Week 46

Alright P-day is here again! (bear with me i've run out of ideas on how to start these emails...)

Last monday we actually proselyted because Hoa could only meet with us on monday. We taught her the restoration and gave her a Sach Mac Mon. hahaha I was thinking about how some missionaries when they get home give their testimony in the language they used on their mission and if i were to do that it would be about 7 different languages.... hahaha gotta love Australia. But Hoa is awesome. I wish so bad that all people we taught were as humble as her. Her date is in two weeks and we have a lot to teach still so please pray for us!

This week we did heaps of finding and calling potential investigators. Hahah it's nice to be in an area where there has actually been work done before i got there! We've had heaps of miracles and we had 10 people committed to church! of course only 3 of them showed up, but its a start! We've found that a big problem (well, not really a big problem) is that we contact people in the City because that is part of Ginninderra ward boundary, but people come from all over canberra to the city so half of the people we contact that end up showing actual interest are in other areas! hahaha it's good to give the other missionaries people to teach, and when the zone succeeds, we succeed, but we really need some more poeple to teach!

President Palmer emailed us all today and told us that President and Sister Back have both received their visas and will be arriving in australia on Saturday! We are all really excited. I have heard nothing but good things about President Back and I can't wait to work with him.

We had a recent convert fireside last night for the canberra stake. A recent convert fireside is where a bunch of recent converts are asked to stand up and bear their testimonies and tell how they came to meet the missionaries and pretty much their conversion story. The AP's do one like every month up in the city for the whole mission, but since Canberra is so far away we cant really get to it, so we decided to start doing our own here! It was really awesome. We didn't have that great of a turn out, but it was the first one so we are hopeful that it will grow in popularity in the future. One woman was talking and she talked about how one thing that attracted her to the church was that the people actually live what they preach. Then she talked about the first time she came to church and how she walked in and saw a bunch of good people, and then she came to find out that they all had their imperfections, but everyone was trying to be like Christ as best as they can. That's what hit me. Too often we forget that we knew what we were getting ourselves into before we came to Earth. We knew we would fall short, we would mess up, and that is part of the plan. We just have to remember that we have the potential to become perfect and we need to always be striving towards that.

Today we're going to the Telestra Tower, which is a big cell tower that you can see from pretty much anywhere in Canberra so i'll get some pictures there. I know mom's probably dying because i haven't sent like any pictures this transfer, but i haven't taken like any. hahaha we go to the chapel and play sport every p-day and we don't do anything on the other days worth taking pictures of. hahah but i'll try to get some pictures.

Love you all! can't believe this is already the last week of the transfer. The end of next transfer will be my year mark..........not okay. Hope you all have a great week! Go share the gospel with someone!

Love,

Elder Tingey

Week 45

Okay first off gotta give a birthday and fathers' day shout out to the best dad on the planet! Love you dad! Cant believe you're 50!  hahaha

This week was a pretty awesome one. Elder Cheng and Elder Bowcut's investigator Liang Li Li got baptized. It was really cool. Elder Cheng baptized her and he did it in chinese so me and elder bowcut had to be the witnesses because we were the only ones in the room who knew what he was saying. She is really awesome. I got to do the baptismal interview and we just chinglished our way through it. She is extremely shy, but she has a very strong testimony and desire to follow christ.

On wednesday there was a district leader training up in sydney so all the district leaders in our zone came and slept at our flat on tuesday night and drove up together wednesday morning. It was a great night. We have some solid missionaries in our zone. I feel like i can confidently say that there is not another zone i would rather be in. I'm worried that things are going to change soon, though, with this next transfer.

We had one of our investigators, Simon, tell us that he is going back to China as soon as exams are over so he had to drop his baptismal date. So that was disappointing, but he already has a ticket to come back sometime in July so we are looking forward to that. We decided this week that things are going to start going downhill unless we start finding new investigators so we pulled out all the stops and picked up 3 new this week! and a few potentials that we will be visiting this week to see if we can turn them into investigators. I will say it is entertaining working with chinese people because they always seem to pick the most interesting english names for themselves. they will pick names like Swing. or Bubbles. or Ice Cream. It makes calling potentials just so much more interesting. But we really are excited. We'll see if we can smash them with some chinese and while they are stunned from it, hit up the gospel. hahaha it never gets old seeing chinese people realize that you are speaking chinese to them. We went to a less-active's house and he asked me to say the prayer and i had my english name badge on so he had no idea and i just said the prayer in chinese and he started laughing mid-prayer.

Something i did this week was start reading the Book of Mormon again. I love in the first chapter of 1st Nephi at the end where nephi talks about how the tender mercies of the lord are over all who he hath chosen BECAUSE OF THEIR FAITH. It's good to know that our God is not an arbitrary God. He blesses us according to our faith, and if we excercize a particle of faith, he will help us grow that faith so that he can bless us even more. That's pretty dang cool if you ask me.

This sunday we had Elder O'Riordan visit the Ginninderra ward. he's the area 70 for the pacific area. He's awesome. the Epitome of a spiritual giant. He stands at the pulpit and you can just tell that he is a powerful tool in the hands of the Lord. He shared a few experiences with us and i was amazed at how he has zero doubt in the power of the Lord. I think that's what it takes to be a powerful servant of the Lord. That is something i've been working on. I think too many times i have doubts in myself, and it holds me back from seeing some of those miracles that everyone wants in their life. It's like every one of us is on a two man team with the Lord. If we don't believe that we can win, it's like we don't believe that when we fall short, Christ will pick up the slack and make it happen. I dunno, it's just something to think about. Hahaha sports analogies. (is it because the world cup is on and the NBA finals? who knows...)

Okay love you all! i'm going to end this now. We're going to go play sport at the chapel like we do every P-day. hahah it's all good. i love playing sport. Hope you all have an awesome week and let dad watch sports in peace! hahahahaha Love you Dad!

Love,

Elder Tingey

Week 44

Once again i must apologize for my email coming on tuesday instead of monday. Yesterday was the Queen's birthday so President Palmer had us do P-day today instead. Turns out it's not even really the Queen's birthday, that's just when they celebrate it. I don't know, i guess when you're royal you can have two birthdays. #peasantproblems

This week was a great one. Even though we had one less car than we would like, we still managed. Trade-offs with the APs went well. Elder Shafer is an awesome missionary. He is the epitome of a Preach my Gospel missionary. It was great to be able to learn from him.

We were able to commit two people to baptism this week. they don't have dates yet for different reasons, but we are really excited for them. The first is Scott. He was a referral from the sister missionaries in the Belconen Ward. (side note: our zone is composed of the canberra stake which has Ginninderra, Belconen, Woden, Tuggeranong, and a tiny branch on the coast called Merimbula) He is the son of someone they are working with. He told us he wants to change he meets his 13-year-old daughter for the first time. We've taught him a couple times this week and he has accepted everything we've taught him. He's got a ways to go, but that's not what matters if he truly wants to change. He doesn't want to set a date until his daughter arrives. and the second one is a man up in Goulburn who is married to a member. He told us the only reason he's not baptized is that he lives too far away from the chapel. (it's like an hour drive from Goulburn to our chapel) And he works in the mines so his schedule sometimes makes him work on sundays. But we asked him if there was a branch in Goulburn if he would be baptised and he said definitely! If only all investigators had the same outlook as he does... hahah he is so humble and just has the most sincere questions. I love teaching people that WANT to learn! He doesn't have a date because the whole "branch in Goulburn" thing isn't finalized yet. But soon it will be.

Many mighty miracles happening in Canberra this week! We were informed that we will not be getting a new car for the indefinite future.... so that kindof stinks. We'll be running on faith and prayers and hopefully we will see some more miracles this week. The bus system here isnt as good as up in sydney so its not as easy to get around. Hoping to find some new investigators this week because right now the uni is in the middle of exams so all our uni students dropped us until after their tests are done.

ZTM went well. I actually wasn't that nervous. We trained on Sacrament attendance, and Baptism. We have such a great zone. All the missionaries here are hard working and we don't have any serious problems with the companionships so that makes things a lot easier on us.

Life is wonderful round here. The work is awesome. I hope i stay here for a long time. (but don't tell anyone)

Love you all so much! miss you heaps! I am constantly amazed that i was lucky enough to be brought up in a gospel centered home. TOday i studied lehi's dream and of all the people wandering in the great and spacious field, how did i manage to come to a family where everyone is making their way along the strait and narrow path. Thank you everyone for being such amazing examples for me. You are the best!

Love,

Elder Tingey

Week 43

Okay once again i am emailing on tuesday. Hahaha they might as well just move P-day to Tuesday.... 

In the past two weeks i have done the drive between mortdale and canberra 7 times. That's a full day just spent driving in the car! hahaha dang. Yesterday we had MLC. It was the Real MLC, though. It was really good. It's interesting to be able to see how the mission functions behind the scenes. We've got some solid missionaries leading this mission and i'm lucky enough to be able to work with them. I'm on trade-offs right now with the AP's. we started yesterday after MLC and we will go until tomorrow night. It's been really good. Elder Shafer is the one i'm with right now and the cool thing is, before he got called as an AP, he served in Ginninderra for like 8 months so he really knows the area. That makes things heaps easier on me. hahaha It's been interesting these past few weeks because i think i expected that just associating with all these experienced missionaries would just kindof make me a good missionary, but I realized that, just like in life, it comes down to you and what you are willing to do to become what the lord wants you to become. We can surround ourselves with all the good in the world, but we have to allow it all to sink in. I hope I can put forth enough effort to become a great misisonary.

We had an awesome lesson this week with Yang Bai (uni student from the Henan Province) We watched finding faith in Christ in Chinese. (Understood most of it!) And we talked about Christ and who he is and what he did on this earth. I have to say probably the coolest thing on my mission has been teaching chinese people about christ. To see people with no christian background feel the spirit testify to them about the reality of our savior is amazing. I could do it all day, every day. (oh wait, i do....)

We had Hoa come to church this week. She has a baptismal date for the 5th of July so please pray for her. She is from Vietnam and her husband is studying right now. Exams end in two weeks at which time we will start teaching him as well as their 8-year-old son. Hoa told us she wants her family to be together forever so she wants them all to be baptized. She is soooo awesome.

We have Zone Training Meeting this friday and for some reason i'm a lot more nervous than i was for any of the District meetings i gave. It's nice only having to give trainings once a month, but i feel like there's a lot more pressure on for this one... hahah we'll see how it goes!

It really amazes me how the work here in Canberra is flourishing. I think it's because they have had some stellar missionaries down here in the past. There seems to just be an expectation of excellence and i wish the whole mission had it. Canberra is the place to be my friends. Lovin every minute of it.

Here's an australian word of the day: Nakka'd. It means like, tired or something. The guy who used it was talking about racquetball and he said after the game he was "Nakka'd" hahaha not sure how the spelling is, but that's how it sounds. hahaha i love Australia.

Love you all. Hope you have some awesome vacations planned now that school is out. (or will be out soon)  we got in a small accident this week, but we are all in one piece and doing fine! Hahaha i promise, mom. Not even any minor injuries. Nope my neck doesn't even hurt. hahaha cant' think of what else you might possibly ask me. Love you all!

Love,

Elder Tingey

Week 42

Okay sorry for the day late email, we had a mission conference yesterday that i forgot to tell you about. It was up in Macarthur so we drove up the night before and stayed with the Camden elders and visited the Sika family sunday night. It was funny because three of the four elders in our flat have served in Camden so we all showed up at their door and they were sooo surprised, and then, unplanned, the actual camden elders showed up! hahaha it was way cool. We had a good chat, and then we went back to the camden elders flat and slept over. The conference was good. I thought they were going to tell us we can use facebook now, but nope. We're still the stone age mission... hahahaha its all good though. 

After the conference we drove back and stopped in a city  called Goulburn on the way. It's Australia's first established city so it's old as. Heaps of old churches that look like castles and stuff. We don't get to go there very often because it's like an hour drive away from canberra so we only go when we have to go up to Sydney. Right now we're working on establishing a branch there because if we did, there would be like 4 baptisms. all people who want to be baptised, but it's just too far away. We want to get a senior couple to come be the branch president and relief society president. I'll keep you updated on what happens with that.

Mom had some questions so i'm going to answer those. We have 4 elders in our flat right now, Me, Elder Walsh, Elder Cheng, and Elder Bowcut. Of all the flats i've lived in, it is definitely the nicest. we have two study rooms, one bedroom, three bathrooms, two showers, a living room, and a kitchen and a laundry room. it's a two level thing. We have two universities in our area so a lot of people we work with are chinese so i get to use my language a lot. Problem is, elder walsh doesn't' speak Chinese, so we usually teach in english. We even have a few chinese members in our ward. Because it's canberra, most of the people in our ward work for the government, so there's actually a lot of americans in our ward also. I got to the flat the first day and there was Cap'n Crunch in the cupboard! I really like my companion. He's been out almost a year and a half so he really knows what he's doing, and he's been a zone leader for as long as i've been on my mission. We have heaps of fun, and we work REALLY hard. I did get socks and a sweater last week. Thank you for putting mony in my account. We get fed a lot, and when we don't get fed, we eat leftovers from other feeds. 

We have a few investigators, and two with a baptismal date. The two are Hoa and Simon. I haven't met simon yet because he is a uni student and exams are coming up so he couldnt meet with us last week. Hoa came to church. she is a little vietnamese woman and she has a husband and 8 year old son that she wants to get baptised as well. Our daily schedule is the same up until we go out to proselyte. We usually have a couple appointments every day, which is soooo  nice. We contact people at the uni, visit less-actives, and do all the other missionary stuff, and usually we have a feed in the evening with one of the members. We don't ride bikes. Almost everyone in Canberra has a car because it's so spread out. The ward is awesome. Heaps of awesome people, and very strong members. We work a lot with the young men, which is way cool. it's all good stuff. Being a zone leader hasn't been too eventful. We had a mission leadership council on friday up in Sydney, and we had to do numbers and organize some trade offs, but other than that it's pretty chill.

We had a cool miracle last week. We were waiting for an appointment that was like thirty minutes away so we decided to call some potentials in our phone, because we have like 100 potentials in our phone. We called one, and he told us he didn't have time to meet with us because he was looking for a job and a place to live. As we talked to him more we found out that he and his pregnant girlfriend were living out of their car. We asked if there was anything we could do to help him out and he asked if we had any food. We met up with him later that night and gave him some food, and talked about God. Recently in his life there have been some experiences that have turned him toward God, and he expressed a desire to get closer to his father in Heaven. It was a really cool experience and they are now investigating the church. Really excited to see them progress in the gospel.

We're almost done with the book of mormon! Loved reading moroni 7. Charity is a cool topic to study. Everything we do must be driven by charity. Because we love christ purely  and unconditionally, we also have love for those around us.

Love you all! Have a good week!

-Elder Tingey

Week 41 (Week 40 was Mother's Day Call)

Good morning everyone!

This week was nuts. Completely nuts. It was awesome to skype the family on monday. I realized as soon as we cut off the call that i didn't say anything i was planning to tell yous! UGH. hahaha it's okay though. I can still tell you through email. Wednesday we decided to text shirly because she told us she was going to text us her new school schedule and she hadn't yet, so we asked what her schedule was and she replied and said she wanted to come to church on sunday! hahaha you have to realize that i'm the only one who even knows her because we found her on trade-offs, and i'd only met her the one time. so we set up for her to get a ride to church with one of our members and it was awesome. I know she is one of those prepared that we are looking for.

That was the miracle of this week and now for the bad/good news.... I got transferred..... 

hahahaha definitely didn't see it coming. for the first few hours i wasn't sure if the sisters had set up some elaborate prank on me or something.(they tend to do that) But no, it was not a prank. I had to pack my bags and say my goodbyes. I'm really going to miss the Gong. It was an awesome place with some awesome people. 

My new area is Ginnindera ward in Canberra. Some people call it the Canberra mission because it is so far away from everyone. we drove for about 3 1/2 hours to get here. And as a result, i'm emailing today from the Australia National Library. Canberra is really nice. It's freezing, though. I'm going to buy a sweater after this.  My companion is Elder Walsh. He's from Philadelphia and he's been out for about 17 months. He's really awesome and i'm way excited to be serving with him. We have been asked to serve as Zone Leaders. Pretty nervous about that, but excited to see what it's like to be a zone leader. The area really seems to be booming and there's heaps of success. We've got a couple baptismal dates lined up for the coming weeks so i'm really excited about that. The missionaries here are really awesome. I'm living in a flat with my companion and elder Bowcut and Elder Cheng (yes, my son). It's going to be a great transfer. I'm going to have to keep this short because we've got a lot to do today. Love you all! Hope everyone is doing well! I'm a bit behind on the book of mormon reading, but i just read the story of the brother of Jared a few days ago and i really love that story. Not only his faith that led him to be able to see the Lord, but also how the stones were touched by the Lord, and they gave light to the people. "ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill, cannot be hid." It's so awesome that we are able to be the light for other people. Let it shine!

Love you all!

-Elder Tingey

Week 39

Holy cow I don't really even know where to start....

As far as people we're meeting with go, we weren't able to meet with trish this week because she's had some big tests for school so we are seeing her tomorrow. Hoping to invite her to church. We met with Gong last week and invited him to be baptized, but he told us his parents didn't want him to. He said he's talked to them a few times about it and it's always been the same answer. I felt like we needed a little more help from the Lord so we taught him about The law of the Fast (remember this is all in chinese) and invited him to fast and pray and then call his parents again. He really could use all the prayers he can get. He's such a cool guy. He's from Henan province, I don't think I told you that before. Bruce Li hasn't answered our calls or texted us back in a couple weeks now so we are probably dropping him. Darnit. Other than that we are going to be doing a lot of finding this next week (seems like a common thread among every week....) haha

Wednesday night we received a call from the zone leaders and they told us that President Lew had just been released as mission president.... He is still recovering, but the Area presidency decided it would be better for him to be back in Utah getting treatment so he was flown back sometime between Thursday night and today I think. the new mission president is President Palmer. He's from New Zealand, Christchurch and he has been a mission president in Washington State before. We've got a Zone conference this Thursday down in Canberra. I think i'll be in denial until I actually meet him, but it's definitely official. I think I've told you all how much I love the Lews before so it's been a rough couple weeks. Keep them in your prayers because President Lew's fight isn't over yet. It's going to be interesting to see what the Lord has in store for the Australia Sydney South Mission. It's just a good thing he knows what he's doing....(:

This weekend was Stake conference so we had to go back up to Macarthur. They wanted all the missionaries to attend all sessions so we went up Saturday and slept over and drove back sunday. We got to sleep over in the Camden flat! They got a new flat!!!! It's soooooo nice. And it was so cool to drive through my old area and I got to talk to a bunch of people from Camden ward while I was there. hahaha good to see they still remember me. Sunday was a really good meeting. we've got a solid stake presidency. Then after the meeting I was able to ordain tracy to the melchizedek Priesthood. That was really cool. I was so nervous. and while we were waiting, it came to another prospective elder from our ward's turn and elder Wang and I were the only people from Wollongong ward there so he looked at me and asked me to come do it! haha definitely wasn't ready for that, but it was a really good experience. I'll put some pictures from it on the drop box. Tracy is the short Maori, and Bach is the name of the other. He's from Vietnam. It made me look at my line of authority and realize that from now on, I am part of someone else's line. that's pretty sweet.

Zone P-day was pretty cool there's a sweet beach down in Dapto that we went to. Our zone (the South Coast Zone) is pretty much the most beautiful zone in the mission. Now if we can just get the numbers that the other zones are getting, that would be great... hahaha it's possible, we just need to work harder. I'll send some pictures of that as well and there's a pretty good vid that i'll try to get on the drop box.

Love you all, can't wait for next Monday! I sent a package with some of my mail and a gift for mom for mothers' day. and there IS a letter for you guys in there somewhere so find it! and don't open the package until mothers day! (but open it before we Skype because I actually don't like being there when people open my gifts....Is that weird? I dunno, it's just one of those things I guess... hahahah)

Have an awesome week! Know that I love you all, and I pray for all of you often! Cheers!

-Elder Tingey