- Josh helping to clear land for a member’s new home.
Howdy all! It’s been a great week here down under. We’ve mostly been working on reactivating less actives, and visiting former investigators to see if they’re still interested. We had a lunch with a less active member, who used to be a cook, and he made this “pizza” type thing that was really good (and vegetarian, I never thought I’d say I really liked anything without meat involved.) It was really good, and he wants to do it again, and invite more of the less actives and maybe even some non-members next time.
We also got to visit a less active round about where we live. She is perhaps the nicest lady I have ever met. She refused to accept when I said I had enough ice cream on my bread pudding, and went and got a whole new container just to put some more on top. She had us write down the lesson we taught her so she could remember it, and then sent us home with enough food to last us half the week. And she wasn’t even expecting us! It was a really neat experience, and I can’t wait to go visit her again.
The slang and phrases here are still a little hard to pick up. Apparently, if you say “what?” if you don’t hear or understand something down here, it is considered very offensive. You instead say “excuse me?” which sounds to me a little more rude. They also spell things funny over here (Honour, Colour, Litre), and it throws me for a loop every time I see it. Emily would freak out, and go straight to the highest authorities to officially change all the words to be spelled correctly.
We’ve been able to do a lot of service this week as well. We’ve helped people move stuff out of their garage, cleaned up kangaroo poop, burned tons of trees to clear land for a member’s home, etc. etc. The work with our investigators is pretty slow, but I think we’ve made some progress, and may see a baptism soon. There is one lady named Debby and her son who have been taking the missionary lessons for about four years. They and the entire family seem to like us (missionaries in general), and the last missionary in the area called us last night, and told us that she is really close to baptism. She does seem to know most of the message, but has difficulty getting to church because she has epilepsy and can’t drive. She was out of town this week, but we were able to talk to her son for a while who is cool as (Aussie slang again, they never specify what they are cool as, and it applies to all the adjectives down here, sweet as, far as, etc… don’t ask me why it’s like that, I haven’t got a clue).
I’ve been having a great time down here, and I hope every one is doing well.
I love you all
-Elder Shelton