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
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
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.
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 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.
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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