Week 82

Alright another beautiful week in Austraya! (except it DID rain pretty hard a couple of the days...) Wildlife spotted this week: 1 Kookaburra, 3 Foxes, 2 blue-tongued lizards, 2 regular lizards, 1 Wallaby, heaps of Kangaroos, 1 wombat (dead), 3 Huntsmans, and a whole ton of sheep, goats, cows, horses, and llamas. Beauty, mate.

Well, we'll start with the sad news: Gary isn't getting baptised this week. His wife had to go out of town for a few weeks so we are postponing it a couple weeks. We figured it would probably be best for her to be there for it. So sadly, i probably wont be here to see him get baptised in our branch president's pool... but that's okay! i'm just glad i've been able to teach him as much as i have. He's the man. 

We had a district training meeting on friday down in orange. It was Elder Stewart's first training and he did a really good job! haha he used a quote from Ice Cube in it. hahaha if you don't know who ice cube is, he is a rapper. It was good though. the quote was, "our art reflects our reality" so he talked about how "our message should reflect our reality". it was cool. So that was really good and i was on cloud nine since i wasn't the one doing the training! haha oh the sweet release.... but i have a feeling i might get a call from president for this next transfer. we'll see, though. So since the meeting was on friday morning we slept over in Bathurst thursday night and also, a couple days earlier the bathurst sisters called and asked if i would help them out with their baptism on saturday so i agreed and they told me i would be singing a duet with sister Tauti..... yes. it happened... apparently i sing now... but anyways, they wanted to practice on thursday night so we met at the senior couple's house and practiced. and it just so happened that the APs had been on trade-offs in our zone for the past couple days and were planning to sleep at the senior couple's house that night before they drove down to sydney in the morning. Right now we have two companionships of APs. one works in the office and the other goes out and does trade-offs and they switch off every week. It's pretty cool. Elder Wu from back in the Camden days is one of them, and Elder Weller became one last transfer. He's the one who knows the Smiths. lives up near oakley. so it was elder weller and elder Tito who slept over with us in bathurst and they had some very interesting stories to tell us that i'll have to wait til i get home to tell yous. haha crazy stuff going on. glad i'm not the one dealing with it... haha sorry i really struggled explaining that.

so after DTM we had a district P-day where we went to a waterfall just outside of orange. it was cool. I'll send some pictures of it. One of the sisters in our district goes home today because she extended, but her visa expires so she has to finish mid transfer so it was kindof sad, but she seems pretty excited to go home. so it wasn't too trunky for any of us. It's weird because everyone that's been here the whole time i've been here and that have been my leaders my whole mission are going home now. My trainer goes home next transfer. It's weird. Still no word about whether they're doing a group going home a week early, but i think i'll hear soon. if not, then the 24th it will be. and i'll just get off the plane and go to class with a tag on... hahaha 

The sister's baptism went well. They had a baptismal interview they needed done so we would have been there anyways and so they figured it would just make sense for me to sing with sister Tauti. But in case you're wondering, we smashed it. haha luckily sister tauti has the voice of an angel and i just was backup. But we were having some refreshments after and Elder hill, the senior missionary asked me if we had to get back to mudgee any time soon and we didn't have any appointments so i said no and he told me he had someone he wanted me to come visit with him. It was a chinese couple that used to investigate and the wife didn't have very good english so he wanted me to speak to them in mandarin! hahaha i was soooo happy. it was great. it was a bit strange because i was the only one they were talking to and we had my companion and the senior couple there. but it was good. I got to ask them if they wanted to be together forever and you could tell it was something they hadn't thought about very much, but i think it touched a nerve. They have a young son. But i got to talk about how i miss my family very much and i am so grateful that i know we are a forever family. Which is VERY true! Love you all so much! One thing i did realise is how hard a time i have understanding people. i think that might be due, in part, to lack of immersion in the language, but we keep trying! 

Church was really good. Fast and testimony in a small branch is cool because everyone has to bear testimony or else there's awkward extra time at the end so each person in the branch bore testimony and the spirit was so strong. and then we had sunday school on the sermon on the mount. i LOVE the sermon on the mount. so good. and then in priesthood there was a discussion on whether or not Jesus was white...haha dangit. but it was okay. didn't get TOO heated. 

Going into the last week of this transfer. hopefully we can finnish it off strong. I listened to a devotional by david a bednar that was called "that we might not shrink". it was really good about accepting the will of God in our lives. he tells a story of a young couple where the husband was diagnosed with Cancer 3 weeks after they got married. and he visited them and the kid asked for a blessing and elder bednar, instead of asking if he had the faith to be healed, asked if he had the faith NOT to be healed. it's a really interesting concept. caused a lot of pondering and application to my own life. if you can find it, it's really good. 

Love you all! have a great week! 

Love,

Elder Tingey

PS tell Nathan hello for me! 

The Waterfall

Here's us at the waterfall. Elder Smith tryin to save me from temptation.