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