Settling In..

It’s been crazy to think I’ve been away for over a month. Time is really flying over here. We’re not having very much luck with investigators at the moment. We technically have more than one investigator now (two), but she doesn’t really seem interested in learning the gospel. She teaches history and religion at school, so I think it might just be that she wants to hear what the crazy Mormon people believe about religion so she can share it with her class. She’s really nice though, and we won’t give up on her.

The other investigator we had, the one I wrote about last week, his name is Mark.  Mark came to sacrament meeting this week, but he’s really adamant the he doesn’t get baptized. He does understand why we do get baptized, he just doesn’t want to do it. I think his mom may be involved, telling him that if he does get baptized, he won’t be a member of the church of England anymore, and that he’ll go to hell. We’ve been trying to set up an appointment with him where we can meet him mom as well. He really is a good guy, and is trying to do the right things, I just think that he has been raised in a way that makes it hard for him to consider anything we say as true unless he already believes it. We were able to share some scriptures with him about the pre-existence, (Jeremiah 1: 5 for those of you following along at home), and he just kind of said, Yeah I don’t believe that. I don’t think he realizes that we pulled that from a book that he already believes in, but like I said, he’s a really good guy, and we hope that something will be able to speak to him.

I’ve really not enjoyed tracking, but big surprise, right? The people here are pretty nice before they slam the door, and there was one that we were able to have a decent talk with. He was drunk, and mostly incoherent at the time, and when we asked if there was any service we could do for him, he asked if we could go down to the pub and grab him a couple of beers. We actually ran into him later in the week, he was just going out fishing as we were coming back from a place we were trying to meet a potential investigator, and that was cool.

The work has been slow, but also has been slowly picking up, so we hope to be able to get in some really good discussions soon. There hasn’t been a baptism here in about three or four years, about the time our branch mission leader served here (literally, he served in this exact area, he knows where our flat is, and his name is on a picture that all the elder sign.) Anyway we’ve had some cool opportunities to do service.

Like I said in the last email, we’ve done a lot of moving (seriously, check out the spider, it’s called the huntsman, and it was within inches of my arm), but we’ve also been able to do some other things. We volunteered at a place called Potoroo Palace, and that was really cool. It’s an animal sanctuary, and they have really awesome animals there. I stood face to face with an emu, they have free roaming kangaroos, I saw a dingo (I want one, I’ve heard that you can keep them as pets in some places down here, and if you cross breed them, they’re probably okay everywhere (I’m thinking half huskie)).

The birds down here are amazing colors, and even their boring birds have really unique crests and will at least ask you “Do you want a cookie?” I told them that I very much would appreciate a cookie, but it never went and got me one… I was really disappointed because that bird would have been so much cooler if it had been trained to fetch cookies.

They also have a fourteen foot python, the largest type of snake they have down here, but I haven’t seen it yet. Potoroos, the animal the sanctuary is named after, are the smallest of the kangaroos, and are about the size of a loaf of bread. They’re really cool, and the sanctuary named them all after biblical figures (David and Ruth are a cute couple).

     I love you all, and hope you’re having a great summer! (while it lasts, you go back next week or something, yes?)
-Elder Shelton
Josh & Koala Bear at Potoroo Palace Animal Sanctuary

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