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