy you better get a picture with all the kids on santa's lap and send it to me. and also a picture of the scones. man i miss waiting in that line for 3 hours.... hahaha dang it i love christmas time.

Love,

Elder Tingey

PS  i am able to skype again this year so i'll do it on the 26th for me which will be christmas for yous. not sure of what time yet, but i'll let you know.

PPS a chinese girl just sat down at the computer next to me. she was speaking cantonese to her friend but we'll talk to her anyways... hahaha

Week 69

Alright first things first 

i want to wish my mother a happy birthday last week! Technically last monday for me was not yet the 24th for all of you so i had to wait until this week. haha Love you mom, hope everyone was nice to you and you didn't have to clean the house on your birthday to get ready for thanksgiving... haha You're the best mom ever. Literally. It sounds like you had a great thanksgiving down in st. George. I wish i could say the same. My comp isn't into the american holidays so i tried to suffer in silence and then thursday night i dreamed of  turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes and ham and all the great stuff. i honestly can't wait for next year. What i didn't hear is what the outcome of the tingey family turkey bowl was!  haha too good. i'm just glad i don't have to miss my favorite holiday again.

We had a pretty decent week. numbers-wise it was our best week this transfer, but we didn't see much progression. It's been really interesting this past week because most of the people we teach are very strong in their religion so we get into really core doctrine. You can't just skim across the top. So i've had to do a lot of study and deep-thinking, which has given me a few headaches haha but it's been really good for me, i think. 

Two main thoughts have come to mind this past week. First, i am amazed at how much i've learned since i've come on a mission. It is really priceless how much i've learned. And the more i learn, the more i realize i don't know. i'm just really glad that i was able to develop a strong foundation of faith and now everything i learn is just building off my testimony of the saviour. And i love learning about the gospel and the church. The second is that i am truly so grateful for Christ. I've gained a much greater appreciation of the atonement as i've been able to discuss the doctrines of Grace and Mercy and Justice. I wish i was able to comprehend just exactly how powerful the sacrifice of our saviour was, but from what i've experienced, it's amazing. and that's just for one person! And one of the most amazing things to me about it is that he did all of that so we can truly have agency and be able to accept him or reject him. As we begin the christmas season i hope everyone gets a chance to reflect on the influence Christ has on their own life. Haha i'm lucky that i get to do it all the time and it's the best. And even though it doesn't feel like christmas time because its like 100 degrees here, i still feel a little bit closer to christ at this time of year. 

We were meeting with our man, Justin this week and he showed us a copy of the 1830 edition of the book of Mormon that he ordered on the internet. it was pretty cool. it's the brown one that's in all the pictures and the restoration video and stuff and he let us borrow it so we're going to go have a photo shoot with it. haha but it's pretty cool. he's the man. he's read the whole book of mormon, D&C and most of the Pearl of Great Price. He has some really deep questions. I really like teaching him because i learn so much from studying the questions he asks.

Other than that, things are pretty chill here in Mudgee, mate. Hopefully we can grow our teaching pool a bit. (haha that seems to be the slogan here...) Love you all and hope you have a great week. Talk to you next week!

Love,

Elder 田

(haven't given up on the Chinese yet!)

Week 68

This week was another slow one. i think i'm still trying to transition from the city to the bush. i'm all thrown off because you can't just go contact people at the bus stop if you have open time because there's one bus that runs through the town like 3 times a day and nobody rides it. So we have to try other things. We are going to try the basketball courts after school this week. hopefully we can rope some aussie kids into a game. haha that's the easy part. i just wish i was any good at basketball! hahaha we'll see. I think the most valuable skills to take on a mission (outside of spiritual things of course) are playing the piano, basketball, skateboarding, and cooking. if you can do those things, you'll smash it. haha its really true. my comp is a firm believer that we should be able to play video games as a finding tool. haha thank you, mum for not letting me play video games as a child. 

We met with our new friend Greg last monday. We were expecting it to be a short visit, but we were there for like 2 1/2 hours because he took us around his farm (600 acres) and showed us his purebred rottweiler litter that are like 2 weeks old. haha they are so cute and the father is massive and terrifying looking, but the nicest dog ever. Everybody has dogs out here, it's awesome, but i am so sick of getting dog hair off my clothes. haha all goods, though. Greg is the man. we talked about the gospel of jesus christ and he really liked that we believe in enduring to the end and that you can't just continue to sin and repent and sin again. He's the owner of the local rugby union team. and he works a lot with troubled youth and helps them turn things around. it's pretty cool. he's a good guy. works almost 24/7 though so it's hard to find time to meet with him. but that's alright. 

We met with nigel and read from the Book of Mormon. One thing that is really interesting about mudgee is that everyone pretty much is christian. mostly catholic and baptist, but pretty much everyone goes to church every week! its weird. haha i guess i'm so used to talking to people who never go to church that it surprises me. but nigel is a cool guy. he knows the bible really well and we have some really deep conversations about doctrine like grace. it is really interesting and my understanding of the gospel has really grown from it. We had another lesson that was really similar with a guy named Justin. hes not new, we just haven't been able to meet up since i've been here but it was a really interesting lesson and i'm growing a lot from it. 

I found out that this area just got missionaries a year ago. there were missionaries a long time ago, but they closed it because there weren't enough missionaries in the mission, but now with the wave there were enough, but there hasn't been a convert baptism here since the missionaries got here. SO it's gonna take some faith prayers and work, but i know there are people out there that are prepared. 

We had zone conference on friday and it was really good. The assistants had good trainings and president and sister back smashed it. really what most of our zone needs is a good beating, but they did really great without using violence. haha just kidding. but then we had lunch and played a game with everyone. it was like a huge game of foursquare, but with paddles and a tennis ball. it was cool. and then we had a testimony meeting which was really good. gave us that spiritual upliftment we needed to go out and do the work. and then we took our 3 hour drive and got home right before 9. haha it was great though. 

Love you all! hope you have a great week. The past couple weeks i've learned a lot about myself and my relationship with our saviour. He is truly amazing. There's times when you feel alone and you feel like there's more laid on your shoulders than you can bear. I know i have had divine help on my mission. and i am so grateful for it. I love being on the winning team! even when it seems like we are behind on the scoreboard. 

Love,

Elder Tingey

Week 67

Dear Family:

haha i hate starting these emails... okay so this past week was pretty good. Our area is really beautiful. We do lots of driving between the towns we cover and its just rolling yellow hills. it's awesome. We've been trying to contact that malaysian guy in kandos, but he's never been in the shop when we go. but we'll keep trying. 

We met with a guy named Justin on Monday evening and it was a pretty good lesson. He's pretty attached to the bible and the missionaries have been trying to help him see that the bible and Book of Mormon support each other and we had a really good discussion about it. and then at the end he gave us a referral for his preacher at the uniting church! haha should be interesting. He told us he would talk to him and let us know if he's interested next time so we will find out tomorrow when we see him. We also met this old lady that used to be a jehovah's witness, and she's pretty cool. I think she's met with missionaries before because she told me that she already has one of the passalong cards that i was writing something on. 

On the 30th of this month there is an area wide "invitation sunday" and we are really excited for it. Our members (all 9 of them) have been doing great inviting people. It should be really good. hopefully we can get things going and see some growth here in mudgee! 

On saturday we had ZTM and i was so happy i didn't have to give a training. It was so nice to sit with the rest of the zone. I only have to give a training once a month as a district leader because our district is so spread out. AND there's no sisters in my district! haha both the sister companionships in our zone are in the other district! not sure how i managed that. haha just kidding just kidding, sisters are great and i'm not a sister hater... haha but then there was a district picnic in orange with all the branches after the meeting and that was fun. we only had one member from mudgee come, but it was still good. 

That's about all that's happening in Mudgee this week. haha hopefully next week we get some stuff going. 

They asked me to give a talk yesterday and i gave it on Prayer. It was really good for me, i think. Prayer is so awesome and i hope everyone makes every prayer a spiritual experience. I don't think i'd be able to be where i am if i didn't have prayer in my life. Constant prayer is what keeps us safe from everything in this world. Love you all. Church is true. 

Love,

Elder TIngey

Week 66

Great week this week. Great week. 

It's completely different from anywhere i've ever served before. I guess i should've expected it, being this far out in the bush, but it was a shock. We got to go help this guy demolish part of his house for service! haha i was starting to think that the only service that was ever needed was elderly ladies that needed us to do their gardening. haha it was fun, but it smashed me. i was so tired for the rest of the day. it's been like 35 degrees Celcius the past few days, so we've been dying. lucky we have the car. 

THursday we went to sydney for a district leader training meeting. it was fun. there's a bunch of old zone leaders that are now district leaders so it was good to see them again. it's funny because you've got a bunch of old zone leaders there and then there's the guys that have been out for like 5 months and they just have that green look on them. It was funny, though, because there was definitely more aspiring going on in that meeting than what went on at MLC. I guess they figure it's their only chance to get seen. One day they'll learn... haha

I don't know if i told you guys this last week, but my companion's name is Elder Stewart. He's from New Zealand near Christchurch. He's been out 1 transfer longer than me. I don't know what else you would want to know about him so if you have questions ask.

We had a cool miracle on sunday. So there was a baby blessing and that brought heaps of people because they were samoan and one guy that came was the manager for the Mudgee Wombats which is the union rugby team here in mudgee. He really enjoyed it and he stayed for sunday school, and we taught him the restoration during priesthood. it was awesome. he's a cool guy and he seems pretty keen. 

as for the rest of our teaching pool, We are teaching a woman named Lita from Fiji who has been investigating for like 4 years and apparently her younger brother just moved in with her and he's a pentacostal preacher so that should be interesting. That's pretty much it, though. I'll tell you what was told to me when i came in: We have a lot of people to visit, but not very many to teach because they wont let us share a message, but they like having us come over to talk. hahah that'll have to change, mate! Oh yeah, i almost forgot to tell you, on wednesday we were up in a town called Rylston and our plans fell through and it was a long drive back to mudgee so we were sititng in the car deciding what to do and i just searched chinese restaraunts in the GPS and there was one in the next town over! So we drove over to it and parked outside and literally right as we parked this chinese guy came out. I asked if elder Stewart could use his bathroom and he looked at me funny and i realized that his restaurant hadn't opened for business yet... haha but he let us in and i asked him where he was from and he told me Malaysia so i asked him if he spoke mandarin and he said YES! so we talked for a while and i told him we'd love to help him out building his restaurant and i gave him a plan of salvation pamphlet. SO we will follow up with that sometime this week and i'll let you know how it goes. That was probably the biggest miracle of this week. haha i was soo happy.

Our branch has 3 Melchizedek priesthood holders (and one of them just moved in!) So we have a branch president and a counsilor and i'm not sure what the other one will be. hopefully a branch mission leader. we have 1 aaronic priesthood holder and then like 6 relief society sisters and maybe 3 small children so we are few in numbers, but strong in spirit here in mudgee. Hopefully we can get some growth. One problem is that mudgee is a mining town so a lot of people here are only temporary so we really want to find a solid family that is here for the long run so we will be praying for that. 

Love you all! Miss you! Time is flying by. its scaring me. but i'm loving it. It's crazy to look back at where i was like 6 months ago because i'm so different. It's interesting because i always feel like i'm converted to the lord, but when i look back i always feel like i'm more converted than i used to be. It's that line upon line, precept upon precept thing, i think. I love our savior and i love being out here serving him. Mosiah 2:21 is one that i think is really interesting. I really love verse 22, though. All God asks is that we keep his commandments and he will prosper us. Kindof a cool thing. It's not about bringing in a profit for the Lord. it's about doing what he's asked. 

Have a good week!

-Elder Tingey

Week 65

Hello everyone! 

Not sure if you all knew this, but transfers were this past week! I thought i would probably stay because elder Katene is so new to the area so i didn't tell you they were coming up... hahaha WRONGO! It's amazing how your life can change so quickly on a mission. But i'll tell you about that at the end of the email. Last week was great. We got to meet with a bunch of people and teach a bunch of lessons. Karka was really good. She said she was going to give us a referral for her sister who lives down in woden ward so that's exciting. get the whole family involved. i really think she'll get baptized. she just needs to not be so pregnant... haha she's great. We went with jimmy to hot pot again this week and had a great time. He's the man. He'll be a leader in the church someday. i'm excited to see what happens with him. We met up with wilma on sunday to say goodbye and it was kindof sad. haha she's cool and i hope she continues meeting with the missionaries and gets baptized someday. It's really nice to have today's technology so that i can stay in touch with these people. It makes leaving a lot easier. can't imagine what is owuld be like to say goodbye and know that it is very likely i will never see them again.

Saturday night we had a halloween party with ginninderra and belconnen ward. it was a trunk and treat put on by the primary. It was awesome. there were heaps of nonmembers there. we were having a hayday talking to everyone! i think there will be a lot that comes from it. Its crazy how successful the work is when members provide people to teach. Love those referrals.

We went to the zoo for a district p-day last week and it was pretty sweet. it was the national zoo and acquarium but it was  quite a bit smaller than hogle zoo. pretty sad, but still fun. i think i'll cut this email short so i have time to upload you guys some pictures.

okay so for the big news... saturday morning elder katene and i drove to the chapel to check the transfer details and i couldn't believe it, but i saw my name on the list! So i knew i was gone. Elder Bowcut was on there too, which was only fitting that we come together and leave together. So i was really sad about it all and wondering what was going to happen and where i was going to go the whole time we deep-cleaned our flat and then right as we were finishing the cleaning our phone rang and it was president back... every time he calls you just can't help but freak out a little bit especially when it's on transfer day. but i answered and he thanked me for my service as a zone leader and told me he was "promoting me to district leader" haha so i was happy about that. I don't think i would like to be zone leader anywhere but canberra. we had it easy there. So the weight of that calling just immediately lifted and while we were on the phone he told me where i was going! haha president back can't keep secrets to save his life. So he told me i'm going to be going to a place called Mudgee! hahahaha couldn't believe it. Look it up. i went from a ward of about 150 active members to a branch of 7. it's out near orange and dubbo. only one companionship in our branch and we live 2 hours from the nearest missionaries. Makes things pretty interesting. Lots of fun to be had up here. Yesterday i did a total of 9 hours of driving and i was so tired from packing the night before... it was dangerous. but it was a beautiful drive. Australia has some really pretty scenery that you don't get to see if you spend all your time in Sydney. I think i'll only have one more area after this and i think i'll ask if i can go to hurstville because i've never been very close to the city and i heard there's heaps of chinese people there. haha haven't seen a chinese person in Mudgee yet! but we'll find one. we cover a place called golgong as well, i think. pretty sure that's what it's called. so i'm pretty stoked right now. the closest thing i've ever been to a branch is doing the sacrament at the care center back home! hahaha hopefully there will be no fishing sacrament cups out of old people's mouths here.... hahahahaha but i will keep you posted on how everything is. we have a few investigators and hopefully there will be some more coming!

love you all! Have a great week!

-Elder TIngey

Kangaroos!!

me with The lanky family kids. they're so much fun. 

Week 64

Dear Family:

What a week what a week. Sometimes you go out and work your tail off and talk to heaps of people and smash yourself, and you can't see much happening from it. It's true that often things are happening under the surface that i'm not able to see, haha but that doesn't always make me feel better when totaling up our numbers sunday night!

We were able to meet with jimmy this week and he took us out to hot pot! there's this really nice sichuan restaurant in downtown canberra that he took us to and he wants to take us again this friday in case i get transferred. He is the man. Literally the man. He's got his final exams for this semester coming up and he still has to read heaps of stuff and study, but he's come to church every week and has been reading the book of mormon and not just reading, but studying it. This just feels like the way missionary work is supposed to be. We were talking to him this week and he told us that he is a part of the Communist Party back in china so pretty much baptism is off the table for at least 6 months. He told us that it takes 6 months to resign from it and he's going to resign until the party's policy changes and members can have a religious belief. He will be in australia until next July so maybe there's a chance i can be here for his baptism. But if not, that's okay. Because he's the man! haha

Wilma came to church again this week and she brought a friend! Her name is amber. She is from Henan Province and is studying at ANU. at the end of sacrament meeting one of the members who is a returned missionary from taiwan was asked to give the closing prayer and he gave it in Chinese! haha it made all the Chinese investigators really happy. I asked Amber how she felt after the meeting and she said that she couldn't understand much because she's only been in Australia about a month but she said she felt peaceful and she really liked it. Haha we asked  if we could meet up during the week to explain a little bit more, but she has too many assignments and is too busy. Hopefully we can get her to sit in when we go to teach wilma. Wilma is doing pretty good.

We met with yang Bai on wednesday and it was good. She's not at the point now where she's ready to start progressing, but i think eventually she will. She's so nice and she's been helping me with my chinese. haha speaking of which, elder Bowcut and i decided that both our chinese is not very good, and his is better than mine. so we have been waking up at 5:30 to do an extra hour of language study. It's been good. we smash through about 50 words every morning and we still have our regular hour of study! hahaha we'll see how long we can keep it up.

We did a lot of finding this week, and didn't come up with much. One girl said it was okay for us to come back, but i think it was more just a combination of her being nice and elder Katene with the smooth voice.... hahaha no answer when we went back.... We found a part-member family that we're hoping to work with more, but we were only able to visit with them really quickly because they were on their way out. So i guess i'll keep you posted on that. We dropped by a former that we are going to help move this weekend and she explained to us this miracle story of how she met the missionaries but because of a few things she hasn't been baptized. She told us that in the bible, john the beloved was mis-interpreted and was really meant to be Mary magdelene, the beloved companion (wife) of Jesus. I guess you learn something new every day. She gave us the gospel of mary to borrow and read through so we'll see how that goes! :)

Other than that, almost nobody was home this week. It was rough going. But we had a good time through it all. Hope you all have a great week! Love you very much! Miss you! Church is true. Jesus is our savior. not sure where mary fits into it all, but that's not what's important:)

-Elder Tingey

Week 63

Quick update from the week. 

i don't have much time because we have our zone p-day today so i have to go set up soon. we're having a barbecue, but its not like most BBQs.... i'll send you a picture to explain.

This week we had a great lesson with Karka and her friend Moomoowah. we discussed the restoration and resolved a couple questions that came up about priesthood authority and prophets. they are both baptist so they know the bible really well and love it when we teach using bible scriptures. One big thing we've been working on with karka is that if our church is the true church of jesus christ on the earth today, then she would need to be baptized again. on monday she told us that if she receives an answer that our church is true, she is willing to be baptized again. It was awesome. and moomoowah told us that before the lesson she felt like all churches are true because they teach you to be a good person, but after she said that from what we talked about, she now believes that there is only one true church. Hopefully they both can get their answers soon! One dilema is that karka is pregnant and due any day now so things might get a little complicated soon here... haha she's the best. We didn't get a chance to meet with jimmy this week, but he came to church and we set something up with him for tuesday. He's still doing great, just needs a bit more time and prayers. On thursday Wilma, who never wants to come to church because it's too early to wake up, called us and told us that she wanted to come to church this sunday! haha it was awesome. So she came and i think she really enjoyed it. the sacrament meeting theme was family history work, so i'm pretty sure that was kindof boring for her, and we always sing the crazy hymns in the hymn book that nobody knows so Wilma was laughing at me struggling to sing #42. haha and then i started laughing because i was slaughtering it, and it was just not a good situation. Moral of the story: just stick to the 12 main hymns that everyone knows. hahahah 

We were able to meet with Yang Bai this week and we read from the book of mormon with her. she doesn't want to take lessons about like "the gospel" until she can have her boyfriend with her to learn as well, so we are doing the sneak attack of using to book of mormon. haha it was really good, and then she told me that she wants to help me learn chinese, so we had a few minutes of language study together. poor elder katene was falling asleep. SHe offered her laptop to watch movies to keep him occupied, but we had to turn it down.... haha 

We met a chinese guy named zack at ANU this week. We had a good lesson about the nature of god and stuff like that. we will be meeting with him on saturday. That's the update on our teaching pool for this week. We are looking to find some more keen investigators and we've received a couple referrals from members for part-member families that live in our area so we're hopin something comes of those. I guess i'll let you know next week.

We had interviews with president back this week. It went well. The poor guy has been dealing with a lot of stuff up in sydney. He wouldn't give any specifics, but i definitely do not envy his position, and i understand why we just got the stricter rules.

I got the package this week! is was so awesome! thank you all so much! I've already finished one box of the cereal and the pringles are almost gone. hahaha all of it was great. and the best part, i have to say, was the baby bottle. hahahahahahaahaha i died when i saw it. SOOO funny. and i will definitely use it to the fullest. haha

Hope you are all doing well. Life is so much different now that i have all the knowledge of a 19-year-old. :) hahaha just kidding. i still don't feel a day over 12. haha Love you all. The church is true. something i love doing is testifying of the truthfulness of the gospel as a representative of the savior. I know he lives. I love Sharing his message with people. I know i can't always see the bigger picture, but i know God knows what is going on and is behind the scenes making everything work out. Walking by faith is expected of us and if it was easy, it would have been satan's plan. haha trust in God, and hope for good things to come! and like that comercial says, "we haven't forgotten who keeps us in business". hahaha too true. Love you all!

-Elder Tingey

Yes. That is a spit.

Week 62

Well, it feels like it wasn't that long ago that i was sitting here emailing you guys last week. haha probably because we took our p-day halfway through the week! It was a pretty messed up week. haha i guess i'll just go through the 4 days that have happened since i have talked to you last.

1. Thursday: we had trade offs with the assistants. They came down wednesday night and stayed until friday morning. I went with Elder White. he just got called as assistant this transfer and the poor soul is dying this transfer so he has to spend his last T in the office! haha he's pretty sad about it, but he's awesome. He served in ginninderra for a long time so we went and visited a lot of people he used to work with. and one of his recent converts. We did a lot of walking around talking to people and i got sunburned! haha except it's not like the good utah sun. it just gets red and irritated and hurts and now i'm still just white as ever. haha but we were able to see Yang Bai because elder white used to meet with her a lot so somehow she found some time to meet with us. it was great. and now we're meeting with her on wednesday and she wants to help me learn chinese and we'll read the book of mormon together.

2. Friday: We did Zone training meeting and because the assistants were there and we had MLC on tuesday and p-day on wednesday we didn't have any time to really prepare a good training so we both winged it. hahaha it went really good though. President has asked that we use the sister training leaders in our trainings for zone training meeting so we told them they could have 20 minutes to present a training for the zone.... 40 minutes later they still had another activity they wanted to do and we had to just stand up and thank them for their training and start ours... not sure if they were very happy about that... Then me and elder Katene tried to make a pasta bake for lunch, but i think something went wrong because we both felt terrible for the rest of the day. We had a lesson with Jimmy that night at one of our members homes. It went really well and it was good to have him there to make good friendships. We talked about the 18th for baptism and he told us he wants some more time to understand the gospel more before he gets baptized, so that's off for the moment. I have no doubt that he will get baptized at some point. i just hope i get to be there to see it. we'll see. keep praying for him!

3. Saturday: We had general conference pretty much all day. It was hectic. Robbins' talk was smash in the morning session. and President Uchtdorf had one of the best conference talks i've ever heard in the priesthood session. It was inspiring. all of conference was good, but i thought saturday was especially good. We met with wilma between sessions to read the book of mormon, and i think she really liked 1 Nephi 3:7. hopefully when we explained it to her it helped her understand that scriptures are meant to be applied to our lives. not just enjoyed as good literature.

4. Sunday: My birthday! haha It was a great day. I didn't get to open my birthday package, but its okay because i'll probably get it this week when president comes down for interviews. So thank you in advance! haha and thank you for the white shirts and ANU shirt! i'll take a picture in it and send it next time. The other elders bought me a hot pot, which was really nice of them, but i think it will come back around when the end of the month comes and there's no money for food... ahaha it was really good, though. We had a good time. Conference was awesome, too. and there was a chinese translation set up in the primary room so me and elder Bowcut went and watched the last session in chinese! haha mostly it just made me realize how bad my chinese really  is, but it was good. i understood most of elder Richard G. Scott's talk. nice and simple, but powerful. Can't believe i only have one more conference left as a missionary! its crazy! Next october conference i'll be watching on our nice leather couches that have claw marks all over them from the cat that used to live there.....ahhahaahaha jk :) oh yeah！also, there's a returned missionary in the other ward and we were talking after one of the sessions and someone xcame up and talked to him and set up for him to go on a visit or something, and he pulled out a returned missionary daily planner and wrote it in! hahaha i was dying！ i can't waiit to have one of those for when I get home! haha

have a wonderful week! go read over some of the conference talks! they're so awesome! Due to some obedience problems in our mission, the policy for music has changed to MoTab only so i'll probably be listening to a lot of conference talks from now on. it's gonna be good. I'm so happy we have living prophets so we aren't "tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine" because i've seen too many people that are. I hope we never take that blessing for granted. Love you all！ talk to you next week!

-Elder Tingey

this is Floriad. that flower exposition thing that canberra does every year. it wasn't very cool, and it was almost 95% women there, but me and elder Katene had a good time.

me and my companion at Mt. Ainslie, overlooking our kingdom.

Australia's tomb of the unknown soldier.... but they didn't copy america...

our birthday celebration. 火锅！

Week 61

Well okay here we are. 

haha this is the most messed up week ever. Monday was a public holiday (again) so all the libraries were closed and tuesday we had MLC up in Sydney so they told all the zone leaders and sister training leaders they could choose between monday and wednesday for their P-day so we decided to go visit some people up in goulburn on monday and drive up to sydney monday night, stay at the APs flat and take p-day on wednesday. and then tomorrow we have trade-offs with the assistants so they're coming down tonight and then friday we are doing our zone training meeting and saturday and sunday is conference. haha not one just normal day of proselyting this week. and that is why i'm emailing at such a random time. Also they just made the parking at the library $5 so if ever you just don't get an email from me you can assume that yous just aren't worth the $5. hahaha just kidding!

MLC was good. just sometimes i feel like we have too many chiefs and not enough indians up there. I was getting close to just flipping the table and walking out. haha but it's a good thing i've been studying chapter 6 of preach my gospel! The meeting started at 9:00 and we had to leave at 3:30 so we could drive home and it was still in full swing. they did feed us lunch which was pretty good. i just can't be in a meeting for that long. i get distracted after a few hours.

okay mom wants me to talk about all my investigators and stuff. The peruvian woman we dropped because we tried to visit her a few more times and we kept getting hindu bashed and they always just told us she was out of town and they didn't know when she was supposed to get back. haha so we are moving on! The three african guys we can't go visit because of the rule about teaching people of the islam faith.... awkward... haha not sure what happened up in sydney, but i know it's all under control. you don't have to worry. even though i'm serving in the nation's capital which is probably the highest likely target of a terrorist attack. hahaha really though, it is all under control. I don't feel in danger at all. 

Jimmy is doin great. he's still on for baptism on the 18th. his auntie and brother came to visit from china and he brought them to church. and he showed up in a suit! haha he's the man. and he told our ward mission leader that he wants to serve a mission like us after he finishes school! he really is the man. pray hard for us to keep his date the 18th. we have a few things still to teach him. Karka we weren't able to meet up with this week. nobody answered on saturday when we went to visit and we dropped by sunday and she said she had visitors so we will go by later this week. i'll have to ask president about maybe having a temple square missionary help out. we'll see if she understands much of the book of mormon. Wilma is doing good. she just is very busy with school and she told us that in early november she will be moving up to sydney so right now we are reading the book of mormon with her. she told us she hasn't felt much from reading the book of mormon yet, but when she prays she feels peaceful. She's great.

Elder Katene is from a small farming town in New Zealand on the west coast of the North Island. It's called Talinuky (or at least that's what it kindof sounds like. you never know with those kiwi accents) he's the man. he's been out for a little longer than me. he was my zone leader when i was in camden. it's funny because camden is in macarthur zone, and macarthur zone has heaps of problems all the time. like missionaries getting sent home, problems. so he is very experienced with dealing with problems. haha but he took a breath of fresh air when he came to canberra because i told him that in 3 transfers i haven't had to do very much as far as big issues go. and that's why it's so nice being zone leader in canberra. haha except for the fact that nobody has any idea who you are when you go to conferences and stuff. It's been a big change to go from elder Bryce to elder Katene. haha i went from GO GO GO to way more kick back. He's hard working, but he does it in an islander way. We laugh all the time. I love it. Good times.

Well i hope you all had a great week and enjoyed conference and played slow motion football inbetween the sessions! haha i miss that. I'm really excited for conference. it's going to be great. and its my birthday! i'm not sure if i got the package for my birthday yet. i don't think i did, but the sister training leaders got the mail from the office before us (gotta love sisters) so i'm not sure. i'll find out on friday. If not that's okay because we are having a big hot-pot party for our dinner hour on sunday. it will be great. don't you worry about it.

Love you all! The church is true! have a good week!

-Elder tingey

Week 60

Pretty sweet week this week. 

First of all, there is nothing better than having a polynesian companion. and i'll tell you why. Because polynesians have an unspoken language with other polynesians that involves the offering of food. I'll explain what i mean with an example. Last night we were in trouble because our P-day got switched to tuesday so we were running very low on food. the pantry was empty except for rice. and we had some milk and oranges and frozen veggies in the fridge. So we decided to go out and visit people and hope for a miracle. SO westart out and are getting nothing. and we finally end up at a less-active's house and she is also from new zealand of maori descent. we were having a chat and suddenly, she looks at elder Katene and asks the most inspired question i've heard on my mission thus far: Have you eaten yet? and that was it. she ordered fish and chips for us and the left-overs are sititng in our fridge because of course there was an absurd amount that there was no way we could have finished in one sitting. haha i love it. and we realized that people, regardless of race, ALWAYS assume a polynesian is hungry. So we seem to get fed more often than when its just two white elders.

Second of all, Jimmy is smashing it. He's read heaps of the book of mormon and seems to really enjoy it. He's the man. We taught him the plan of salvation and clarified some of the things in the first 10 chapters of the book of mormon. we're just hoping to get some more fellowship in the ward for him. We taught wilma this week and she told us that she feels like she has 60% faith. haha but i think that's really good. she's really cool. We also had a smash lesson with karka last night. I think the main thing keeping her from progressing is that they don't have the book of mormon in her native language. so last night we committed her5 to read it in english and take it really slow and underline everything she doesn't understand and we'd go through it with her and explain it all. it was a good lesson and the spirit was really strong She's really cool. and her family is the best. they always give us cool asian lollies when we go over there. Yang bai and violet have dropped off until the end of the semester which is oct 22. so they'll be on hold for a bit here. This past week elder bowcut had a potential that he talked to start texting him and getting a little too close. and finally sent him a very explicit text that made elder bowcut text back and ask that they never contact him again. See the problem is, it was a man from sri lanka.... hahahahahaha

Third, a couple weeks ago there was some terrorist activity going on up Sydney so all the missionaries are not supposed to visit muslims. pretty crazy. not surre if i already told you that... hope not. We're going on an adventure today for P-day because it's the end of the month and we have like 300 extra k's. so we don't really have a plan, but its just going to be an adventure.

Love you all! hope you are livin it up! The weather is beautiful now. and it's just in time for my birthday! and i get to go to general conference on my birthday! that's like the best present ever. haha i'm so excited for general conference. getting my questions and stuff ready. hope you are all doing the same!

love,

田长老

Week 59

Man. another great week. This is going to be a short email because i don't have tons of time today.

We got transfer calls on saturday. Elder Bryce got transferred and he went to the cantonese branch up in sydney so he was really excited about that. i'm happy for him. Just wish there was a mandarin branch in our mission. haha i guess canberra is my mandarin branch... My new companion is Elder Katene. He's from new zealand and he's maori. he's the man. Totally hilarious. We're going to have a good time this transfer. I'll get a picture of us together and send it to you next week.

On friday there was a big farewell party for a senior missionary couple who went home yesterday. It was pretty big because they have only been in canberra the whole 18 months so everyone knows them really well. But they got permission from president back that all the missionaries could come to it so we went and were mingling with all the people and then they got on the microphone and said the program would be starting so everyone needed to take their seats. Most people were already in their seats because that's how normal people are, but missionaries are the ones who are supposed to mingle with everyone to find the nonmembers there. so we go to take our seats and there are only the ones on the front row left so we all sit down in this big row in the front and this polynesian brother gets up and starts playing the guitar and singing and it was pretty good and we were all happy, having a good time. and then they announced that the next performance would be a hawaiian dance... and these two girls come out and start doing this dance, but this was in the cultural hall so they're just doing it in front of the crowd on the same level. And at first it was fine. just the typical hawaiian dancing, but then the beat started getting really fast and the girl turns around and starts doing the thing where they move their hips really fast and it got awkward for us really fast... haha suddenly my empty plate of food became really interesting to look at... hahaha luckily i was sitting off to the side but one of our elders was sitting literally right in front of her and we look over at him and he has his head looking down and is reading his scriptures! hahah had his full quad out and was reading them! hahahahaha i was dying. The life of a missionary:)

Jimmy came to church again and loved it. We taught him the restoration during the week and he loved it. He's on date now for the 18 of Oct. Please pray for him. He told us that he has been reading some jehovah witness stuff so hopefully he sees through it because they have some really messed up ideas. Its the week after break this week so there's a lot of assignments due and quizes apparently. i swear they always have quizes. haha

Love you all! have a wonderful week! Church is true!

-Elder Tingey

Week 58

Alright what a week. 

First off, thank you to everyone who is praying for sister Levine. She is improving, but is not out of the woods yet! Please keep her and her family in your prayers this week. We visited last p-day and her parents were doing okay. it's been cool to see everyone pull together. we have missionaries, members, less-actives, and nonmembers all praying for her.

A quick shout out to Sister Katie Nydegger, having her farewell today. She's going to be a smash missionary.

We had an investigator committed to come to church last week and he never showed up and then he texted us later that night and told us that he took the bus to the suburb where our church is, then walked around for an hour and a half, looking for it. Then asked the people at the shops where it was and they had no idea and then his phone died so he couldn't call us so he went home. haha poor guy. then the other elders had a baptism yesterday for the friend of one of the recent converts in the ward so we invited him to come see it. We were a bit nervous that his first contact with the church would be a baptism, but it went great! He loved it and came to church yesterday and loved that as well. He told us that he wants to come to church for the rest of the time he's in canberra. His name is jimmy. He's chinese and he's a uni student at ANU. I've been trying to get an ANU t-shirt, but they're really expensive. we'll see if i can get one from a reject shop or something. But Jimmy is awesome. I'm really excited for him.

Our YSA advisors just told us that they have a list of about 150 chinese ysa less-actives taht they want us to find out if they still live here or if they have moved back to china so i'm, really excited to go find them all. I'm really praying that i don't get transferred. This is the last week of transfers. I really like our zone so i hope not too many people get transferred. (plus it's the biggest pain to get everyone with their luggage all the way up to sydney)

On thursday we went to visit a referral that the Tuggeranong elders gave us. Her name is jacklynn and she is from Peru. We walked in and she took us into this meditation room that had hardwood floors with these little pillows on the floor and there were pictures of those hindu gods and goddesses all over the walls so i knew we were in for an interesting lesson. but we start talking and ask her what her religious background is and she says Christian. haha so then i was just really confused. (remember i'm trying to sit cross-legged on a tiny pillow this whole time until i gave up and just stretched my leggs out straight...curse my bad hips) but she tells us that she has a book of mormon and she used to meet with her group in the same building the mormons met in when she was living in equador. so she's interested in it. and she loved that we don't believe in the trinity! haha it was pretty cool. We're meeting with her this thursday to talk more.

We visited some potentials last night. It's three guys from africa. They don't have that great of english and they're all muslim so it was pretty interesting, but they were way cool and i think we're going to play basketball sometime.

Life is going pretty good. Loving australia, especially since it's getting a bit warmer. Love you all! have a great week! the church is true!

-Elder Tingey

Week 57

Okay it was a very interesting week. 

Lots of interesting things happened. First of all, i don't know if you have heard, but there was a sister in our zone that was hit by a car on friday afternoon. Her name is sister Kendall levine and i'm pretty sure ther is a facebook group for her. I don't know a lot about it, but I guess she was driving with her companion and they saw a double rainbow so they pulled off the road and parked on the grass (that's totally kosher here in australia, by the way) and got out to take the picture. as she was getting back in, a car lost control or got distracted or something like that and went off the road and hit a tree then bounced off and hit her and the car she was getting into. She was rushed to the hospital and right now she's in critical but stable condition. She is in a coma right now. somehow she didn't brake any bones, but just has bruising and cuts. I think she had some bruising on her brain so they had to do surgery to relieve the pressure. Her parents landed in australia yesterday and got to canberra last night. She can use all the prayers she can get so please pray for her. It's been amazing to see all the miracles that have surrounded the whole situation. we had a baptismal interview that night we had to do and somehow the other elders were near the flat and they met us there so that we could do trade-off so that i could go do the interview and elder bryce could go to the hospital. We had two appointments cancel on us that day. one for us, one for the other elders, and we were supposed to do a mini mission this weekend and that fell through as well. and there's other stuff as well. just proves to me, that even through tragedy, the lord is watching out for his servants!

We had a pretty good week as far as the work goes. 5 people showed up to church! haha it was great. One of our investigators brought his friend who turned out to be a member that got baptized near wagga wagga and then moved up here like 2 weeks ago! It was pretty cool. Then Yang Bai and Violet came as well! They said they enjoyed it and one of our members invited them to institute on tuesdays and they said they were going to go! That will be really good for them i think. We had a woman named amanda smith that came and told us that she was good friends with one of the less actives that the sisters are working with so they sat together. i think we might turn her over to the sisters because she's a single sister and if theyre working with her friend then they can just get them both at the same time! haha Wilma told us she's too tired to come to church at 9:30... dang it.

I was at the bus stop and these two chinese girls walked up and were looking at the map and talking about the busses in chinsese so i meandered my way over and looked at it for a second, and then turned to them and asked in chinese which route went to the city the fastest? haha and once again they started freaking out and we started talking. i guess she's already a christian and goes to some chinese church in the city. dang it. we need a chinese branch. But she said she'd be interested in meeting with us so i asked if i could have her phone number (which by the way is really weird when it's a girl my age) so she took my planner and when she gave it back she had written her phone number along with her QQ number which is the chinese facebook so i'm not sure what to do with that... i guess just save it until i get home? hahaha

This past weekend was the mid-autumn festival in china. We went to ANU to meet an investigator and there was all this stuff set up for a party so we asked the nearest chinese guy what it was for and he told us about the festival. i guess its for like the harvest or something. (the reason we asked a chinese guy is because it's pretty easy to tell if it's an aussie party or a chinese party just by the decorations) So that was exciting. and while we were there this guy came up and talked to us, which usually doesn't happen. but he's from idaho so he knows missionaries, but he's not a member and he can speak chinese. It was pretty cool.

Other than that i don't think there's anything much to tell. Have i told yous already that elder bowcut who i live with went to Lone peak and knows Crystal? totally true. Okay love you all! have a great week! Pray for sister Levine!

Love,

Elder tingey

Week 56

Well alright this is comin a bit late, but there's a good reason for it. So two weeks ago one of the recent converts in our ward asked if my companion and i could help him out with some service and of course we agreed so it comes to our knowledge that he needs our help on a monday..... haha but we thought it would be okay because he asked if we could come at 9:00 AM so we figured we wouldn't miss too much of P-day. Nek minute, we were with him until 3:30. haha so we are just barely getting to email. Good news is not a ton happened this week. haha just kidding. that's not really good news.

So today is the first day of september so the past week was the last week of the month so funds were running a bit slim. haha after we did our grocery shopping i had 5 dollars for the rest of the week. and that should have been fine, except we had to go to sydney on saturday for another MLC which not only took out a whole day of proselyting, but we had to buy lunch and dinner on the way up and back. SO, because i'm an eagle scout and i'm always prepared, i started a search through our flat for spare change. Now australia has a 1 dollar coin and a 2 dollar coin that are very popular so after turning over the sofa and pulling the beds out i was able to end up with 13 dollars to buy food with so i was really excited about that. and then the miracle of the week happened... The sisters that drove us up to sydney brought food for the car ride! haha just goes to show you that prayers are answered.

The MLC on saturday was with one of the area 70 and it was really good. Pretty much he came and told us that our mission has gone through a lot the past while and our numbers are really low. (we baptized 16 as a mission this past month which doesn't really match up with the 1 baptism per companionship per month standard they have set) so we talked a lot about it. basically the main thing that happened was that we kneeled down as a council and prayed about how we can get the mission to the point of 1 baptism per companionship per month. It was really cool and we've got some great goals and plans to get us to that point. I'm really excited about it. It was funny, though, because the area 70 (his name is elder Oriordan) told us that a couple months ago the brisbane mission had 107 baptisms in one month. and so later we were talking about how we can get to that point because 107 is exactly 1 baptism per companionship and one of the zone leaders raised his hand and said, "well, we could get some professional footy (rugby) players called to our mission." haha now the reason that is funny is because the Assistant to the president of the Brisbane mission was a guy named Will Hopoate and he was a professional footy player before his mission and he gave up a million dollar contract to serve a mission and now he's playing professional ball again and they used to hold firesides up there where he would just speak and people would just come to hear him and then the missionaries would just pick off the non-members like snipers. and it was funny because all of us were thinking it, he just had the guts to say it to an area 70....Elder Oriordan just kindof laughed and told us that if we have resources we need to use them. so we'll see what kindof things missionaries come up with.

We met up with a man named Jonathan yesterday. I don't know if i've told you about jonathan yet, but he is from sierra leone and we've met with him a couple times now. He grew up with a heavy christian and muslim influence. so he reads the bible, but isn't sure if he believes in jesus as the christ. so we've been talking to him a lot about the plan of salvation and how christ is a key part of it. Yesterday we were talking about the book of mormon and we talked about how if the book of mormon is true then our church is the true church of jesus christ on the earth and we asked what it would mean to him if there was a true church on the earth and his reply was "what would it mean to me if someone offered me limitless riches?" so we asked him if he found out the book of mormon was true if he would be baptized and he smiled way big and said, YES! it was pretty sweet. I'm really excited to keep meeting with him.

Okay that's pretty much it for this week. hope you are all enjoying saint george! and sarah and john on another cruise! livin the high life! haha love you all. have a great week!

-Elder Tingey

Week 55

Alright here we are once again! 

Yesterday we had a surprise MLC but they didn't want us to drive up because we have another one on saturday with Elder Oriordan of the Seventy that we will be going to so they had us skype in at the chapel. It was awful. It was us and the sister training leaders in a classroom in the church for like 4 hours. We got trained on how to recognize and help missionaries that are struggling with depression. and then halfway through the meeting the rest of the missionaries came to the chapel because it was their p-day and they played volleyball and basketball while we sat in that stupid room... hahah i was DYING.

We had zone conference this past week and it was great. During our lunch break president back got out 18 paddles and a tennis ball and we played a huge game of like four square, but it was with 18 squares and you had to use the paddle and no slamming (you had to hit it up). It was pretty sweet. haha i love president Back. He and sister back are probably the only reason i'm okay with sitting through long meetings in sydney. They are awesome.

This past week we were able to go visit Hoa and she told us that she needs some time to study the book of mormon. She feels like buddhism and our church both teach us to be good people and she is scared of all the rules in our church. SO pretty much she dropped us. She said we can go by whenever we want but she doesn't want to waste our time. We testified of the importance of christ in our lives and i hope as she reads the book of mormon she will come to know the importance of christ. But now it's between her and the Lord. She's great and it was tough to hear but she'll get it someday.

Nothing else really happened this week. We had like 6 people committed to come to church and ended up with 1 so that was disappointing. but we did meet a less-active family from africa which was pretty sweet. They said they will be coming to church this week so i'm happy about that.

Love you all! sorry this week's is so short. Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Tingey

Week 54

Good week. Lots of good stuff happening. We picked up a few new investigators and the zone had two baptisms this week! One of the new investigators we met is named Jonathan. We had talked to this crazy guy from sri lanka the day before and the guy told us he lived in unit 12 and pointed us in a direction when we met him so we didn't have a street or a street number which made it difficult. So we ended up knocking like 5 different unit 12s and for some reason nobody answered any of the doors. So after the 4th one we kindof had one of those experiences where we were both disappointed but we just kindof kept walking. we didn't say anything to each other, we just kindof walked. and we walked past this guy who was working on his car so we asked him if he knew where a unit 12 was and he of course asked the street and house number which we told him we didn't have so he laughed at us, put his tools down and started walking with us. He's from africa somewhere, i can't remember which country, and his name is jonathan and he told us we could come back to see him! haha it was great. I love being in the right place at the right time.

 Last week for P-day we played sport at the chapel with the belconen elders. Elder Bowcut was still up in sydney picking up his trainee (Elder Smith) so there were only 6 of us there and the islanders only want to play volleyball so we played 3 on 3 volleyball which was pretty fun but then after we finished they showed us this video they had taken earlier that day. Now keep in mind their flat has 3 islanders and a palangi. but apparently what happened was they were driving and complaining about how its not even halfway through the month and they were all out of money and then elder Peleuale yells "stop the car!" so they stop on the side of the road and he gets out and starts running back and so they follow him and they all end up standing around a kangaroo that had become roadkill. so naturally they picked it up and tossed it in the boot and took it home. In the back yard they used kitchen knifes to skin it, gut it, and cut it into pieces to put it in the freezer. This was all on video that they showed me. It was hilarious. Then they made curry with it and they said there's extras so we are probably going to go give it a try. hahaha i just want to wait a bit to see if they all end up in the hospital or not....

We had a pretty hectic miracle happen to us this week. We were sitting down to plan one night, and we were talking about all our appointments that had fallen through and dreading what our numbers were going to look like this week when our phone buzzed! It was a text from a former named yang Bai. not sure if you remember her, but she dropped us about 6 weeks ago. when she dropped us she told us she was going through a hard time and couldn't meet with us, but the text she sent us said she had figured it all out and she wanted to meet up again! AND she said her boyfriend wanted to know "the jesus christ". :) so we set up an appointment and went over there on sunday. Found out she has moved to the uni housing and lives right next door to one of the members of our ward! so we taught her boyfriend, Violet, about the plan of salvation and how Jesus Christ plays such a pivotal role in that plan and yang bai was pretty much a member present for us! haha she's met with heaps of missionaries before and pretty much knows everything. She taught him how to pray right in front of us. haha then when we asked her to say the closing prayer she made Violet do it! hahaha it was awesome. One of the best first prayers i've ever been a part of. We all had our eyes open for most of it and she was telling him what to say and then our member present was explaining that you can say whatever you feel like and then we finished it up correctly and it was all good! He's really good. that would be some people you could pray for. yang bai and Violet. Once again, i'm not sure who is in charge of giving chinese people english names but it's cool. haha

We met with this chinese girl named Wilma this week and we talked about the restoration because most of the questions she asked us had to do with why there were so many churches and what was the difference between our church and the other christian churches. So we had a good talk about the restoration and every once in a while she would ask me to explain in chinese and i couldn't tell if she really didn't understand, or if she was just trying to test my chinese... haha but it went well. and after the lesson we were just chatting and she asked us if there were certain things we weren't allowed to do. I didn't want to get into all the commandments right then so i just listed off the 10 commandments for her and she then proceeded to ask if everyone followed those. I said yes and then she asked "what is the worst thing you've done in your life?" hahahahaha that definitely took me by surprise, but being as witty as i am, i asked back "what's the worst thing YOU'VE done in your life??" hahaha she just kindof laughed and said, "okay maybe lets just not talk about that..." hahaha it was funny. but we weren't done there. She then told us that she can do the chinese face and palm reading and this weird card reading which i'm pretty sure is like witchcraft, but hey, how many times to meet someone like that. So we asked her to read our faces. First thing she told us was that we are the first people she has ever met with green eyes, (weird, i know.) then she told me that my ears are a good shape and size. (means i'm very healthy) and then she said "it's hard to explain in english. can i use chinese?" so i said yes but speak slowly so then she went on to describe my nose and somthing about how my nose is not flat like chinese peoples'. and whatever else she said i have no idea but i don't think it was too bad.... hahah then she said my forehead was large which meant i'm smart, and then she told me that my eyebrows are thick, and she said something in chinese i didn't know so i asked her to say it in english and she said that it meant i'm a player..... i don't know if any of you realize how weird it was for me to have a chinese girl tell me that.... but hey, the face NEVER lies, right??? hahahahaha apparently my hands are good too because she told me i'm smart from them as well. hahahah all in all, i think it was pretty accurate. not sure if it's true doctrine, in fact i'm pretty much positive it's not, but it was funny. She's great but she doesn't want to have two on one lessons. she wants to sit in while we teach someone else. Not sure how we figure out how to do that, but we'll think of something.

This past week we started our diet, but it kindof got ruined by the two tongan baptisms that happened. Oh well, there are worse things that could happen than ruining a diet. We'll try again this week. Okay love you all! have a great week! I found out there's a zoo in canberra so i'm really excited to go there some p-day in the future! I have to give a talk at our zone conference this friday.... dang it. hahaha

Love,

Elder Tingey