Week 69

Alright first things first 

i want to wish my mother a happy birthday last week! Technically last monday for me was not yet the 24th for all of you so i had to wait until this week. haha Love you mom, hope everyone was nice to you and you didn't have to clean the house on your birthday to get ready for thanksgiving... haha You're the best mom ever. Literally. It sounds like you had a great thanksgiving down in st. George. I wish i could say the same. My comp isn't into the american holidays so i tried to suffer in silence and then thursday night i dreamed of  turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes and ham and all the great stuff. i honestly can't wait for next year. What i didn't hear is what the outcome of the tingey family turkey bowl was!  haha too good. i'm just glad i don't have to miss my favorite holiday again.

We had a pretty decent week. numbers-wise it was our best week this transfer, but we didn't see much progression. It's been really interesting this past week because most of the people we teach are very strong in their religion so we get into really core doctrine. You can't just skim across the top. So i've had to do a lot of study and deep-thinking, which has given me a few headaches haha but it's been really good for me, i think. 

Two main thoughts have come to mind this past week. First, i am amazed at how much i've learned since i've come on a mission. It is really priceless how much i've learned. And the more i learn, the more i realize i don't know. i'm just really glad that i was able to develop a strong foundation of faith and now everything i learn is just building off my testimony of the saviour. And i love learning about the gospel and the church. The second is that i am truly so grateful for Christ. I've gained a much greater appreciation of the atonement as i've been able to discuss the doctrines of Grace and Mercy and Justice. I wish i was able to comprehend just exactly how powerful the sacrifice of our saviour was, but from what i've experienced, it's amazing. and that's just for one person! And one of the most amazing things to me about it is that he did all of that so we can truly have agency and be able to accept him or reject him. As we begin the christmas season i hope everyone gets a chance to reflect on the influence Christ has on their own life. Haha i'm lucky that i get to do it all the time and it's the best. And even though it doesn't feel like christmas time because its like 100 degrees here, i still feel a little bit closer to christ at this time of year. 

We were meeting with our man, Justin this week and he showed us a copy of the 1830 edition of the book of Mormon that he ordered on the internet. it was pretty cool. it's the brown one that's in all the pictures and the restoration video and stuff and he let us borrow it so we're going to go have a photo shoot with it. haha but it's pretty cool. he's the man. he's read the whole book of mormon, D&C and most of the Pearl of Great Price. He has some really deep questions. I really like teaching him because i learn so much from studying the questions he asks.

Other than that, things are pretty chill here in Mudgee, mate. Hopefully we can grow our teaching pool a bit. (haha that seems to be the slogan here...) Love you all and hope you have a great week. Talk to you next week!

Love,

Elder 田

(haven't given up on the Chinese yet!)

Week 68

This week was another slow one. i think i'm still trying to transition from the city to the bush. i'm all thrown off because you can't just go contact people at the bus stop if you have open time because there's one bus that runs through the town like 3 times a day and nobody rides it. So we have to try other things. We are going to try the basketball courts after school this week. hopefully we can rope some aussie kids into a game. haha that's the easy part. i just wish i was any good at basketball! hahaha we'll see. I think the most valuable skills to take on a mission (outside of spiritual things of course) are playing the piano, basketball, skateboarding, and cooking. if you can do those things, you'll smash it. haha its really true. my comp is a firm believer that we should be able to play video games as a finding tool. haha thank you, mum for not letting me play video games as a child. 

We met with our new friend Greg last monday. We were expecting it to be a short visit, but we were there for like 2 1/2 hours because he took us around his farm (600 acres) and showed us his purebred rottweiler litter that are like 2 weeks old. haha they are so cute and the father is massive and terrifying looking, but the nicest dog ever. Everybody has dogs out here, it's awesome, but i am so sick of getting dog hair off my clothes. haha all goods, though. Greg is the man. we talked about the gospel of jesus christ and he really liked that we believe in enduring to the end and that you can't just continue to sin and repent and sin again. He's the owner of the local rugby union team. and he works a lot with troubled youth and helps them turn things around. it's pretty cool. he's a good guy. works almost 24/7 though so it's hard to find time to meet with him. but that's alright. 

We met with nigel and read from the Book of Mormon. One thing that is really interesting about mudgee is that everyone pretty much is christian. mostly catholic and baptist, but pretty much everyone goes to church every week! its weird. haha i guess i'm so used to talking to people who never go to church that it surprises me. but nigel is a cool guy. he knows the bible really well and we have some really deep conversations about doctrine like grace. it is really interesting and my understanding of the gospel has really grown from it. We had another lesson that was really similar with a guy named Justin. hes not new, we just haven't been able to meet up since i've been here but it was a really interesting lesson and i'm growing a lot from it. 

I found out that this area just got missionaries a year ago. there were missionaries a long time ago, but they closed it because there weren't enough missionaries in the mission, but now with the wave there were enough, but there hasn't been a convert baptism here since the missionaries got here. SO it's gonna take some faith prayers and work, but i know there are people out there that are prepared. 

We had zone conference on friday and it was really good. The assistants had good trainings and president and sister back smashed it. really what most of our zone needs is a good beating, but they did really great without using violence. haha just kidding. but then we had lunch and played a game with everyone. it was like a huge game of foursquare, but with paddles and a tennis ball. it was cool. and then we had a testimony meeting which was really good. gave us that spiritual upliftment we needed to go out and do the work. and then we took our 3 hour drive and got home right before 9. haha it was great though. 

Love you all! hope you have a great week. The past couple weeks i've learned a lot about myself and my relationship with our saviour. He is truly amazing. There's times when you feel alone and you feel like there's more laid on your shoulders than you can bear. I know i have had divine help on my mission. and i am so grateful for it. I love being on the winning team! even when it seems like we are behind on the scoreboard. 

Love,

Elder Tingey

Week 67

Dear Family:

haha i hate starting these emails... okay so this past week was pretty good. Our area is really beautiful. We do lots of driving between the towns we cover and its just rolling yellow hills. it's awesome. We've been trying to contact that malaysian guy in kandos, but he's never been in the shop when we go. but we'll keep trying. 

We met with a guy named Justin on Monday evening and it was a pretty good lesson. He's pretty attached to the bible and the missionaries have been trying to help him see that the bible and Book of Mormon support each other and we had a really good discussion about it. and then at the end he gave us a referral for his preacher at the uniting church! haha should be interesting. He told us he would talk to him and let us know if he's interested next time so we will find out tomorrow when we see him. We also met this old lady that used to be a jehovah's witness, and she's pretty cool. I think she's met with missionaries before because she told me that she already has one of the passalong cards that i was writing something on. 

On the 30th of this month there is an area wide "invitation sunday" and we are really excited for it. Our members (all 9 of them) have been doing great inviting people. It should be really good. hopefully we can get things going and see some growth here in mudgee! 

On saturday we had ZTM and i was so happy i didn't have to give a training. It was so nice to sit with the rest of the zone. I only have to give a training once a month as a district leader because our district is so spread out. AND there's no sisters in my district! haha both the sister companionships in our zone are in the other district! not sure how i managed that. haha just kidding just kidding, sisters are great and i'm not a sister hater... haha but then there was a district picnic in orange with all the branches after the meeting and that was fun. we only had one member from mudgee come, but it was still good. 

That's about all that's happening in Mudgee this week. haha hopefully next week we get some stuff going. 

They asked me to give a talk yesterday and i gave it on Prayer. It was really good for me, i think. Prayer is so awesome and i hope everyone makes every prayer a spiritual experience. I don't think i'd be able to be where i am if i didn't have prayer in my life. Constant prayer is what keeps us safe from everything in this world. Love you all. Church is true. 

Love,

Elder TIngey

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

Week 65

Hello everyone! 

Not sure if you all knew this, but transfers were this past week! I thought i would probably stay because elder Katene is so new to the area so i didn't tell you they were coming up... hahaha WRONGO! It's amazing how your life can change so quickly on a mission. But i'll tell you about that at the end of the email. Last week was great. We got to meet with a bunch of people and teach a bunch of lessons. Karka was really good. She said she was going to give us a referral for her sister who lives down in woden ward so that's exciting. get the whole family involved. i really think she'll get baptized. she just needs to not be so pregnant... haha she's great. We went with jimmy to hot pot again this week and had a great time. He's the man. He'll be a leader in the church someday. i'm excited to see what happens with him. We met up with wilma on sunday to say goodbye and it was kindof sad. haha she's cool and i hope she continues meeting with the missionaries and gets baptized someday. It's really nice to have today's technology so that i can stay in touch with these people. It makes leaving a lot easier. can't imagine what is owuld be like to say goodbye and know that it is very likely i will never see them again.

Saturday night we had a halloween party with ginninderra and belconnen ward. it was a trunk and treat put on by the primary. It was awesome. there were heaps of nonmembers there. we were having a hayday talking to everyone! i think there will be a lot that comes from it. Its crazy how successful the work is when members provide people to teach. Love those referrals.

We went to the zoo for a district p-day last week and it was pretty sweet. it was the national zoo and acquarium but it was  quite a bit smaller than hogle zoo. pretty sad, but still fun. i think i'll cut this email short so i have time to upload you guys some pictures.

okay so for the big news... saturday morning elder katene and i drove to the chapel to check the transfer details and i couldn't believe it, but i saw my name on the list! So i knew i was gone. Elder Bowcut was on there too, which was only fitting that we come together and leave together. So i was really sad about it all and wondering what was going to happen and where i was going to go the whole time we deep-cleaned our flat and then right as we were finishing the cleaning our phone rang and it was president back... every time he calls you just can't help but freak out a little bit especially when it's on transfer day. but i answered and he thanked me for my service as a zone leader and told me he was "promoting me to district leader" haha so i was happy about that. I don't think i would like to be zone leader anywhere but canberra. we had it easy there. So the weight of that calling just immediately lifted and while we were on the phone he told me where i was going! haha president back can't keep secrets to save his life. So he told me i'm going to be going to a place called Mudgee! hahahaha couldn't believe it. Look it up. i went from a ward of about 150 active members to a branch of 7. it's out near orange and dubbo. only one companionship in our branch and we live 2 hours from the nearest missionaries. Makes things pretty interesting. Lots of fun to be had up here. Yesterday i did a total of 9 hours of driving and i was so tired from packing the night before... it was dangerous. but it was a beautiful drive. Australia has some really pretty scenery that you don't get to see if you spend all your time in Sydney. I think i'll only have one more area after this and i think i'll ask if i can go to hurstville because i've never been very close to the city and i heard there's heaps of chinese people there. haha haven't seen a chinese person in Mudgee yet! but we'll find one. we cover a place called golgong as well, i think. pretty sure that's what it's called. so i'm pretty stoked right now. the closest thing i've ever been to a branch is doing the sacrament at the care center back home! hahaha hopefully there will be no fishing sacrament cups out of old people's mouths here.... hahahahaha but i will keep you posted on how everything is. we have a few investigators and hopefully there will be some more coming!

love you all! Have a great week!

-Elder TIngey

Kangaroos!!

me with The lanky family kids. they're so much fun. 

Week 64

Dear Family:

What a week what a week. Sometimes you go out and work your tail off and talk to heaps of people and smash yourself, and you can't see much happening from it. It's true that often things are happening under the surface that i'm not able to see, haha but that doesn't always make me feel better when totaling up our numbers sunday night!

We were able to meet with jimmy this week and he took us out to hot pot! there's this really nice sichuan restaurant in downtown canberra that he took us to and he wants to take us again this friday in case i get transferred. He is the man. Literally the man. He's got his final exams for this semester coming up and he still has to read heaps of stuff and study, but he's come to church every week and has been reading the book of mormon and not just reading, but studying it. This just feels like the way missionary work is supposed to be. We were talking to him this week and he told us that he is a part of the Communist Party back in china so pretty much baptism is off the table for at least 6 months. He told us that it takes 6 months to resign from it and he's going to resign until the party's policy changes and members can have a religious belief. He will be in australia until next July so maybe there's a chance i can be here for his baptism. But if not, that's okay. Because he's the man! haha

Wilma came to church again this week and she brought a friend! Her name is amber. She is from Henan Province and is studying at ANU. at the end of sacrament meeting one of the members who is a returned missionary from taiwan was asked to give the closing prayer and he gave it in Chinese! haha it made all the Chinese investigators really happy. I asked Amber how she felt after the meeting and she said that she couldn't understand much because she's only been in Australia about a month but she said she felt peaceful and she really liked it. Haha we asked  if we could meet up during the week to explain a little bit more, but she has too many assignments and is too busy. Hopefully we can get her to sit in when we go to teach wilma. Wilma is doing pretty good.

We met with yang Bai on wednesday and it was good. She's not at the point now where she's ready to start progressing, but i think eventually she will. She's so nice and she's been helping me with my chinese. haha speaking of which, elder Bowcut and i decided that both our chinese is not very good, and his is better than mine. so we have been waking up at 5:30 to do an extra hour of language study. It's been good. we smash through about 50 words every morning and we still have our regular hour of study! hahaha we'll see how long we can keep it up.

We did a lot of finding this week, and didn't come up with much. One girl said it was okay for us to come back, but i think it was more just a combination of her being nice and elder Katene with the smooth voice.... hahaha no answer when we went back.... We found a part-member family that we're hoping to work with more, but we were only able to visit with them really quickly because they were on their way out. So i guess i'll keep you posted on that. We dropped by a former that we are going to help move this weekend and she explained to us this miracle story of how she met the missionaries but because of a few things she hasn't been baptized. She told us that in the bible, john the beloved was mis-interpreted and was really meant to be Mary magdelene, the beloved companion (wife) of Jesus. I guess you learn something new every day. She gave us the gospel of mary to borrow and read through so we'll see how that goes! :)

Other than that, almost nobody was home this week. It was rough going. But we had a good time through it all. Hope you all have a great week! Love you very much! Miss you! Church is true. Jesus is our savior. not sure where mary fits into it all, but that's not what's important:)

-Elder Tingey

Week 63

Quick update from the week. 

i don't have much time because we have our zone p-day today so i have to go set up soon. we're having a barbecue, but its not like most BBQs.... i'll send you a picture to explain.

This week we had a great lesson with Karka and her friend Moomoowah. we discussed the restoration and resolved a couple questions that came up about priesthood authority and prophets. they are both baptist so they know the bible really well and love it when we teach using bible scriptures. One big thing we've been working on with karka is that if our church is the true church of jesus christ on the earth today, then she would need to be baptized again. on monday she told us that if she receives an answer that our church is true, she is willing to be baptized again. It was awesome. and moomoowah told us that before the lesson she felt like all churches are true because they teach you to be a good person, but after she said that from what we talked about, she now believes that there is only one true church. Hopefully they both can get their answers soon! One dilema is that karka is pregnant and due any day now so things might get a little complicated soon here... haha she's the best. We didn't get a chance to meet with jimmy this week, but he came to church and we set something up with him for tuesday. He's still doing great, just needs a bit more time and prayers. On thursday Wilma, who never wants to come to church because it's too early to wake up, called us and told us that she wanted to come to church this sunday! haha it was awesome. So she came and i think she really enjoyed it. the sacrament meeting theme was family history work, so i'm pretty sure that was kindof boring for her, and we always sing the crazy hymns in the hymn book that nobody knows so Wilma was laughing at me struggling to sing #42. haha and then i started laughing because i was slaughtering it, and it was just not a good situation. Moral of the story: just stick to the 12 main hymns that everyone knows. hahahah 

We were able to meet with Yang Bai this week and we read from the book of mormon with her. she doesn't want to take lessons about like "the gospel" until she can have her boyfriend with her to learn as well, so we are doing the sneak attack of using to book of mormon. haha it was really good, and then she told me that she wants to help me learn chinese, so we had a few minutes of language study together. poor elder katene was falling asleep. SHe offered her laptop to watch movies to keep him occupied, but we had to turn it down.... haha 

We met a chinese guy named zack at ANU this week. We had a good lesson about the nature of god and stuff like that. we will be meeting with him on saturday. That's the update on our teaching pool for this week. We are looking to find some more keen investigators and we've received a couple referrals from members for part-member families that live in our area so we're hopin something comes of those. I guess i'll let you know next week.

We had interviews with president back this week. It went well. The poor guy has been dealing with a lot of stuff up in sydney. He wouldn't give any specifics, but i definitely do not envy his position, and i understand why we just got the stricter rules.

I got the package this week! is was so awesome! thank you all so much! I've already finished one box of the cereal and the pringles are almost gone. hahaha all of it was great. and the best part, i have to say, was the baby bottle. hahahahahahaahaha i died when i saw it. SOOO funny. and i will definitely use it to the fullest. haha

Hope you are all doing well. Life is so much different now that i have all the knowledge of a 19-year-old. :) hahaha just kidding. i still don't feel a day over 12. haha Love you all. The church is true. something i love doing is testifying of the truthfulness of the gospel as a representative of the savior. I know he lives. I love Sharing his message with people. I know i can't always see the bigger picture, but i know God knows what is going on and is behind the scenes making everything work out. Walking by faith is expected of us and if it was easy, it would have been satan's plan. haha trust in God, and hope for good things to come! and like that comercial says, "we haven't forgotten who keeps us in business". hahaha too true. Love you all!

-Elder Tingey

Yes. That is a spit.