Week 93

okay once again we are going to make this one quick. its the last p-day of the transfer and elder bowcut doesn't want to squander it.

We met with joy and went over the baptismal interview questions with her. she doesn't feel quite ready to be baptized so we have pushed her date back to the 21st of June. kindof sad, but it will be good. She's still awesome. Please keep her in your prayers. 

Shirley is also doing good. she wasn't able to come to church or meet with us last week, but she will finish her assignment by tomorrow and then we can meet up with her. haha she refuses to text us in english so we have to spend ages interpreting the texts she sends us, which is a bit difficult when she asks us things like, "have you ever eaten pig cartilage boiled in brown sugar sauce?" haha that was a tough one. but we got it. and she was all the more impressed by our Chinese:) 

This week they started doing this thing called VIVID in sydney which is where they have all these light shows and stuff and we were riding the train across the harbour bridge on saturday evening and we got to see it! it was pretty cool. the opera house was all lit up and the lights were flashing different colors and stuff. lots of fun. 

Probably the coolest thing was that elder Cook came to our stake conference on sunday! We found out why he is in australia too. he came to give some speeches at unis and also to give tony abbot his family history. but before the meeting we pulled up and were walking in the back door when me and bowcut got caught up in the security and ended up shaking elder cooks hand! hahahaha it was so funny. we were just walking in and then all of a sudden we were pretty much one on one with elder cook. pretty exciting. 

and then after stake conference one of the recent converts in the ward brought her friend to church and told us that he's been being taught by the north missionaries, but he wants to come to our branch now so we will be teaching from this point on. haha great stuff. his name is jack. 

okay gotta go! love you all! if you have questions then email them to me and i will try to answer them next week! BYE!

love,

Elder Tingey 

Week 92

Hello all! So my comp has decided that since he is going home in two weeks there is no point in emailing a ton so we will be cutting it short for a few weeks here so i'll just be giving yous the short version... haha and i'll see how i like it and maybe it will be how i do the rest of my emails:)

Joy is doing awesome! She took us around to some of the chinese shops today since Elder Bowcut is going home and doesn't have much time left to get souvenirs. haha it was really fun. She came to church on sunday. last week we taught her the 10 commandments and the Law of chastity and sunday after church we taught her the word of wisdom and law of tithing. She says the only thing that will be tough for her is drinking tea. apparently tea is like really popular in china or something..... hahaha since EVERYONE drinks it. including me...JOKES! i only dring the honey-lemon tea which is totally kosher. haha We are still hoping for Joy to get baptised on the 31st of May so we are excited for that and trying to get all the lessons in and give her time to feel comfortable about it. She really is awesome.

Nicole kindof dropped us last week. She's still okay to meet up, but she said she has pretty much made her decision about or church. There's a chance we might do a church swap with her and go to her church so she comes to ours, but that's probably not going to happen, unless we just go anyways because there's a mandarin version that meets at the same time next door apparently... hahah jk that's for after the mission.

Mr. Xu is now in Canberra for work for the next couple weeks so nothing to report on him. hopefully he gets back soon. he's like the only person we visit that we Cant speak english to so it helps my chinese out a lot. plus i miss him. he's so cool.

One of the members brought their friend to church last week and we met up with her on saturday. Her name is shirly and she's really funny. She can't believe how we can survive without electronics and entertainment for two years... haha but we played our cards right and didn't speak any english to her at the beginning so she only speaks chinese to us now so the hard part is just never showing any sign of weakness in our chinese so she doesn't revert to english on us. haha its great. and she has some friends that go to snow college in utah! hahahahaha i was crackin up when she told us. haha good stuff. apparently it's a good school!

Other than that life is pretty normal. haha well, as normal as life can get as amissionary. Sometimes i stop and think about how weird my life actually is right now and i'm so used to it that i don't even notice sometimes. hahah its the best. Love you all! have a great week! bai bai!

-Elder Tian