He's learning Tongan

Please keep Cam in your prayers as he learns Tongan, I'm sure he'll need all the blessings he can receive! Thanks for all the support and prayers on his behalf thus far! Here's to another week in he land down unda.

Week 5 is in the books! Sorry i messed up my week count last week haha but i figured it out! One more week to transfers! My P day will be on Tuesday next week (Monday for yous) That will happen at the end of every transfer (evry 6 weeks) so just a heads up :)

Monday- Normal P day we went and played touch Rugby with our zone at a park and that was pretty fun!! Nothing compares to football though! Then we had FHE with our Bishop and his family and we taught about sharing the gospel with everyone! 

Tuesday- We taught an investigator that is the sister missionaries and we finished up teaching him about the Priesthood and about temple work for people who have died in his family! He got so stoked when he heard this! His baptism date is Oct. 24! He is freaking awesome!! He said the best prayer at the end and it totally just flooded the room with the Spirit! So sweet!!

Wednesday- Elder Yardley got a new companion and is training him! His trainee is from Tonga/west valley. He is super awesome! I also found out on this day that i will be training at the end of the transfer as well! So i will only have been out for 6 weeks and I will be training a new missionary! Pretty excited and nervous haha so I will either stay in this same area and train or I will get shotgunned into an area with my trainee! I will train him for 12 weeks and then after that I will probably get put into the Tongan program and I will be learning Tongan!!!!! I am so excited to learn a new language!! President needs more white boys who can speak Tongan so I volunteered and he kept making sure i was being serious and i told him that i am 100 percent sure! It will be hard but man it will be so sweet to be able to learn a new lanfuage and President is excited that I was willing to take it on!

Thursday- Elder Smith and I did service for a less active family for about 4 hours so that was pretty fun haha then we just found the rest of the day haha nothing too exciting!

Friday-Had District training meeting (DTM) and got taught about the history of the church which was so awesome! Then we did finding that day and we gave a Book of Mormon to a lady who seemed very interested on reading it and was glad we had a free one to give her! Then a member from the ward took us to Mcdonalds and bought us dinner and told us about how he converted to the church and how he converted his friend after! Really solid guy!

Saturday- Crappy day for finding.. we struggled to get motivated but we had good lessons with a less active and a member family! We watched the Because of Him video and invited them to always recognize the little or big things that we have in life because of Christ!

Sunday- Got 2 new investigators at church! One of them showed up to church after it was over and told bishop that he wanted to be taught and just had heaps of questions that will be answered in the first lesson and he has already read the BoM almost all the way through so we are excited to contact him! Sacrament meeting was way good! The youth just returned from trek and they all bore such strong testimonies! Made me tear up a bunch! It was cool to hear them all say that they know the church is true and for some of them it was the first time that they had said it! 

The work is slow in Aussie ville but we are working hard to turn that around! Sorry if the descriptions of the days are kinda short haha but i know this Church is the only true Church on this Earth and that there is no other way or name given that we can be saved but through Jesus Christ! Love you all have a good week! 

 

I don't think he takes enough selfies... do you? Last day as a triforce.

Stormy day at the beach, he said the waves were huge

rainbow selfie

beach pic again

werk it, werk it...

 

I shaved my legs.

Man I have been out in Australia for 5 weeks already!! This Transfer is flying by! Looking forward to the next transfer and seeing where I end up. We lose like 27 missionaries this month but get 30 coming in, so I might be training a greenie haha so we will see! Here is my week!

Monday- We emailed, shopped, and bummed around the Westfield in Miranda which is just a really big mall! Me and Elder Smith got some really good discounts on G-shocks, which are nice watches so we each bought one of those! We did some finding after p day but we didn't have much luck.

Tuesday- We found all day because we still have no investigators. We talked to heaps of peeps but none of them were really keen (interested) with what we had to say. We lost the car keys on the train so we had to get our mission president's permission to take the train out of our boundaries to Bondi Junction to get the keys from the lost and found there. It was about an hour to get there and an hour to get back haha but we were actually in the city in Sydney!!! We didn't see the opera house or the harbor bride :( but it was still fun haha Then we had dinner at a member's house! They are the Cashmans and we had some tuna casserole which i actually liked hahaha

Wednesday- We had zone conference and got trained by the President and his wife, the assistants to the presidents and some of the office Elders! We learned that our purpose is to teach the doctrine of Christ and to Baptize! I truly love President Back he is such an awesome guy and so funny when he talks hahaha man i love him! After that we went finding and Elder Yardley balled out! He talked to fetching everyone!! It was nuts and we were so happy to see him get over his nerves and talk to people!

Thursday- Pretty basic day, got some things done that needed to be done then we just found all day. We had dinner at Adrienne's house, a less active in our ward, and she fed us homemade pizza!! It was the bomb! We taught her about prayer and the member we brought with us compared it to a phone that has cell service no matter where you are! I love that analogy because we can literally pray anywhere, anytime and anyone can do it! Prayer is the best!!

Friday- We helped a less active move to her new flat and she is going to take us to lunch on the following Tuesday and we will teach her and talk about coming back to church! It was nice to do some service. Then we went and visited some less actives and one ended up telling us his whole life story for like an hour haha he has a crazy life! Then we had to go get something from a store in the mall for Elder Smith, so while we were there i bought a 45 lb plate from a sports store so I can do some effective workouts haha so I am glad to be doing some lifting again! Then coolest thing ever! We ran into an old potential at the train station and she said she would call us this week and that she is sorry she hasn't gotten back to us yet because she has just been super busy and she was the one who approached us so that was way sweet! 

Saturday- We had MCM with our ward mission leader and had lunch. We were waiting for a bus when a girl came up to us and asked for a Book of Mormon and we gave her one and asked if she would be interested in being taught by us and she said yeah! So we got her number and are going to contact her this week! Then we were by the beach when I saw a guy walking alone and I felt prompted to talk to him. So I asked him a couple of our survey questions then just went into bearing testimony of our message and the BOM! He has a christian background so he was keen as! He gave us his number and said he wanted to learn more! We gave  him the address of the church and he said he would probably come by one week! we are going to contact him this week! I really feel like he will be a solid investigator! 2 great miracles that day from the Lord!

Sunday- Had church, Elder Yardley gave a talk on sacrifice and did an awesome job! Then we went and visited less actives until we had splits with the mission prep class in Mortdale! We took a 21 year old Samoan kid with us and tracted the houses around the chapel! He did way good talking to random people by the buses and I was impressed! 

The work is super hard in this area because its full of rich people that think there life is good enough without religion. Most of Australia is just lazy with religion or honestly just doesn't care! So many people have never thought about God, afterlife, pre existence, or anything! It is sad to me that people think that after we die it is just a dark abyss and there is nothing haha that would scare the crap out of me if that is what i thought happened after death hahaha so missionaries are needed here and I am grateful to be on the Lords team and to know the things I know. I am also grateful I get to share this great message with the people of Australia! I love preaching the good word to everyone and giving them the hope that they need! The Church is so fetching true!!! I love this work and this Gospel and our savior Jesus Christ!! Love you all as well! Hope all is well with yous!! (you's is an Australian thing... I know I am cool.. hahahahaha jokes!!!) 

-Elder Jenson 

Bondi Junction

Golf course we saw...makes me wanna golf so bad! 

He doesn't like to take pictures of himself... 

huge rain storm they got caught in...

after the rain storm

no more morning breath...

Elder smith and Yardley chest bumped and Elder smith jumped so high he hit his nose on one of the tvs at the train station haha it was awesome!

what driving on the wrong side of the road looks like.

Ghetto new watch.

aaaaand he shaved his legs... for reasons unknown... My dad is ashamed.

What an eventful week for the triforce...

Man this week flew by! It has been a good week here in the Sutherland Shire! 

Monday- P day baby!! After emailing we went to a city called Bankstown and we went to the mall there to look for big mink blankets that are cheap. We couldn't find any there so we wasted a lot of time there haha but I had fun because I like just bumming around the mall and stuff. I had a cold for awhile then it hit me super hard that day. Luckily the drive home from Bankstown was long because of traffic so I just slept in the back seat haha. I took medicine and started to feel better which was good because we had an appointment to meet with a less active member named John Gibson. We taught him about Matthew 11:28-30 and talked about how through Christ our burdens can be made light. Teaching this also just strengthened my testimony in the Atonement and how much Christ really does take our pains and burdens upon himself so that we can be happier. After we finished teaching him we went over to the Bishop's house and had family home evening with his family. They fed us shepherds pie and oh man it was sooo good!!! I loved having the home cooked meals from members! We taught his family and him about prophets and why we need to follow their teachings.

Tuesday- We found on the train and around the beach for people to teach and just talked to heaps of people! We had a lunch appointment with an old couple named the Jordans. We taught them about 1 Nephi 17:3 and it talks about how if we obey the commandments of God he will provide a way for us while we go through trials and just life in general. We found the rest of the day until we went to a less active member's home and talked to her and her son about how church attendance is a blessing and we invited them to strive to come to church every week and to feel the blessings that come from that. Elder Smith said an awesome quote to end the day, "I love being a missionary for this church because it is just so dang true!" I couldn't agree more with that awesome statement!

Wednesday- We came up with a better way to find and talk to people. We came up with a basic survey with 5 questions to ask people. It actually got people to stop and talk to us! One question was what do you know about mormons? People always replied with, they have like 6 wives, or they are bible bashers, or they are a church made of man, and man it was just funny to hear all the crazy comments hahaha. Through this we were able to share what we believe in easier and put an end to Mormon stereotypes so that people knew what we stood for and believed in. This also lead to people bible bashing with us.. hahaha we bashed with these two girls about grace and how you have to have faith and works, but they just though that you can do whatever you want on this earth but as long as you believe in Jesus Christ that all will be forgiven. We then went on to tell them how if you have faith in Christ then that leads to wanting to serve him and keep the commandments which he has given us, hence faith without works is dead. Well they didn't believe that so they just threw bible verses at us and we did the same with them. It was useless and dumb to do haha but by defending what we believe it really testified to me the truthfulness of the message that we share with people. I know it is true without a doubt!! Still shouldn't have bashed with them so we will not do that anymore hahaha well we will try! We then went to an investigators home who is being taught by the sister missionaries and we taught him about the priesthood. We gave him a blessing and it was so powerful because during it I knew that the words Elder Smith were saying were not his but they were the words from the Lord and they were what Chris (the investigator) needed to hear. 

Thursday- We visited a 96 year old man from the ward who is almost all they way deaf and blind. He is Hungarian and honestly we couldn't understand a word he said for the whole hour we were there hahahaha but man he is just a sweet old man and he is funny to listen to. He repeated himself a lot and he told us about his muslim neighbor and about how he got hit by a truck while he was driving his scooter a couple months ago, and he didn't stay at the scene because it was raining and he didn't want to get wet so he just went home! hahaha man he was great. Then we got approached by a man named Jeremy who was in the Vietnam war and had a Mormon friend in the army who told him to look into the church before he got killed in war. So we talked to him for a long time about our church and what we do as missionaries. He treated us to dinner at a steak house and spent about 45 dollars on each of us! He was a super nice guy!! We are hoping to see him at church soon.

Friday- We had zone training which was good we learned about how we have to have effort to learn and the Lord will provide the rest as we continue to try. We also were trained on how to invite investigators to pray! Then we went and gave a blessing to a young guy in the ward who just hurt his knee in field hockey and he needed help with knowing whether he should play or not and if he was ok to play that he would be safe. We then went and mowed a less active members lawn and then we were treated to some gnarly chinese food hahaha but we were grateful for a meal.

Saturday- We went to a place called Paul's Burgers and it was delicious! We taught an investigator we met this week and he just wasn't very receptive haha and he didn't really know what was going on. He has been through heaps of missionaries but we think we could be the ones to turn him around hopefully. The only other cool thing that happened on this day was we saw some members at the beach and they bought us fish and chips! 

Sunday- We went to church and then we went out and found people to teach. We talked to one girl who didn't believe in anything. She didn't believe in God or anything after this life.. It was so sad to me that people have such a sad outlook on life. We tried to convince her to let us teach her just once so that she could see how powerful our message is but she wasn't interested. 

I am grateful to be a missionary and for this Gospel! I love being a member of this church! I know it is true and I invite all to know for themselves the truthfulness of this message! We only know it is true if we give it a true chance and are dilligent in prayer and learning! Love you all heaps!!-Elder Jenson     

SELFIE

                                          

Elder Smith's stress ball broke

BEACH day..Missionary work is TOUGH haha

Elder Jenson at the beach

Searchin' for those investigators

triforce

dinner with Jeremy

Yard work... 

Elder Smith is good at yard work, too

Short and sweet

Just a few pictures this week and a short but sweet e-mail from Cam. Please continue to keep him and his companions in your prayers and pray for those investigators and the people they are trying to reactivate. Thank you from our family for all the prayers and kind emails that were received on Cams behalf, he's lucky to have such a supportive group of friends. Until next week!

Thank you all so much for your kind emails and for keeping me in your prayers! Heavenly Father has been with me helping me and strengthening me and I know its because all of your faithful prayers! I am doing so much better and things are definitely getting better! So thank you all again! This weeks email is going to be short, because we have no investigators so all we do all week is ride the train and talk to people and go around town finding potential investigators! We have had dinner over at a couple member's homes so that has been nice because I miss home cooked meals! We were able to teach a couple quick lessons to Less Active members and members which I loved because teaching is so awesome! I'm looking forward to this coming week to meet more people! I will do a better detailed email next week covering what happened on every day because really nothing too exciting has happened! haha Love all of you and thank you again for the support! Talk to you soon mates!

breakfast on the beach baby (too bad he can't swim in the ocean...)

BYOC (bring your own cup, duh) at 7-11. 

scary cockatoo that keeps coming around, they feed him all the time (no wonder he keeps coming back...)

parakeets that they feed as well... 

Elder Smith feeding the birds

Cam gave Elder Smith a haircut... what a brave soul.