This Week

Hello, everyone. Another week has gone by in Australia.

This week has been very slow. Elder Richmond and I spent most of it tracting again.

The rest of the Tupou family that was moving to Sydney finished packing. We went and gave Brother Tupou a hand with moving, painting, and general cleaning-up. It was actually pretty cool, he and his wife were very happy with all the help. His mum came over from Sydney as well, to keep an eye on things while they were on the road. She's a very strong member, and she's been bringing one of the daughters, Mclynn, to sacrament meeting, YSA activities, etc. Mclynn's getting back into things too :)

We received some cool news from the mission office, however: Elder Pearson, from the Quorom of the Seventy, is coming to tour the mission, and meet with missionaries. Cool! Guess what that means?

If you guessed that means I decided to have a smoothie for lunch, you were wrong. (well, sort of.)

This weekend, Elder Richmond and I will, once again, be boarding a plane, headed to Perth. Awesome!

So that's my week, all of it. We're hoping things will start happening again shortly. This weekend is also Australia Day. The branch is having another water slide and barbecue down in Dampier. Elder Richmond is organising a touch rugby game as well, that we've invited people to.

Hope you're all well :) Happy Monday!

Love, Elder Reeder

20

Hello everybody! This has been another one of those weeks :) Thursday-Saturday, we had a Cyclone!

It was really cool. Cyclone Norella was a Category 4 storm that formed north of Australia, and started heading down the coast. It wasn't a direct hit on Karratha by any means, but we saw the edges! Elder Richmond and I were tracting on the far end of our area, most of the day on Friday. Very very windy. And then it rained. Oh my, did it rain. And they all laughed when I brought my rain jacket! (except I left my rain jacket back at home that day, so it wasn't much good.) Karratha has no drainage system, so all the water just stays on the streets. When cars drive by, we got splashed. Elder Richmond and I even went swimming in the ocean! (Not really, the cyclone brought the ocean raining down on us. Seriously.) Brother Clarke loves to track them as they go by, and kept us updated on whether or not it would become serious.

I got the worst sunburn during all that rain. Can't figure out how...

It was beautiful weather outside, other than that! The rain really cooled things down for a few days.

Other than that, It's been a pretty normal week. Elder Richmond and I are starting to hit a wall. Right now, we've got 2 investigators we're teaching. The Tupou's finished moving away Saturday. They've started meeting with the missionaries in Sydney, so that's good, at least. As for us, we're spending most of our daytime hours knocking on doors that were knocked on a few months ago. When we follow up on potentials, they seem to keep falling through. *sigh* This is another part of missionary work, I suppose. A hard part. We're trying to stay focused, keeping diligent, finding ways to work, etc. A couple of members in the branch might have referrals for us, so...

Optimism! that's the key :) And perseverance.

Hey! I'm 20! What a surprise! We'd told a couple people in the branch, but they forgot. Oh well. Elder Richmond and I decided to make a cake for it. So, we got our cake mix all mixed up, and then tried to start the oven, which runs on gas. Nothing happens. Tried the stove, same thing. Our flat is connected to two big tanks out the back. Turns out that the first was empty. And the spare was empty too. So we had ice cream instead. And hopefully they'll send a new tank for us soon. What a birthday XD Oh, and then President Lindsay and family called and sang :)

And that's pretty much my week. Supposedly there's another cyclone forming up north, which would be cool.

Seriously, that last one was awesome, I don't care what everyone here thought (it was lame?).

Hope you're all well, and enjoying the >2 Feet of Snow! Lucky.

Love,

Elder Reeder

A whole new year

G'day, family! Today is January 7th, and it is the year 2013! Can you believe it. Elder Richmond and I celebrated at 10:00 by drinking some sort of egg-nog. But I'm sure the rest of the world was up until midnight having lots of fun outside. (Tip from a family here: Sparkler bombs are really fun.) Tuesday evening, We went out to Dampier to a branch activity. They put on a water slide for everyone. It was Awesome. We didn't go on it (we're missionaries) but we were able to meet a lot of nonmembers there too! Afterwards, we went to Brother Alvarez's home for dinner (Brother Alvarez is Tahitian.)

So we've been having some interesting times up here this week. We've found that all but one of the Tupou children, who we're teaching and preparing to be baptised, moved to Sydney. A bit sudden.

Seeing as how many other people still aren't available, Elder Richmond and I have been trying different finding ideas.

One; We've been doing service for some different people around the area. We got a call from a senior couple up in Port Hedland (600Kms away) that a member and her son were moving down to Karratha. Cool. So we got her address and offered to help her out. We're going by tonight :) Her son isn't a member yet. So there's potential :) The whole branch is getting excited, because there are 3 families moving into the area this coming month.

We've also started teaching English! There is a member from Thailand, whose daughter doesn't yet speak English fluently. We decided to help her out the best we could. We're reading from The Book of Mormon with her.

Also, hopefully, at some point we can get a car up here, to work in the rest of our area. Brother Otto, our branch mission leader, took us on a drive all the way out to Roeburne, Point Sampson, and Wickham. These are all towns in our area, reachable only by car. Very beautiful on the coast. Very isolated. We were shown a random 2" blue hose running by the side of the road. "That's the town's water supply," said Brother Otto.

Cyclone season has officially started. We've gotten some very very VERY hot days, mixed in with a lot of clouds. And one short, intense cloudburst. Fun!

Aaand, so that's been my week. I'm very grateful for A/C. When it works. And sunscreen.

I love you all! Hope you're enjoying the wintery weather!

Elder Reeder