Hey everyone! It's been a week. We're working hard and learning lots, but that's missionary work. We go out to do the will of the Lord.
Transfers were this week - Elder Liu and I are still together in Waverley Chinese. I'm still district leader (pity, I was hoping that call would get passed off). To clarify once again, this Elder Liu is not the same Elder Liu that I trained several transfers back. The Chinese all repeat their names. Our mission has several Lius and several Chens and several Gaos. My son Elder Liu was just transferred down to Tasmania, where he'll be senior comp to an Elder Gao. Tasmania this time of year is cold. Things tend to get cold in the winter. It is also cold here in Melbourne. I'd tell you how cold, but you Americans don't read Celsius, so I won't bother. You Americans also don't happen to read Kilometers. I forgot how to read Miles last week, so I had to find a unit converter so I could read in Kilometers. I won't bother telling you how fast I was going either; not because I doubt your ability to read Kilometers, but mostly because we were late for a lesson and driving waaaay to fast. Some of you might know how to read Kilometers, and then I'd get in trouble. We'll play it safe and not say.
The Waverley missionaries were drafted into our ward choir this week. We more than doubled the attendance. I had great fun refreshing my sight-reading abilities (which are pretty abysmal at this point) and the whole of the choir struggled. It was a great time.
I was told at the beginning of my mission that as long as I could understand more Chinese than I could speak, we were making good progress. I hope that's still true because at this point, even if my oral Chinese is still pretty poor, I can understand (or at least get the gist) of everything said around me. I can't argue back when they go off on me, but hey. At least I know they're angry.
Speaking of angry, we knocked a door this week and the lady came out steaming mad. She told us we knocked too many times on her door, and therefore didn't want to talk to us. All in sharp Mandarin. Great fun.
We were in a member's home last week. Long story short, way too many of the families in our ward have inter-married, so you go to one event and there's bound to be a dozen families there. This particular case was one of those - everyone was packed close in and the missionaries were being seated on the living room couch for lack of space (reminded me a little too much of my mission call opening - yikes). I passed a few of the boys - ranging from 26 down to around 10 - all playing and talking about Pokemon Go. I made some off-hand comment about not having played in over a year. I never was all that big into it (pretty hard to play without a smartphone) but I had an account and a couple pokemon I had caught. The 26 year old stopped me, asked about my Pokemon. I couldn't remember. After a little persistence, I gave him my username and password. Turns out I had an America exclusive Pokemon - Tauros, for those of you who care - and he traded it over to his account in exchange for the Australia exclusive Kangeskhan. I couldn't care less about it, but he was so excited to have collected the whole first 150 Pokemon. This is an example of serving the members, brothers and sisters. This YSA is now my good friend. He will likely be joining us on splits or lessons with investigators. You never know what doors will be opened when you look for opportunities to serve. It might be Pokemon Go. You never know.
That was this week - lots of good things happening over here. Missionaries are leaving and missionaries are coming, always so bizarre to see missionaries go. But the work goes on. We keep on pressing on. The Lord loves us and gives us exactly what we need. Rarely what we want - but always what we need.
Love you all! Enjoy the 4th next week!
Elder Blackhurst
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