Week 34

Well here we go. 

What a week. What a week. I'll try to remember everything that happened this week. Monday after email and shopping we went back to the flat because it was pouring rain and played chess. I am by far the worst in our flat. Elder Wang is Chinese and Elder Hixson and Barlow both did chess club in high school. I was embarrassed over and over and so we came up with a new form of chess. One person gets all the pieces, and the other person only gets a pawn and their king, BUT that person can do two moves each turn. Go try it. it's pretty nuts. Ya, we got pretty bored.... hahaha Then we had dinner at the stewarts like we do every Monday night. They have 12 missionaries over for dinner every week! They are so awesome. But it kept raining all night and on Tuesday when we woke up we got a call that bishops yard had flooded so we went and shoveled mud out of his driveway and grass for a good 6 hours. hahaha I was sooo sore after it. And then we all had dinner at his house that night so we spent pretty much all day there! 

Then on Tuesday we took the train (we are running low on Kilometers for the month) up to a place called Stanwell Park. It's really pretty up there. We walked around and talked to people and tried to get some potentials so we had a reason to come back in the future, but nothing doin. All goods, though, cuz we saw dolphins. it was cool because up there it goes from rainforest to beach in a couple meters. So then we came back to Wollongong and visited some less actives. 

Thursday I was on Trade-offs with elder Quass (oh yeah, I'm district leader...hahaha but I've only had to give 2 trainings this transfer because of zone training meetings and conferences) He is Chinese, but raised in Minnesota. It was a good day, but I think having a car has made me soft... We were on foot and I was sooo tired by the end of the day. We took the bus at one point and I sat down next to a Chinese guy (as usual) and started speaking some Chinese with him. He talked really fast and the bus was loud so I couldn't understand much of what he was saying, but he told me my Chinese is very clear and easy to understand for him. hahahaha but he had to say it in English cuz I couldn't understand what he was saying.... awkward... hahaha but I think he was speaking partially the dialect of where he's from(can't remember which province it is) but then he got off before I could bring up the gospel. That's the trouble with busses. You have literally no time to introduce them to the gospel, but I decided this week that I need to study basketball terms because Chinese people love talking about the NBA. So Ive been learning teams in my free time and star players. hahaha gotta love that lanqiu.

 Friday the whole zone had interviews with president lew. It was really good. He gave both me and elder Barlow some really good advice. And sister lew told me to make sure I was excercising so I don't gain too much weight, and then gave me a tim tam. (ps: tim tams are the best thing in this world) Saturday we did heaps of less active work because our ward list got messed up and names of students that got baptized here, and moved back to china have been coming back onto our system so they have had the missionaries visiting all the addresses to see if it's really them and where they are if it's not. It results in a lot of exciting experiences, and a bunch of extremely awkward ones as well.... hahahaha its great though. and then we went back to the flat and called potential investigators because we found in our area book that potentials from like a year ago hadn't been contacted yet. Barlow called one named anna and the first thing we hear when she answers is "wei" so barlow just dove in head first with the Chinese and it was awesome. If you didn't know, phone Chinese is about 10 times harder than regular Chinese because all you hear is faoaifls;jkgal;jkasl;jasl;jajcuelx,eposmdfas;iowfmaf and you just say hao, hao. hahahahahaha it was awesome. but eventually we had to revert to English so we could actually communicate with her and she asked us to text her the address of our chapel and the meeting times so hopefully she comes this week to church!

 Then sunday we had church, visited some less actives, then had dinner. all in all, a great week. And going into the last week of the transfer, we're gonna have an even better one. love you all! Remember to pray for missionary opportunites! The church is true! For those that are following along in the book of Mormon reading, how awesome are the war chapters of alma??? Moroni and Heleman just are the coolest guys ever.

Take luck!

-Elder 田