More adventures from the land down under

Hey everyone! Another great week. Busy. Not much to report - we're still cranking on. 

We went out to the Morrington Peninsula today - southernmost tip of the peninsula on the right, just south of Melbourne. Very beautiful. Turns out most of it was closed, so we drove a long way to see very little. But even then, it's such a gorgeous country. Wandered down along several beaches and rock formations - I love Melbourne. 

I heard a song played in Chinese the other day, and it struck me just how much I could figure out on my own. Chinese has grown, my friends. To all of my lovelies who are preparing to serve a language mission - don't sweat the language. Work hard. It will come. The Lord will provide. 

We had exchanges last week. My new Zone Leader is Elder Zalypko - a funny Ukrainian Elder who's been serving for almost exactly as long as I have. Hysterical. After only working with Americans and Chinese and Australians for a year, a little European taste was definitely a change. He found a MoTab arrangement of an old Ukrainian piece on my drive (no clue where it came from) and that's all we listened to for the whole day. He tried to get me to teach him a little Chinese, but it all came out with the Ukraine accent, which was pretty funny in itself.

I was truly blessed by the tender mercies of the Lord this week. Long days upon long days. I think the Lord knows exactly when we need a little slack cut, and when we need to push a little harder. There were things I was able to do and people I was able to meet and I hope the Lord continues to provide as we do our best to do His will. I know He loves me and cares for me. I hope despite my weakness, that I can do a little to give back to Him. Not that anything I could ever do could ever pay Him back for all He's given us - but in overwhelming gratitude, I follow His example to show my love to Him. 

And beyond that, it was a pretty slow week. We're talking with lots of people, making lots of new friends, trying to connect. I made lots of new Facebook friends, both from here and back home. It's a little weird every time I see someone I know's picture pop up on my phone, but I'm glad to hear you're all doing well. Keep the emails coming, I love the news coming from back home.

 

Short email this week, I'll be sure to put a better one together next week. I love you all, miss you lots. Keep on doing good.

Elder Blackhurst

With great power comes great responsibility

Hey everyone! Another fantastic week in the land down under. It has been a busy week, and next week will be even more so. We're grateful for the many opportunities we have to work and to serve and we hope the Lord continues to bless us as He has in the last while. 

The phones are rocking our world. It's been madness trying to get everything set up and linked up and getting all the records into place. I'm now more socially connected than I was before my mission. I'm sure you all know that I wasn't a social media sort of guy back home, but Facebook and WeChat and the likes are tools we can use to better do the work. So I spent an hour yesterday getting Facebook set up for my Chinese district members because they didn't release the set-up instructions in Mandarin. Anyway. You're welcome to find me. I won't come looking for you, but I'll accept friend requests. The purpose of the account, of course, is missionary work. But I'd love to be in contact and to hear a little more about what you're all up to. If you want to contact me personally, email is still best. But If you care to get a few positive missionary thoughts, you're more than welcome. 

With the new technology, we've been getting lots of training on good things to do with our phones, and not good things with our phones. If I hear one more person quote Spiderman, I might lose it. But the statement does stand - there's a lot of potential for good and evil with so much connectivity. For example, I've become to go-to English teacher for half of our investigators ever since I got the phone. I can call them and spend 20 minutes giving an English lesson because of the quality and clarity of the conversation. So many good tools. I also know there's a lot of ways to waste your time. I know I try to talk to a lot of people every day and most of them are on their phones when I approach. Most of them aren't doing something productive with their phones. I personally have found myself using more time than I should in learning about all the cool features my phone provides - we can't let it get in the way of the things that matter. I wonder how much all of you back home use your phones for good, and how much you might consider giving up? It is a powerful temptation, just to get lost in the virtual world. Don't forget to look up once in a while and appreciate the world around you. 

Zone conference was this week. Always fantastic. President Vidmar is an excellent teacher and trainer and I'm ever so grateful to be under his stewardship. Fun fact: not only is he a gold medal Olympian (two golds and a silver), he also happens to be the only non-general authority to give a talk in General Conference. In April of 1985, he was the first speaker at the General Priesthood session, where he delivered a talk on Pursuing Excellence. Great talk, but it's really weird to see a video of your mission president from 30+ years ago. He looks awkwardly young. Honestly, I don't know if he's the only non-general authority to speak, but someone told me and I trust them enough not to double check. If anyone wants to source check that and let me know, that'd be great. 

We have two investigators who are approaching baptism. Our ward has been picking them up and bringing them in and I couldn't be more grateful. To all of you back home: find your local missionaries. Offer your help to them. When they bring an investigator to church, I hope you can say that you were the first person to introduce yourself. It makes a world of difference. We need to be loving our fellow men. The missionaries make it easy: they give you easy opportunities. I implore you all, take them. Find a way to serve today and tomorrow and every day for the next week. I can promise that the Lord will poor out his blessings.

Congrats to Elder Johnnie Johnson, who returned home from Trinidad after an honorable two years. Can't believe time goes so fast. 

I love you all, have a great week! Love the Lord and keep on moving. I look forward to hearing from you all soon. 

Elder Blackhurst

Oh, say can you see...

Hey everyone! Another great week. I'll apologize now for the shorter letter, I'm writing this from my new Samsung J5. I forgot how much I despise writing on a phone, but so it goes. I'll write what I can and type a proper letter next week. 
But it definitely was a fantastic week. Lots of new investigators and good lessons taught. I love going out and sharing my testimony. Not a lot of people are as excited to see me as I am to see them, but hey. All part of the gig. 

So, yes. New phones. Fancy. Now everything is online, phone calls are clearer, and I can Google translate everything. Texting us worlds easier and I'm so excited about all of our new language opportunities. I've taught several English lessons in the last week that wouldn't have been possible last week.

One of the apps we have is Duolingo - a free language learning app. Intended for language missionaries, but of course, most missionaries have given it a go. Our zone leaders are learning Greek, the APs Mandarin; Elder Liu started Klingon before very quickly abandoning hope. Lots of fun. 

Elder Liu and I went out with a member today for P Day. We had to get up early, so I set a 5 o clock alarm. What tone do you think I set for the alarm?  None other than the mighty MCO Star Spangled Banner. Happy 4th, my fellow Americans. 

Tracted lots recently. We've met lots of fun people. It always makes me laugh when people give stupid excuses for why they can't talk to us. Liru shuo, they're suddenly sick, or they have to go take care of "something". "I'm Christian", so don't bother. "I'm not Christian", so don't bother. But once in a while, we'll knock a door. Maybe it's a mother who comes to the door. Maybe she isn't interested in our message in particular. But she loves Christ and your love of the Savior connects you. Made me think: is our devotion to the Savior the first thing people notice about us? Or are we more concerned about other little things? May we all be a little more devoted to Him this week.
 
Thank you for the fun package I received this week. I hit my one year mark tomorrow - crazy. Seems like just yesterday I was getting out of the MTC. 

My dear brothers and sisters, I'm not the same Elder who stepped off the plane last September. And the Lord has only begun His refining process. When we let Him take the lead, He'll help us become everything He wants us to be. I know that. I love Him. I love missionary service and I look forward to the adventures coming up this next year. 

Have a great 4th and a great rest of the week!

Elder Blackhurst 

Pokemon Go

Of all letter headings I thought I'd write on my mission, that wasn't one of them. 

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

Another week of Tracting

Hello everyone! Another great week in Glen Waverley. We met a lot of really good people this week and had a lot of success. I feel very good about the work that was done and am looking forward to seeing what comes of it. 

I'm not sure you all know, but writing good quality emails is a struggle. I do my best, but after a year, there's only so much you can say without repeating yourself over and over again. I apologize for any redundancy. 

I tell you this, not because I need you to know, but I need some sort of header to this email. I think this will do.

Let's dive into this week. 

This week convinced me that there is success to be found in tracting if you find the right neighborhood. Last week, you may recall, we went out with Elder Norby and found a good area with several Chinese families. If it ain't broke, don't fix it - we went back to that same place and continued to comb those streets. We've got four or five families we'll be going back to in the next several weeks, along with a couple other students. One of those houses was a young Australian man who invited us in at the door. We shared the message of the restoration with him. For a Chinese missionary who spends all day at the university, that's a special experience. I love being a missionary and sharing this message, all day every day. Nothing like it. 

Chinese is still growing, bit by bit. Language study is getting a liiiiitle thin recently, with a lot to take care of, but still improving. I've got a box in our flat, I made it myself. I've got the transfer's Chinese flashcards that slot into the week's flashcards, split into seven parts, so every day I have a few cards I need to memorize. This week we're slacking a little bit, so instead of just 12 in my pocket, I've got almost 30, leftover from previous days. And as all you procrastinators know, the bigger the project gets, the less appealing it is to start. Hopefully we take care of those before they pile up too much. 

We get phones in a week! Nothing to report now, but hey. That's exciting. 

Woke up Sunday morning pretty sick. That wasn't fun. I didn't really want to get up, but I did, and went and laid down on the floor. Anyway. I know the Lord watches over His missionaries because we had two hours of meetings before a three hour church block followed by a lesson with a new investigator and then a dinner appointment and somehow I got through it all without falling completely to pieces. 

By the way, that investigator was one of our several new investigators. The students are all now starting to get over finals and have free time to talk to us again. Very exciting. 

A YSA member of our ward is organizing our P Day activity - a nerf war between the Elders in our zone and the City missionaries, which will be a lot of fun. I woke up this morning and got dressed in P Day clothes and stopped a moment in front of the mirror. I was dressed as I would have if I were about to head out to the Red Mountain High School D-Backs performance - red choir T-shirt, blue jeans, tennis shoes. KC hat on my head. Maybe I look a little rounder in the face now than I did when I left, but besides that, all pretty much the same. But the thing that stood out to me was the difference one year and that little black name tag make. I am a representative of Jesus Christ. I get to praise His name each and every day among the people in Melbourne. I love it so. How grateful I am for Him, and for the magnificent plan of redemption. I know why I am here and what I'm doing. I know it isn't always easy - rarely is. But He isn't expecting our perfect performance - just that we do our best. And that, I can do. 

I love you all, miss you lots. Lucy turned thirteen this week - crazy. 

Jiayou!

Elder Blackhurst

Schanck is pronounced Shank

G'day, everyone! Great week. We're approaching the end of test season with the students, so schedule is starting to fill up. We've been busy and working hard. Love the work, love the Lord. So grateful to be here. 

It has been a short week, since last Thursday was P Day and interviews with President were yesterday, so we really only had a couple days of full work amid lots of meetings. 

Fun experience yesterday - Elder Hadlock in the City had to attend a departing-missionary meeting in preparation to go home, so we got to take Elder Norby with us for the day. Great time, and a surprising amount of success. We attribute it all to Norby's charm and good looks. We found one neighborhood that, from the start, we knew was all Chinese. (There's a feeling you get - we as missionaries are very good at pegging the nationality of the family in the home before they open the door.) We knocked doors until the sun went down and found several families excited to be taught the gospel. We'll be following up in a few weeks. I can't wait.

As for our own investigators, things aren't looking quite as good as normal, but we're making do. We dropped several baptismal dates - most of them are still working with us, but need more time. But Ted is still learning and growing and preparing for baptism. We're looking forward to the 23rd.

Super early this morning, we went out with a member to Cape Schanck, along the southernmost edge of the eastern peninsula near Melbourne. Beautiful, beautiful sight. I'll have pictures up next week. For those of you movie buffs, that's the bay where the closing scene from Where The Wild Things Are was filmed - beautiful long beach, with the rocks jutting out along the two sides. Absolutely gorgeous. So early in the morning, on a Wednesday in the middle of winter - no one was there but the three of us. The hike in and out was lush and green with kangaroos hiding in the bushes.  Melbourne is a beautiful, beautiful country. I hope to go back to that little bay. 

Hoping to have good pictures and good stories for next week - the rest of this week is totally filled. Praying for good things to come our way - we know the Lord will bless us as we do our best to do His will. How grateful I am for the knowledge of the gospel, and for the light and truth that comes to us as we follow Him. I know our lives are full of trial, I know we meet challenges along the way. But what's the purpose of it all? To prepare to return home to Him. Trust in Him. Believe in Him. And it will all turn out in the end. 

I love and miss you all immensely!

Elder Blackhurst

G'day, mate

Hey everyone! It's been a fantastic week. Lots of good contacting to be done because no one wants to meet with us. Still not sure why, but the students all think that studying is more important than listening to us. Lots of tracting and GQing and visiting members. Despite numbers being low, we're grateful to be working. 

No one is slightly exaggerating. Ted and Bowen are still doing great. Both still on date for the 23rd of this month. They're progressing well, both have recieved all the lessons. They both seem to "forget" about church sometimes, but that's alright. We'll get them there soon. We also had a miracle contact last week - we called a random number out of the area book and they invited us for dinner. Beautiful little family. We'll call them again today, hopefully we'll have a chance to go back and keep teaching them.

My dear companion has taken to greeting all of the Australians we pass on the street. He tries to emulate the "G'day, mate" he hears so frequently from the Aussies. Unfortunately, with an Asian accent, it sounds like "Go die, mate". I had to ask him not to use that one anymore until he's had more practice. 

While on the subject of Australian accents, no. I still don't have one. Nor will I ever have one. You're all going to ask when I get home, the answer is no. My Australian accent sounds Asian. 

We were in the temple this morning. Beautiful, beautiful experience. Always is. I had a lot of thoughts this morning, but particularly one of gratitude. How blessed we are to have all we do. Missionaries bump into a lot that could pretty easily bring you down - after a whole afternoon of tracting and not talking to anyone, you can get a little frustrated. Stick with it. Be grateful to be alive. God has given us so, so much. Why should we ever not be grateful?

Have a great week, everyone. I love you all. Keep up the good work!

Elder Blackhurst