Week 51

G'day. Hope you're all having a wonderful sunday. It's just another beautiful day in Canberra today. It's getting warmer here. Slowly, but surely. haha i think they just sent me down here for the cold part of the year and once it gets warmer they're going to send me up to Sydney where it's just really hot. Hopefully not. I'd be totally fine to celebrate Christmas here.

Update on people: Hoa is doing good. we went over there and talked to her for a bit. It was short because i didn't want to keep her out of bed for too long. SHe's been having trouble understanding the book of mormon because the vietnamese translation is apparently really hard to understand. And she's not the only person who's told me that. In wollongong we had a vietnamese member who couldn't understand the book of mormon very well in Vietnamese. And then the english translation is really difficult for her to understand as well so we have started reading with her. We read the story of Nephi and his brothers getting the plates and she seemed to really like how brave Nephi was. Haha i told her she is brave too, going through what she's going through. She's awesome. We just got her a book of mormon stories book that has all the pictures and stuff. i think that will help her understand it more. 

Our boy Scott told us he is moving to hong Kong. he said he wants to live with his idol, Bruce Li. Good news is that he knows a little bit of chinese. He said he knows some swear words and numbers so i asked how to say 17 and said shi san, which was close enough to convince me! He's going to save his government pension to buy a plane ticket and then fly there and get chinese citizenship. I told him to call us if he needs help packing up because he said he only wants to take one suitcase and i just know there's hidden treasures in that flat. haha just kidding but he really said he's moving to hong kong so we're going to miss him if he goes.

We were walking through the city on wednesday and we were standing at a cross walk and it was like an island thing in the middle of the road, and elder pederson (we were on trade-offs) leaned in close and said, "i think we might need a priesthood holder..." so i looked around and saw that standing on the island behind us was about 9 chinese girls and we started cracking up. And then we contacted one of them and met Ruth! Ruth is from CHina studying at ANU. She told us she is already Christian! So we talked to her about what we do as missionaries and asked if we could meet up and she said yes! so we met up and talked on saturday and we taught the restoration and invited her to be baptized and she said yes! I was so excited. And she's going to read the book of mormon. We are meeting with her this saturday again. Really excited about it.

Yang Bai texted us and told us she doesn't want to meet for a while. She said she's going through some things at the moment she needs to straighten out. So we're praying for her to text us. She's the one who has been taught everything and wants to be baptized she just needed to move out or get married. So hopefully she texts us back because she was really cool.

I had a cool experience on sunday. We got to church and this guy walked in and came up and asked me if Elder Shafer was here today and i told him that elder Shafer had been transfered and my companion and i had replaced him and his companion. So he told me his name was Reza. He is from Iran and he is a member of our ward but he goes to woden ward. So we were talking a bit before sacrament started and i asked him when he got baptized and he said a bout 5 years ago in Canada. I said that was pretty cool and we kept talking and he asked me where i was from and when i said Utah, he asked, "do you know elder Neff?" haha that seems to be everyone's reply. People i guess think if you live in utah, you know everyone from Utah. so i told him there were a lot of Neffs in Utah but i know some. and he said "do you know Ben Neff? He just got married a couple months ago." hahahaha so if ben neff served in Canada then i definitely met his recent convert! How cool is that?!?! and he wants to serve a mission! So we're going to meet with him this week to talk about what he needs to do. I thought it was flippin awesome. It was cool, too, because i felt the spirit soooooo strong when he told me it was elder Neff that taught him. So if you could figure out the details and let me know that would be awesome. I've already emailed his little sister but if anyone is in close contact with Ben, give him my email and i'll tell him about it. Unless ben didn't serve in Canada, then i would be disappointed... :( haha let me know.

Okay i know it's like feast or famine when it comes to my emails, but i just give yous what i've got. hahaha Love you all! hope lake powell was fun. Mom was nice enough to send some pictures to remind me it's been 2 years since i've been there... hahaha i think i would kill for a wakeboarding run right now. but i'd rather teach people the gospel so its all good. haha. Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Tingey 

Week 50

Pretty good week. 

We did a lot of finding this past week and i wish i could say it payed off, but we didn't have much success as far as finding people goes. But that's alright. we'll keep going regardless. We did have one girl invite us back tuesday to talk to her. haha they found her when i was on trade-offs in a different area and elder Bryce is worried because she's like our age and decently attractive. hahaha I'LL be the judge of THAT. haha it's okay because my missionary goggles are fastened safely on. But apparently she's aussie so it might be the second aussie i teach on my mission! haha the last one got baptized so i'm hopeful! haha 

We got a referral this past week from missionaries up in the North mission for a guy that they had been teaching, and he has come to church a bunch of times and he committed to baptism, but they found out that he lives like an hour out of canberra and just goes up to sydney for work and that's when he'd go to church so they referred him to us and we called him and he was totally keen to meet with us, but he's only at the place they told us he lived (a small town called Tarago) on like monday and tuesday every week so we're not sure how we're going to go about helping him get baptized but we'll keep yous updated!

Just an update on Hoa, She has been in and out of the hospital for the past week because of complications in her pregnancy and because of it she is on strict bed rest. She's at about 23 weeks right now and i think she was having early labor pains or something so they want to keep the baby inside because it's definitely not ready to be born. We visited her in the hospital and then visited with her husband Vin at their house while she was resting. Please please please pray for her. She's taking it like a champ, but it's gotta be hard on her. She will probably be laying in bed for the next like 3 months.

We had interviews with President Back on Friday. Love him. he showed me the message dad left on his phone as he was leaving for Sydney! hahaha and then he was like "i hope that doesnt make you trunky." hahah he's the man. You can just tell that he is inspired in his calling and i'm excited to see where the mission is at in 1 year.

Yang Bai got back from traveling last week and she moved into her new apartment. We are hoping to meet up with her this week and set up a baptismal date! Simon also was supposed to get back from china last week, but he didn't answer our calls and wasnt home when we stopped by. Hopefully we can meet with him as well and set up a date for him too!

Hope you are all loving life and finding missionary opportunities everywhere! We had a gospel principals lesson on fasting this week and i had a prompting i should fast with you this week so i'm going to be fasting on wednesday for me which should be tuesday for you. Love you all heaps! Have a good week!

love,

Elder Tingey

Week 49

Quite an interesting week. 

It's amazing how at the end of every week you feel the same amount of exhaustion, but some weeks seem to have more to talk about than others. This week not much happened. Except We had to travel down to queanbeyan to get a "working with Children" background check done. it's this new thing in NSW where people have to be checked in order to work with kids. so all the missionaries had to do it, but since we actually aren't in NSW (we're in the ACT) we had to travel outside of the ACT to go get it. Side note: we got our car back, but they cut us 500 ks so we've been walking a ton still. So to save ks we decided to take public transport. Problem is, public transport isn't very simple when you're going inter-state so it was quite an adventure for the four of us. Haha it was funny because we got there really smoothly. we only had to wait in the city for half an hour for a bus to take us down to the south side of the ACT and then the train from fishwick to queanbeyan left right away and it wasn't a very long walk to the RMS where we got the check done, but the way back was a different story. We had to wait about 2 1/2 hours for the train back, and then the bus was another half hour to the city, and another half hour to our flat... haha and we saved a total of 60 ks.... but we talked to heaps of people along the way so it was good.

We've been doing a lot of finding recently because our teaching pool is pretty small. But this week i'm really excited because 2 former investigators are coming back to canberra. one was in china, and the other was travelling australia and they both had baptismal dates at one point. so we're praying for them. It's Simon and Yang bai. They're solid.

There's not a whole ton else to write about. We're trying to start a chinese gospel principles class for the chinese investigators, so i'll let you know how that ends up. We have interviews with president this friday so i'm also excited for that.

Love you all heaps! If you have any questions for me i'd love to answer them! haha give me something more to write because i know mom is going to be mad my letter is this short this week.... hahahaha sorry.

Elder Tingey

Week 48

This week was a very "missionary-like" week. hahaha ups and downs, but you get to sunday night and look back and are able to see the miracles. I know the Lord has a hand in this work and everything happens under his timing and will. Tuesday night we visited Hoa and talked about her baptism. She told us that she wants to be able to live the commandments before she gets baptized and she is struggling with the word of wisdom and tithing. She drinks tea and coffee and doesn't make very much money. She wanted to postpone her date so the baptism didn't happen last week...:( broke my heart, but she has desire to follow christ and i know that she will be baptized someday. We just need to work with her. I was amazed when she told us she didn't want to be baptized on saturday that instead of being frustrated, i was instantly filled with so much love for her it was weird. haha she really is the best and i just want her to have that happiness that only comes from the gospel.

We had zone conference last week and MLC yesterday and i have been amazed at President Back. It truly was inspiration for him to be called here. He is amazing. It has been cool to see him come in and everything he's said has seemed to hit home for me as something i need to do to improve my personal ministry. Something he said yesterday that i loved was "almost every problem we have as a missionary is from a lack of faith." man that is so true. If you're teaching pool isn't doing very well, it's probably because you need to improve your faith to find the elect. If you're struggling with your companion, it's probably because you need to improve your faith that the mission is led by inspiration. it's just a really cool principle to think about. and he talked about Numbers 21 how the children of israel just needed to look to the brass serpent to be saved, but yet there were many who wouldn't look and perished. It really is simple what we are asked to do here on the earth, but it's US who complicate it by lack of faith.

We had trade-offs with the APs when they came down for our zone conference and i got to go with Elder Fiu! He is so awesome. It was a sweet trade-off and i learned so much. He has such great faith and it rubs off on everyone he's around.

We went to visit a former last week and it turns out two of our formers live in the same apartment complex right across the hall from each other! haha so we knocked on the first and it was this auzzie guy who told us to come back later cuz he was on the phone so we knocked on the other one and they weren't home but the other guy must have looked through the peep hole because we heard him say "it's the mormons. They're knocking every door. haha they don't know that i'm the only one home in this place! everyone else goes out!" hahaha we left, and were laughing sooo hard. but then we went to drive away and elder Bryce was backing me and as i backed up this fijian couple pulled up and elder Bryce started talking to them and they invited us in so i pulled back into my spot and we went in and taught the whole restoration! We gave them a book of mormon and we will be seeing them this week! that was an awesome miracle. One that i had been praying for. I love being a missionary. It's literally the best thing. It depresses me to think that someday i will have to give it up and be a normal citizen.... hahaha but i still have over a year before that! haha love you all. have a good week! pray for hoa!

love,

Elder Tingey

Week 47

alright!

it's the start of a new transfer and just like every other transfer, there were a bunch of changes. The big one is that elder Walsh got transferred! Hahaha which means my last 3 companions have been with me for only 1 transfer... i'm gonna start thinking i'm one of those troubled missionaries soon that don't have companions very long because people can't deal with me..... hahaha actually elder walsh got released from being a zone leader and got called as a district leader. So once again, elder tingey is expected to know what he's doing and get it all figured out... haha we'll see how it goes. between the area and being a zone leader, i'm a lost puppy. 

My new companion is Elder Bryce from Arizona. he's solid and a great teacher. I'm really excited for this next transfer. He's also Cantonese speaking. I think the AP's and President Palmer weren't aware of the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese because when i got to the transfer meeting, one of the AP's was like "hey, we put you with a chinese speaker." hahaha definitely not the same language, mate. haha but its all goods. this way we can cover the people from mainland and hong kong. We'll smash it. And that brings me to some other changes. We had two new APs called this transfer and they're having a tri-panionship of aps until the one who's been an ap the longest leaves. But the reason i'm telling you this is because Elder Fiu is one of the APs! hahaha the man. Love that kid. He's going to be awesome. It's funny too, because all three of the aps have served in Ginnindera ward. hahaha so we talk about the area and they all want to be the one to come on trade-offs here. 

Also, we got a new mission president this week! he got here on saturday morning. President Back. He's the man. he got up in transfer meeting and said that he and sister back really have no idea what they're doing. hahaha They are still jet-lagged, and the APs have been showing them the ropes. He talked about how in this mission we are going to be obedient, we are going to work hard, and on P-day we are going to play hard. haha he really is the coolest guy. Already love him and sister back. I can't wait for our zone conference this week. At transfer meeting they talked a lot about love and how that has to be central to our work. Love for God first, and then love for all those around us. I think that's so true.

Hoa is on date for this saturday! We have a few things to work out but i'm praying that next week i will be able to send you a picture of her in white! She is so great. I can't even explain how much i love her and want her to be happy. Every time we teach her it makes my day.

This past week we had a new investigator come to church. His name is Jeremy and he's a Chinese Uni student. We started out just playing basketball with him and he didn't seem that interested, but he texted us and said he wanted to learn about jesus Christ. Hahaha i love texts like those. He's still a bit reserved, and doesn't want to commit to baptism, but he is interested to learn and hopefully as he learns more, he will develop that desire.

Hope you are all doing well. Glad the Jazz got themselves an aussie. haha and i've heard the US is doing well in the world cup! keep me updated on that. It's always good to hear from all of you. Love you all heaps and heaps! Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Tingey

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