...And Even More Updates!

January 6, 2014

Wollongong is doing great. We get transfer calls on Saturday. I  CANNOT beileve that I've been in Wollongong for 5 weelks already. Its flown by. I'm hoping that I get to stay in Wollongong for a little while longer though. Apparently once school starts again there are Chinese people everywhere. But it won't start up again until March. So it's still a while away.

So T.T.  is the guy we met at the train station. He's good. We just haven't been able to meet him much. He's applying for his Ph.D but before he can apply he has to take an English exam. The exam is on the 11th so he's been at the library all the time. We saw him on Friday when we played basketball but thats about it. A lot of our investigators are in the same boat. They're all studying for this exam so they can't meet with us much.

Last week we met these two Chinese guys on the bus. One of them is from LUOHU! It was really funny because I like to introduce myself and say that I'm from Shenzhen and then he said his family lives in Shenzhen as well. So there names are P. and L. P. is from Shenzhen and L. is from Shanghai. When they left to get off thus bus, we realized that P. was wearing his boxers and had no pants on. Super funny. Only a Chinese guy would do that. So P. and L. are roommates and they're both getting their Ph.D in mechanical engineering. L. is super interested about religion and is constantly asking questions. First time we went to his house he and Elder Liao talked about World War 2 in Chinese for like 30 minutes and he will always ask for my opinion, and I'll have to tell him I have no clue what you guys are talking about. It's funny though. No Chinese want to read the Chinese Book of Mormon because they are afraid that there's flaws in the translation, so they read the English one.

Hope that you are enjoying your trip to the US. Im sure your dog misses you a lot.

Love,

Elder Hall

January 13, 2014

Transfers were yesterday, and I made the cut, so I'm still in Wollongong. Excited to still be here. There' s a lot of changes around here though. New district leader and we have more missionaries coming to Wollongong and they will be moving into our flat. So its going to be a little crowded in our flat, but it'll be fine. So we will now have 12 missionaries in the Wollongong Ward. We've also had 4 extra mini sister missionaries. Mini missionaries are youth ages 16-18 who are thinking about going on missions so they give them a chance to be a full time missionary for a week. So we will really have 16 missionaries in Wollongong for this week. 

Wollongong is so good though. It's exactly what I pictured Australia to be. Elder Liao and I are excited to keep on working with who we have and hope to be able to find more. This week we finally got an investigator to sacrament meeting. His name is Aaron from Dali, China. We've been meeting with him a lot. We got him to church and he was super uncomfortable because he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. Then in Sacrament meeting he fell asleep. So right after sacrament ended he told us that he  was bored and then ran home. So our big goal his week is to make a more Chinese friendly sacrament meeting. We are going to try to get all Chinese less actives back to church--so we'll see how that goes.

Everyone is so busy that no one can meet with us. The Chinese are studying at the library all day every day so we're going to go and try to find more people to teach.

Elder Hall

January 20, 2014

So we got two new Chinese speaking missionaries in our flat. One is from Layton, Utah and the other is from Chengdu, China!  It's crazy. There' s a lot of Mandarin spoken in our flat now which I love. And Elder Wang, from Chengdu, has this Sichuan Cookbook so it looks like I'm eating Chinese food for the rest of my life! Hopefully we will make some Kung Pao. There's a lot of stuff we have to figure out as a District now though. President Lew says he wants the Chinese speakers around the city and the University, so we may be changing up all the areas, and its going to make a lot of missionaries unhappy. So that will be interesting this week.

This week has been pretty good though. Our investigator A., came to church again this week. He wore a suit this time and he had a much better time at church, so we are making a lot of progress with him. We also met another investigator L. last night. L. always has so many questions that it takes forever to teach him, but we are really happy that he is asking questions. We've also been getting a lot of referrals this week from the sister missionaries, so hopefully we will be able to teach some of them.

This week has been chaotic though with switching areas and getting new missionaries and everything, so not too much happened this last week. Russel M. Nelson will be coming to speak to us at a joint mission conference with the North Mission. Its going to be on February 19th I think and it will be in the North Mission, so we are excited to go up there. But the North Mission is super strict and they are not even allowed to talk to us, so at the Conference they will put tape down the middle of the chapel and South goes on one side and the North on the other. Not sure why they are so strict about it but they are.

I think David and Hailey will have a boy. What are you guys thinking? I always just picture their kid being a boy. I'll try to send pictures.

Love,

Elder Hall

January 27, 2014

That's too bad about Ashley's foot!

Wollongong is always hot. I hear there's a huge heat wave but I don't feel any difference. Wollongong is one of the few places in around here that's really humid, but we are right on the ocean so we often get a nice breeze.

So we switched up everything. I'm now living with 2 different missionaries--Elder Cheung from Hong Kong and Elder Smith from Lehi, Utah. They both speak

Mandarin so it's still really good. We now cover the city and the University--so really the two best places in Wollongong--it's awesome. I can't WAIT for school to start back up again because once it does there will be so many more Chinese
everywhere. We're at a point where I really feel like we've talked to every Chinese person here. We keep on seeing the same people all the time. It's funny though because they know us now so we have a lot of friends around town.

Everyone is going to up Sydney this week for Chinese New Year though. This week we've been trying to work a lot with A., and helping him quit smoking. He's been
doing really well so far he says. He didn't make it to church on Sunday because he said he had to register for classes, so we haven't seen him for a few days. He really wants to quit smoking. He told us he's tried so many times to quit, so hopefully this is the time he quits. 

We have met quite a few new people this week. We were on the free bus outside of the Uni, and the bus driver turned off the bus and it was dead silent, and these four
Chinese guys came on the bus and sat down a little ways in front of us. There were a lot of people on the bus and it was totally silent, but I just said, "Hey Shuai Ge
men" which means 'hey handsome guys' (it's really weird in English but apparently saying it in Chinese is less weird) and they all turned around and I started talking to them and they were all super excited and came and sat down next to me and gave us their phone numbers. So that was pretty cool.  Australia Day was this week so that was crazy. Everyone was completely drunk this weekend so it was really awkward. Old shirtless guys just came up to us and gave us hugs and stuff. We played Rugby to celebrate 'Straya day. All the missionaries here love playing rugby, so we play it
all the time.

Love,

Elder Hall

February 3, 2014

That's crazy that you are in Phuket. That's a lot of bouncing around to different countries.

This week has been pretty good. One of our investigators, T. went back to China. We have been trying to get a hold of him lately but we finally went to his house and all of the furniture is gone and someone said he and all his roommates left. So that's a bummer.

A. was in Hurstville for Chinese New Year this week, so we haven't seen much of him. But it sounds like he's doing well on not smoking. Hopefully he will be able to make it to church on Sunday because the other Elders' Chinese investigator is getting baptized, so it would be really good for him to come to that.

We met with this new investigator, Z., who's a girl from Beijing and we taught her.

Another investigator W.  was also in Hurstville for Chinese New Year. Everyone has been either gone or busy. We also met this guy S., who we've talked to a couple of times and said he wasn't interested. But we ran into him the other day and he was suddenly way interested. He was in Hurstville for Chinese New Year as well, so we will try to meet with him this week.

Another person we met was L. L. always loves to talk about politics or computers with us in Chinese which is alright for Elder Liao but I never have any idea as to what's happening. He's going back to China in March so we're making a big push for him, but he just doesn't want to come to church.

This morning one of our members took us to this rainforest about an hour away and we hiked up to a waterfall. It was pretty cool. There's also a huge Buddhist Temple that we want to try to go to next P-Day.

Anyway that's about it for this week.

February 10, 2014

We never go to the temple. We're supposed to go every 3 transfers. I have heard that there is an even NEWER film though. Crazy. I am going to the Buddhist Temple today though. Not really the same. We're going as a district activity.

I got the package you sent this week. I also just got the birthday package with the hot chocolate in it. Turns out  the mission office had our address wrong. The mission office has been forwarding all of our mail to the wrong address, so both Elder Liao and my mail has been going to someone else. So that's not good. I know I have friends who have been saying that they would send me a letter, its just all been going to the wrong place.

This week was pretty good. We met a couple new investigators. We also got to meet A. again. He has been gone for a week, and he made it to church yesterday. Unfortunately, he left right after sacrament meeting, and after church we had a baptism that we really wanted him to attend. We are also teaching someone from Tibet, so he speaks a little bit of Mandarin, but his Mandarin is better than his English. Turns out that two of our new investigators live with one of our members so that's pretty cool. We can go to visit one of our members and then meet two of our investigators. We're just really hoping that we can make some serious progress with some people that we teach. So many of them have no motivation to change, and that's why its been really hard to get them to progress.  We've been helping a lot of members with service this week as well. We're pretty much free workers so the members love it. We just got a revised ward list and there are probably 30 new Chinese people whose records got forwarded to this ward, so I'm really excited about that. We need more Chinese members. The guy who just got baptized yesterday is Chinese, so we have one more Chinese member. 

Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Hall


February 17, 2014

 My District

This week was good! We had two investigators at church for the first time. We were really excited. A. came and another investigator, Z. came as well. Everyone has been bringing a lot of Chinese to church lately so this last Sunday we started up a Chinese Gospel Principles class. It went really well. We had Elder Liao teach it and we had a few investigators there so it was good. 

We've been teaching a lot of lessons this week to people that we find on the bus and on the street and stuff. We've been finding more and more Chinese investigators, and because school is almost back in session I see more and more Chinese people. I used to just see the same ones over and over again. One of our investigators, L., is going back to China soon. That's really sad to see. He is super interested in what we teach but he just never makes time to come to church or anything. We've also been trying to teach S. this week but he couldn't meet with us because his parents were in Australia and they forbid him to listen to us. The same thing happened with another investigator, he told his parents that he was meeting with us and his parents said he wasn't allowed to, but he still does. Chinese parents can be crazy! 

I do love talking to Chinese people on the bus and on the street. They think it's so funny that I can speak Chinese. 

We had Zone Meeting and Zone P-day this week, and because everyone's Polynesian we played rugby all day. We play so much rugby. It's pretty fun but not as good as football. 

Send some pictures of SeaWorld!

Have a good week,

Elder Hall

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Months of Updates!

October 15, 2013

There's still a lot to learn from conference. We ate with a family yesterday that has conference running on the TV on repeat all day long. I'm going through and starting to read all the talks again so I can keep learning more from it.

I'm still not speaking any Chinese. On Thursday, we are teaching a less active family, and one of their kids is taking Chinese in high school, so I'll see what he understands. It's tough here though. Really hard and
stressful work. But two of our investigators have adopted children from China, and they said they wanted me to teach them Chinese, but when I got there they were too shy.

We did have some success with one of our investigators Sister G. though. She came to church on Sunday, and we had a lesson at her house last night. She was a member, and was married in the temple, but later had her name removed. But she prayed in the lesson last night which was awesome. She also wants her kids to have records in the church even though they aren't baptized. So we will be working on teaching her kids and hopefully they will want to be baptized.

A big thing in this mission is having "Amuleks" at every lesson. An Amulek is a member present at our lesson who can testify abotu what we teach. And normally the Amulek is a member from the ward who the person knows. So when we teach a lesson, we have to think about who we should bring to the lesson with us. 

It's starting to get cold here. It's normally in the 50's, so its cold when you're riding your bike in the morning and at night. Also yesterday was Columbus Day so that's why I didn't email. All the libraries were closed.
Love,
Elder Hall

October 22, 2013

All is well here.

This week we received transfer calls and it looks like I'll be staying in the same area with the same two companions. It'll be nice not having to change. Im getting to know our investigators and our ward members really well.

Also an Elder just came up to me and said somebody in his ward knows you. Her name is Sister French(?) apprarently she is on a blog or facebook group with you.

Today was an exciting day...we got a car! It's a brand new Chevy Cruz with 7 miles on it. The mission bought 30 new cars and they gave them to all district leaders (my companion is a DL). Normally to shop, email, and get to the mission office we have to call members and ask for rides, but this will make getting around a lot easier. 

It's starting to get cold and the leaves are falling from the trees. This is good because now when we don't have an appointment, we can always just start raking someone's lawn.

Yesterday the Relief Society President asked us to talk a little bit in Relief Society about missionary work. It's funny how crazy opposite Elders Quorm and Relief Society are. THe Relief Society spend weeks preparing their lessons apparently, and it was really good.

We met with a couple on investigators this week. One them is J, she's 14 and her parents are divorced. One parent is active and the other isn't. She wants to get baptized, but her mom won't give her permission. It's crazy that some people won't allow their children to get baptized because of their own personal issues.

Big game this week though. Boise State vs. BYU. I'm sure I'll hear all about it the Sunday after the game.

Love,

Elder Hall

October 29, 2013

I'm still in a three-some with the same companions. Still in the same area. Our area is a mile by a mile and a half, and we have a car now. So life is pretty easy here.

We've been doing a lot of raking this week for people around the neighborhood as service. There's not a lot to do from 1 o'clock to 4 o'clock here. Everyone is in school or working, so lately we just go outside and start raking.

This week as we were trying to meet people, we had a run in with a very bold woman. She spoke her mind very freely about the Mormon church, and there's nothing you can do but just sit there and take it. So frustrating. And you have to learn there's no point in arguing with those types of people.

On Saturday, our ward invited us to participate in the Trunk or Treat, where the whole neighborhood was invited. It was pretty fun getting to see and talk to all the kids. We're starting to get to know the members in our wards really well, which is awesome.

Lots of visa issues everywhere. A few weeks ago a lady from our mission office called me to ask if the health clinic in Provo gave me some forms that I was supposed to have. They didn't give me anything, so I'm starting to think that I've got some issues with my visa that they have to figure out.

Investigators are all doing well. Hopefully we will be able to have more success this week.

Love,

Elder Hall

November 12, 2013

I was pretty excited on Tuesday when Sister Olsen from the mission office called me to tell me my visa came. Just a huge sigh of relief. By the time I leave I'll be almost 5 months out on my mission! I've loved Idaho though, and I'm really going to miss it. But I'm excited I finally get to go to Australia and speak some Chinese! So I drove over to the mission office yesterday and told the Sister that if I didn't email my mom my flight plans that my mom would kill me. So I got them (even though they wanted to give me them on Thursday).
So it looks as if I'll be leaving at 8:30PM on Monday. So I'll probably still be able to email. 

Anyways,
United Airlines UA 5630 Leaving:18NOV 830P from
Boise o LAX landing at 939P

then QANTAS AIRWAYS QF 108 leaving 18NOV 1155P
arriving in Sydney at 940A on NOV20

Qantas will be good. I'm glad its not Delta or United. So it looks like I have a delay from 9:40
to about Midnight. And I'll probably have some time at the Boise Airport. I'll probably call you guys while its
late at LAX. It's only a 14:45 flight to Sydney though which isn't too bad. I think we've been through worse.
I also went to DI and bought a nice carry on suitcase for $6. So I hopefully won't have as many weight
problems.  I'll use my big backpack and the small suitcase I just bought as carry ons.

As for Boise, none of our investigators are having too much progress. I have a lot of hope in M. though. We met him again last night. He's married to an active member but gets caught up on little things.

He was having a lot of trouble accepting the fact that we have free agency. And it's a pretty hard thing to explain. He kept on bringing up Judas and how he betrayed Jesus, and he believes that Judas did not have a choice. But he's still doing pretty well. Brother V. loves to cook. which is awesome for us because he'll always feed us something. He's kind of a stay at home dad right now. I think the government is still paying him because he was wounded in Afghanistan and lost his eye. SO with his free time he cooks. And he and his wife just got put on the Ward Christmas Party committee and they put him in charge of food and he's really excited about that. One of our wards is doing "A Night in Bethlehem" type party. I know that Newtown Ward has done something like that in the past and its turned out really well.

We also went to go visit a new move in this week, and the lady who moved in used to live in New Fairfield. In fact, her dad was the Bishop for the Newtown Ward in the early 90's. Her last name is Clark, but she was in Newtown before she got married, so I don't know what her family's name is.

Yesterday we went to a Chinese Buffet as a zone. It was a total wake up call to see that my Chinese is bu hao. I tried talking to some of the waitresses and I could barely keep the conversation going. Hopefully I'll get to Australia and it'll just click on again.

Anyways, I got a busy week ahead of me. I'm excited for the rest of this week!
Love,
Elder Hall


November 25, 2013

So much to tell. 

My companions are Elder Ee and Elder Katene. Elder Ee is from Malaysia and speaks perfect Chinese. Elder Katene is from New Zealand and is English speaking. 

We are in a regular apartment. 1 bedroom, 1 study, 1 bathroom, a kitchen and a living room. 

So we aren't actually in Parramatta city, but in one of the surrounding towns. Its called Merrylands. Everyone tells me that Merrylands is super sketchy. We were playing basketball the other day with this guy and told him we were in Merrylands. He asked, "wow, isnt that where the big shooting just happened?". We just looked at him and said that we don't like to know about those kinds of things. People call our area the little Middle East. EVERYONE is either Middle Eastern, Polynesian, or Asian. Most are Middle Eastern though. Probably over 50%. Sooooo strange and different than Boise. 

Our ward is all islanders. We have 11 missionaries in one ward. In Boise we had 3 missionaries for 3 wards. 

We don't have any Chinese investigators yet. We talk to a few Chinese people a day though. There's lots of parks and if you go to the parks you can always find Chinese people. They are always so surprised when I speak Chinese. They always ask "Why do you speak Chinese?!"  Lots of people from Guangzhou!

On my flight were 5 missionaries. 3 going to the North Mission, 1 going to Brisbane, and then me. So President and Sister Lew picked me up and drove me back to the mission office. I got to talk with them for a while which was nice to get to know them. They're both very nice.

The mission office said they had all my stuff, and I filled out some paperwork as well. 

We have a lot of investigators and potential investigators. They're from everywhere. Iran, Sudan, Korea, Lebanon, China, Tonga, Australia, India, New Zealand and everywhere else. I really should have been called Arabic speaking for this area. It would be so useful here. 

For P-day were having a mini Thanksgiving with some people from my district. There's an Elder in my district from Hong Kong! His name is Elder Lam and he speaks Cantonese and Mandarin. 

We have this investigator who is 92 from Korea, who makes us sing karaoke with him before we can teach him. He is so funny. The other day we played basketball with some people and bet them that if we won, they would have to let us teach them a lesson. And we won!  So we got their phone numbers. We talk to so many people on the street. We are always meeting people. It's a lot different than Boise. 

I love it here. So fun and interesting. It's such a strange mix of everything. 

Love,

Elder Hall

December 3, 2013

So i got transferred to Wollongong. Yesterday was transfer meeting so today is P-day. Merrylands is good though. Our investigator, M., from Iran is getting baptized on the 7th but I won't be able to be there. On Sunday we ordained a recent convert E., to the office of Priest, so he can baptize his friend M. We also have a baptism on the 14th with Kaylin, who's 10 years old. But I have to forget all that because I'm no longer there. I'm opening up a new area in Wollongong. Will cover Wollongong, North Wollongong, Pernhill, Fairy Meadow, and Towradgi and then all the missionaries share the big university in the middle. My companion is Elder Liao, from Taiwan, whose been out 6 weeks. So we both have no idea as to what were doing. I'm pretty scared because I feel like there's a lot of pressure on me to train him, start a new area, find investigators (because we have none) and to get to know the area. Lots of stress for sure right now. Elder Liao doesn't speak too much English but won't speak Chinese because he wants to improve his English. It's hard to communicate. Just hope and pray we'll figure everything out. 

Wollongong is beautiful though. Way nicer than Merrylands. Sounds like the members here are really good though, so that is something to look forward to. The Parramatta Ward was 95% Polynesian, but they never really fed us, so we cook at home, and I rely on my companion's cooking skills and eat what ever they give me. 

I was on lds.org the other day and i noticed that my records were in Kimberly. Super weird. But I'm glad you got that figured out. The mission office is attached to the Stake Center correct. Haven't talked to Ron or Stefan in a long time. It's good that Ron switched schools though. It sounded like he didn't like Florida too much. 

I'm in another walking area. So we just take buses and trains to get around. Haven't taken any pictures yet but I will this week. We can Skype on Christmas or basically the week of Christmas whenever we want. I'll figure out my account thing or just use a member's account.

Wish me luck because I am going to need it,

Elder Hall


December 9, 2013

We write our emails at the library in Wollongong. It's a lot bigger than the one in Idaho. 

Our district has 6 elders and 4 sisters. All the elders live in a house except us. We live in an apartment in North Wollongong right next to the North Wollongong train station on Hindmash Ave.

Members feed us on Monday and Tuesday, but the rest of the days we either cook or go out to eat. I now realize how terrible I am at cooking.

My companion is good. Really hard to communicate though. We speak English, he wants to improve his English so that's why we don't speak Chinese. 

I'm in the Wollongong Ward. It's so different than Parramatta Ward. In Parramatta it was all islanders, but here everyone is white. It's really nice though. But no members live in our area so we don't visit with them much. 

We walk and it's really rough. The buses and trains come every 45 minutes or so. And they don't really take you into neighborhoods where people live. So there is a lot of walking. 

The University is near our apartment. We aren't allowed to proselyte on campus, but we can talk to people at the bus stops near it. Everyone is out for summer vacation right now. So there's no Chinese here anymore. They're all headed back to China. We really don't have anyone to teach right now and it's hard to find people to teach because school is out so it's been a pretty hard week. 

We did have Zone P-day on Friday. It was really fun. We went to the Big Lighthouse that's on its own little peninsula. There's a big field there and we played Rugby and then just walked around the rocks around the lighthouse. There were lots of Chinese tour buses at the lighthouse as well so we tried to talk to them but they were all going back to China in a week or so. We sung in our ward choir at a big stake Christmas activity on Saturday which was pretty fun. It was a huge thing that our stake put on and the mayor of Cambelltown (where it was held) showed up. 

Wollongong looks a lot like Shenzhen to me--except the ocean is actually nice and there's beaches. It's in between the ocean and the mountains. Really beautiful. Starting to get really hot though. 

Also I think I left my camera cord in Parramatta. I have a lot of pictures to send but no way to send them. I'll try to email my previous companions and see if they have it. 

Love,

Elder Hall

December 16, 2013

Christmas is an all day P-Day, so we get to go wherever we want. We have to Skype at a member's computer and I have had one family offer to have us Skype at her house. So I'm going to try to text her right now. We have breakfast with a family on Christmas morning and also have dinner that night. So it will probably be in the afternoon. 

We have a big Christmas conference at the mission office in Mortdale on the 23rd. I've seen almost everyone from the MTC except for two people. But it sounds like its going to be a big conference and they talked about us watching Ephraims Rescue. So it will be really fun.

Wollongong is great. It's been a crazy week with a lot of ups and downs. The beginning of this week until Thursday was terrible. No lessons at all. Super frustrating. We had called this Chinese potential investigator and he told us that he really wanted to meet with us. So we scheduled to meet him at the chapel at 2:30. But he was a no show and hasn't answered his phone since. And then we were stuck at the chapel with no way to get back to our area. Plus it cost us $10 to get to the chapel in the first place. So frustrating. We were so mad. 

But the next few days we were able to have more success. On Saturday, we taught a Chinese investigator named T. We contacted him on the street one day. He gave us his address but left out what unit he was in. When we got to his place, we found out that he lives in a big apartment complex with around 50 apartments. So I was thinking we would have to knock on every door until we found his. But luckily we asked one of the guys smoking downstairs and he said that he lived somewhere on the 3rd floor. Once we got to the 3rd floor we picked a random one and it turned out to be his.He fed us fish head soup--which I ate. Probably wouldn't recommend it, but I did eat it. He has the craziest accent when he speaks Chinese that I really can't understand a single word that he says. But luckily my companion knows what he was saying and translated for me. It was really discouraging not being able to understand him at all.

After teaching T., we had 2 hours of time that we really didn't know how to fill. So we walked around Wollongong and eventually found ourselves in the train station. We met this Chinese student named T. sitting on the bench at the station. I just started speaking Chinese with him, and then we just started talking about the gospel. I understood everything he said and was able to say everything I needed to say to him without the help of my companion. It was awesome. We were able to teach him the first lesson on the bench at the train station. Such a good experience. Literally everyone in the train station was staring at me while we were talking because I was speaking Chinese. Really funny. T. is so awesome though. We will hopefully meet with him again this week, and I just hope he doesn't go back to China. 

We also taught a Nigerian Investigator named J. yesterday. That was another awesome experience. We taught him the Plan of Salvation yesterday and he understood it very well and accepted it.
I'm finding more and more opportunities to speak Chinese, so my Chinese is really improving.

Love,
Elder Hall

December 24, 2013

Elder Hall and Elder Liao

That's crazy that you guys have someone going to Brisbane there. My MTC zone was full of people going to Brisbane--like 8 of them. 

Kyle Lewis was in my Chinese class at BYU and he went to Sydney on his mission a few years ago.

Had a good birthday week. We taught the most that we've ever had here. We even had 5 Chinese lessons. So that is awesome. Also every Friday Night we play basketball at the University and we invite our Chinese investigators and they bring their Chinese friends. So playing basketball has been a really good way to talk to Chinese people and get more people to teach. We taught T. this week as well (the guy we met at the train station). It went pretty well. Chinese is getting better and better. I study at every opportunity I have. 

That's really cool about Sea World. I never thought it would be finished, but it sounds like it's almost there. I also discovered that every 7/11 here sells Krispy Kreme doughnuts so that's really awesome. 

Our Christmas activity was really good. We had a really good devotional, followed by a cultural show, where every zone performed something. And because we have so many Polynesians pretty much everyone went up there and did the Hakka which is a dance where they scream, yell and pretend to kill each other. I could tell President Lew was not a fan of what everyone was doing. So hopefully we will have a Christmas conference next year!

Talk to you tomorrow

Elder Hall

December 30,, 2013

I was pretty surprised when I saw Ron. I thought it was going to be the maid or something and was thinking 'wow, they're making the maid work on Christmas'. It was so fun to see him. I haven't talked to him in ages. Looks like he's doing really well though.

Talked to David and Ashley for a little bit as well which was really fun. Everyone looks the same so that's good. No drastic changes yet.

A lot of people were out of town this week so it was a little slower for lesson, but we've been getting more and more investigators. We taught 7 lessons last week, and 6 of them were in Chinese. We have a lot of Chinese investigators which is really great. Just in the last 3 days we've gotten 2 referrals and found 2 new investigators so there's a lot of Chinese practice for me. My Chinese still needs a lot of improvement. Chinese are always way happy to talk to me, they just get really hesitant when we start talking about the Gospel. But most of the time we manage to get their phone number and address which is good.

We taught one of our investigators T. this week. He's the one we met at the train station form China. It went really well. We set a baptismal date with him for January 25 so hopefully we will be able to stick to that date. We always have a baptismal date for another Chinese investigator named T...y for the 25th as well. We aren't sure if we will be able to follow through for the 25th though because we still have a lot of work to do with him. All the Chinese that we teach are University students from ages 20-30. Almost all of them smoke and drink because that's just what people in China do. So we start to see some of them aren't as committed once we start teaching the commandments.

All else here is really good. Time is flying by in Wollongong so fast.

Hope you are enjoying America. I do miss America.

Love,

Elder Hall

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Conference Weekend

Conference was soooo good. I've never really paid that much attention to it ever, but being a missionary, you seem to pay more attention. I was able to watch all 5 sessions. We watched 4 of them with the members that we live with, and then one of our ward mission leaders had us over for lunch, and to watch the last session. Learned a lot from all of them. Priesthood session was really great. President Uchtdorf talked a lot about how we all will fall, but we have to get back up. And then another person talked about the urgency of getting back up now, and not to wait. That was probably the thing I liked the most, and got me thinking about what i can do right now to help myself. One of our investigators Brother V. loooves President Uchtdorf. Uchtdorf's first talk was all about how no matter where we are, everyone can come to the Gospel. I think that talk had a big impact on him. Brother V. also came to Priesthood session, where the entire stake gathered together to watch. So I think we're making good progress with him. Yesterday we also met with another investigator named Brother S. He really knows the bible but struggles to beileve that there is one true church. Previous missionaries also helped him to stop smoking but he just started smoking again in the last few weeks. He works in North Dakota for like 5 weeks at a time and then comes backl for one week, so he doesnt get to see his family that often and we dont get to teach him very often. Hopefully we will be teaching more people this week. We teach a lot of members the lessons because thats what the mission president has asked us to do, and it helps us practice. I dont know if i ever told you but we now teach from pamphlets. Which is kind of a cool way to teach. Not how they taught us in the MTC though. We use a lot of pictures and try to teach through the different pictures.

This week we went through the Boise Temple which was pretty cool. A lot smaller than I pictured it to be, but it was still good.

Also a member took us to a resturant called Mongos. Its probably the best resturant that could every exist. Its an all you can eat, make your own stir fry mongolian noodle place. Words cant describe it. I have also located a Taco Bell in our area which is good news.

On Tuesday we are going on exchanges, which means our senior companion will leave and we will get another elder who has been out just as long as us. Thatll be interesting. Three people who have no clue what they are doing.

I also went tracting for the first time this week which i hated so much. The mission president doesn't reccomend it and would rather us meet with members to get referrals but we were on splits with the ward, and i somehow got paired up with a  guy who just wanted to tract and chase down people that were walking their dogs.

Also yesterday started suit coat season, which means we always have to be wearing our suits. Good thing i have more than one.

I dont have like any emails today so thats why im making this one so long. Im trying to think of what else happened.

Anyway i could go opn about conference forever. Apparently a womens group tried to get into priesthood session and they got really mad and made them broadcast the priesthood session live on tv so everyone could watch. A lot of the talks were about women and their roles. Anyway watch all of it. Its real good. I learned a lot from it.

 

Love,

Elder Hall

Trip to BYU Health Center

Sounds like your having fun. Provo was fun though. I went with my ZL and the President gave him permission to meet his sister there. S0 she drove us around all morning with him and his two nephews and niece. Went to Krispy Kreme and Jasons Deli which were good. Went to my appointment very unprepared. I was told that i only needed to bring a passport and i was supposed to bring four passport pictures...very stressful. They said they think they will be able to do it if i send the passport pictures down via mail, which i did today. Hopefully it will work. They said it would take a while for it to get sent back and have it reprocessed. Everyone else in my district at the mtc all got there visas though...very frustrating. Back today though and we went shopping and i got permission to email today which is nice.

Its really hard out here though. We arent finding like any new invesigators and we are running out of people to teach. I know its because we arent working hard enough.  Hopefully this week will be better though.

My talk went alright i think. It was like 10 minutes long. Getting excited for general conference though, it should be good. I think we will just watch it from the stake center.

I get to meet so many awesome members here. We had dinner with a guy that drives apache helicopters for the army. Such a nice guy with a nice family. Lots of cool stories. One of our investigators, Michael V. is also a veteran. He's like 30 but he lost an eye in an explosion in Afganistan. He is married to a member and he loves us and the other missionaries.

 

Hope you have a great time in Bali!!

elder hall