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