Elder Spencer Burton Tingey: Week 88

Can't believe this is the last week of the transfer... time is going way too fast. i'm scared to blink, cuz i know if i do i'll be back home. i'm hoping not much changes this transfer. Elder Lam is going home so we are definitely getting someone else in our flat but hopefully that's the extent of the changes. haha i'm a happy camper right now. and i know its at times like these that heavenly father decides to give us a growing opportunity, but i can hope, can't it? haha It was a great week.

Wednesday was probably our best day. We literally had to run from appointment to appointment from 1:00 until 9:30 it makes the day feel so short when there's no gap time to do street contacting or anything. There were two days this week where we were too busy to have dinner even! so that should tell you how busy it was if i didn't have time to eat... haha actually i'm losing weight now so soon all the clothes i bought when i got fat will not fit anymore but i don't have the clothes from before anymore so i'm in a bit of a pickle again... hahaha all goods, we'll figure it out. The lord always provides for his servants.

Joy is doing great. She wasn't able to come to conferene yesterday because she has a big test today and she had to study but she told us she reads the book of mormon every night! Shes pretty awesome. she's planning on may 10th for baptism unless somthing with school comes up. we're meeting with her on sunday and until then we're just praying that she gets an answer about the book of mormon because "those who receive this witness by the Holy Spirit also know by the same power that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world, that Joseph Smith is his revelator and prophet in these the last days, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the kingdom of God once again established on the earth preparatory to the second coming of the Messiah." Pretty cool how that works out.

Liu is the man. He's keen to meet like every day if we want to, but he goes back to china tomorrow for three weeks so we are meeting with him tonight and we will give him a book of mormon to read on the plane and while he's back there. He came to general conference and said he really liked it. he came to the sunday morning session, which was awesome. even in mandarin i was getting a lot out of it.

We met with a girl named Nicole this past week and it was really good. She is an australian-born-chinese so she can understand chinese because her parents only speak to her use chinese but english is her natural language so we teach in english. She is baptist and has a pretty good understanding of what she believes and what the bible teaches. We met her up at Sydney University when we got lost trying to find where we were meeting someone else and we asked her to help us and she showed us where to go. We met up on friday at a park in hurstville to talk about the restoration pamphlet we gave her and answer any of her questions. She had some really good questions and when we explained the book of mormon she was really interested in it. So we gave her a book and invited her to read it and pray about it and she agreed! So hopefully now she gets an answer. She's really cool. and she's only 18! i think i just assume that everyone who goes to uni is older than me because i've never been before... weird how soon i WILL be going, though. and MJ's right behind me! haha

Matt and Brother Xu are doing really good. Both of them had to overcome smoking addictions to be baptised and it seems to be weighing on them both a bit so prayers for them would be appreciated. Brother xu was expressing to us that he feels a bit uncomfortable at church because he doesn't have a suit so i gave him one of mine. haha he had the biggest grin on his face when he showed up to church in it. (and it fit him better than it fit me)

General conference was amazing. haha we were laughing after saturday sessions because it was pretty much all about marriage and pretty much all of us went to conference with questions like "how can i finish my mission strong?" or "how can i focus more on the work?" haha and then bam, marriage, fatherhood, children. it was great, though. good stuff for 4 months from now. We watched the sunday morning session in mandarin so we missed quite a bit of it, but that is one session i will definitely be studying for a while. Elder Holland and President uchtdorf both had amazing talks. so i can't wait for the ensign to come out. i'm going to get my own copy. and then the sunday afternoon session was awesome too! Elder renlund representing the holladay 3rd! smashed it. "twas I, but TIS not I" what an awesome talk. and then i can't remember his name, but the guy that talked about hearing the music and not just doing the dance moves. that was really good. now when we get rejected we just ask each other why they can't hear the music! haha and then i loved Elder Pearson's talk as well. "if you lose the spirit, you are lost." he's the man and he's the pacific area president and he's from holladay! he's so good. such a good conference. although we did have to explain to our investigator and less actives why they were talking about easter as if it was yesterday when really it was a week ago, but that's alright.

Love you all. hope you all have a wonderful week and do lots of fun stuff. We have Zone p-day today down in burundula or something like that. its like a park or a beach or something but apparently it's really beautiful so i'll take some pictures and send them next week. have a great week! Church is true.

-Elder Tingey

#listenforthemusic