Cockroaches, yuck!

Just a friendly cockroach!

Howdy All!

     It’s been a crazy week here. A lot of trying to contact people, but not so much actually contacting people. The only lesson I’ve taught to this week was on the street with a guy who wanted to bible bash. The area is great, although I have to cover it on foot, and it’s stinking hot at the moment. It got up to 39 (102) degrees the other day, and we were outside the entire time. I’m turning a toasty brown color though! And losing weight. After being here only a week, I’ve already gone down a notch in the belt loop. I don’t know how many pounds I’ve lost, we don’t have a scale, but I’m willing to bet a couple. The cockroaches are still bad, but getting better. we’ve been super careful, everything is sealed and in the refrigerator, and we’ve bought heaps of cockroach traps and have gone through a ton of on the sight spray. I think I’ve only seen eight or nine today, and that’s success!
     I’m happy to hear everyone is serving missions, especially Jeff. Russia though, that’s the place I think about when I’m having a rough day “we’ll at least I could have been called to serve in Russia! (sorry Bart)” The area is great, but so much different from my last one. The ward is super involved, so much so I was overwhelmed (see quaking in my boots) for our first coordination meeting. It was so busy that the missionaries don’t even say anything, they just hand the list of people they’ve been teaching over to the ward mission leader and they all discuss what they can do to help them come to church. It’s been very different, but I’ve had a lot of help from the zone leaders. I think I may be giving them the impression I have no idea what a missionary should do because of how many questions I have about my leadership stuff. But they’re great. I’m also at the very north part of the mission, so I went from south tip to north tip, and I thought that was interesting. (I’m hoping not to have to go straight to west tip next, I hear that the Orange Zone is brutally hot in the summer, and freezing in the winter. One of the branches out there only has eight people in it, including the two missionaries.)
     Time for some questions…. or answers, I’ve heard it both ways .
 What is your companion’s name, where is he from, and how long has he been out? What is he like?
Elder Van Orden. He was actually in my last district, so I knew him before. We actually drove all the way from Canberra in the same car. He’s been out for twelve weeks now. He’s really into cars and engines and stuff, so not to much in common there, but we do find things to talk about.
Are you biking or in a car or public transport and
how big is your district (area and missionary wise?) 
On foot. I’m not entirely sure how big the area is, but at least six kilometer radius, and very, very likely more. The actual area in Paramatta I’m in is called Merrylands, so that may give you an idea of how big it is.
What does a district leader do?
He leads the district of course! No, mostly I collect the numbers of people taught during the week and conduct a weekly training session from the Preach My Gospel handbook.
What is the weather like there? Much the same as Merimbula?
Like I said before, HOT. HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT. One of these days, the zone leaders are going to find fried Elder Shelton in the streets.
Can you go out of your area on P-days? Like into Sydney to see things. Will you?
 
I have a bit of freedom as district leader to leave the area, but not much. Can’t really go into “Sydney” (Paramatta is actually a suburb of Sydney, but not really the main part of it). I don’t think we’ll be going too far because we have to walk.
What is Parrametta like? How is the church doing there?
Are you assigned to a ward or branch, and is it one set per ward?
Heaps of Islander people. At least in the ward. Mostly from New Zealand as far as I’ve been able to tell, but still a good mix. The people here are really diverse, (tons of people from India and the middle east) but mostly white and islanders in the ward itself. We have several missionaries to each ward, like four companionships each.
How close are the other missionaries to you? 
Most of the other missionaries are a couple minutes drive from us, many of them in the same apartment building. We can’t really get to see them ourselves, but the zone leaders pick us up on Thursdays and Saturdays for district meeting and church the following mornings, and that’s where most of the other missionaries are. Four companionships literally just across the hall from eachother. It’s stange, the flats they stay in are the flats I helped furnish while I was up here in Sydney because of Elder Serle. I was in all of those flats before any of the current missionaries were.
      Thanks, and I hope everyone has a good week!
Love Elder Shelton
 

Witnessing at baptism of the branch Mission Leader’s son before leaving Merimbula

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