Easter

Dear Family and Friends

 

Just in case anyone was curious, in Australia, Easter is a four day holiday.... so that means the shops are all closed on Friday, and Monday, hence the really late letter!

 

It was an incredible week last week.  The Bishop's son brought his friend to church! This has been quite a long process, but it was so good to see this young man come, and to feel the excitement of the ward about the work. Now we'll just get the rest of them to bring people!

 

This week should be really fun. We're going up to the ward camp on Friday, doing a fireside, and helping with the activities. Should be a blast! There will be heaps of non-members and less-active members there. Can't wait!

 

Our training we had yesterday was really good too, (even if it was an 8 hr meeting). We talked a lot about having visions for ourselves out here, and as we gain our vision, it will give us the energy to keep improving! We also talked a ton about why exact obedience is so important.  It was really powerful, it coincided with the impressions I had during General Conference as well, so it was really good!

 

Finally finished my first study of Preach my Gospel! I've been tearing up that book since I've been out and drinking it all in. It is such a phenomenal book! Tf you struggle with studying the gospel, sharing the gospel, or anything else, give it a look. Tt may be based mostly on missionary stuff, but it focuses a lot on your own conversion as well. It's super good! I can't wait to start it again this week!

 

Hope all is well wherever you may be.

 

Love you heaps!

Elder Gibb

General Conference

Dear Family and Friends,

 

I'm not going to lie.  I was a little worried for conference this week. Everyone in the ward has been touching on a line here or there of conference and telling us it was going to be so incredible, and we were going to love it.  This kind of stuff happens when we don't have internet and have to watch conference a week late and everyone else is up to date.  But it was better than everyone made it out to be! Elder Holland basically kicked the whole thing off with his usual, intimidating but powerful talk, and from that point on it was just incredible!

 

Lots of rain this week! We usually walked into the flat looking like we had just finished taking a shower, in our clothes!

 

Our of time this week, love you heaps though!

 

Have a great week!

Elder Gibb(y)

Suburbs - You Gotta Love Them!

Dear Family and Friends!

 

What a wonderful week!  I had Kangaroo for the first time!!!! It was in a stew with Lamb (also a first for me) and so I'm not really sure which one was which... but they were both definitely really good! Also we found another Huntsman spider in the flat this week.  Luckily we managed to preserve it's life from Elder Chin Ah You's attacks, so it can continue to kill our pests in the home! I'm thankful I don't have to worry about the bugs as much now that Aarogog is around! (So I name spiders now... there's nothing wrong with that) It's not as big as the last one, but still, pretty big!

 

We had Oreo night last Tuesday (Out Rescuing Every One) and I don't remember if I've explained it before! So if I have just skip this paragraph, if not read on! We have it the first week of every month, and someone in the Ward Council opens their home. Everyone in the ward is invited, and we along with the Bishop and Ward Mission Leader, come up with a list of names for the people we want to see. Usually it is a list of less actives, but occasionally members that weren't there last week, people who might need service, etc..

 

Anyhow! This week it was full of miracles! I went with the Ward Mission Leader Brother Lau'lu and we went to visit a couple of less active families that haven't ever really let the ward in and are usually pretty hard to get a hold of because they're very busy! We went around with our little booklets about family history this time. and it was incredible.  The spirit of Elijah is truly working among the people here! Within a few minutes they both wanted us to come back and show them how to get online and get started!!!!! It was incredible!  I've had to brush up on my knowledge a bit, and the website just gets cooler every month! Hopefully it'll amount to some more miracles in their homes!

 

Other than that it was a typical week.  Talked to heaps of people, met people from India, China, Japan, Chile, England, Finland, and a few Australians - you know, a typical week! HAHA, I love it down under! Getting more used to the culture (sarcasm) and learning how to do missionary work in the suburb mentality (mostly involves a lot of waving)!

 

Hope everything is going great for you where ever you are in the world!

 

Love ya heaps!

 

Elder Gibb

 

P.S. That is not my hand next to the spider, I'm not that dumb...

 

 

An Unfortunate Event

April Fools!

Oh I totally got you guys!

#patheticmissionaryjokes

 

Seriously though this week as been pretty good! Kellyville now has sisters in the area! It's so awesome, except for the fact that they are now teaching all of our old investigators, so it's back to base one and finding! However it was definitely time for this ward to have sisters. There are so many  people who we've been teaching who we could only meet with at parks and who's husbands weren't all that thrilled with us teaching them. But with the sisters they are progressing much faster, which is so good for the ward to see and to help them get excited about missionary work again! Hopefully this will lead to some people getting baptized. It's gonna be big!

 

Other than that nothing really super cool happened this week....

Seriously....

I'm sure it'll be better this week!

 

Love you heaps!

Elder Gibb

 

P.S. If you would like to send me stuff about general conference that is TOTALLY cool. However, in Australia, we won't see conference until next week. The women's meeting isn't until this Saturday, and we still have regular church this week, but I would love to hear some of your thoughts, just put spoiler alert in the subject!

 

Love ya!

Youth Water Activity + Missionaries = WATER FIGHT!

CRAZY week last week!

 

So for what ever reason I always feel like the last week of the transfers is always the most stressful. Even when you do the exact same thing as the week before. We did heaps of finding and most of it was spent just riding our bikes along until we saw someone. Then we would target them, bike really fast to them, slow down, and ask them if they want to learn more!  We found two new investigators this week! One will probably be passed off to the sisters that just came in, but hey, PROGRESS!

 

Since we were out in the sun so long, I may or may not have a chin strap tan from my bike helmet.  At least people can't say that I'm intimidating!

 

On Saturday we had so much fun it hurt... literally.  Water balloons can leave bruises - just FYI! We woke up super early and played basketball at 6:00 with some less active members and members.  Then we went and did yard work for two hours with a member.  He made us biscuits and gravy and it was so good!  Did you know they don't have breakfast sausage in Australia?   Any who, then we changed and got ready for English class, but no one came, so we went out to help with the youth activity... and may or may not have had a bit of a water fight !  I guess you only live once eh!?!

 

Finally found a spider that was picture worthy while I actually had my camera on me! Although you usually have your camera near by when your home right? Any who, this is a Huntsman Spider. It is very common here to name your Huntsman Spider because it eats cockroaches and keeps your home clear of bugs! However, it is large, it jumps large distances, and it was in my room!  I think our bug spray will be just as effective as the spider!

 

Not much else has happened. None of the missionaries in our flat moved this week, sisters will start serving in the ward this week, and the sky is still blue!

 

Love you heaps!

 

Elder Gibb(y)

 

 

An EnLIGHTENING Week!

Dear Family and Friends

 

It's been a good week.  Who am I kidding???   It's been a great week!  We maintained our 20 lessons, found a new investigator, and she came to church! M-I-R-A-C-L-E! Had some fun on Sunday when I got to teach the youth in the 13-14 year old Sunday School class! We were learning about the atonement and using comparisons to try and help others understand what it means. The lessons you can make out a paper clip.... I tell ya.

 

P-Day was super fun last week! We went to our Stake President;s mansion, and I mean like a gigantic amount of property surrounded by the bush.  Big enough to fit an entire zone of missionaries, with crackers (sorry biscuits) included! We got to play as a whole zone on his basket ball, tennis and volleyball court.  We look longingly at his indoor swimming pool and  I think we all almost "fell in".  We played pool, ping-pong, used his complete home gym, and watched a couple elders play squash.  Then went to dinner. It was  a very good day 

 

Had a couple of  HUGE storms this week.  Elder Han and I were out finding on Saturday and the sky was clear and blue.  Then within 30 minutes the rain was coming down so hard we were soaked within a couple of minutes.  We had our rain jackets luckily, but it was raining so hard it even broke through that resistance! As a last resort we walked to one of our member's homes who were unfortunately not home.  We started off to dinner hoping they would have some towels when we got there.  All of the sudden, the world turned white, and then a crack of thunder that was incredibly loud surrounded us! IT WAS SO COOL! We may or may not have screamed a bit, and my pants were already wet.  Needless to say, it may have been a good thing we didn't have umbrellas!

 

And since I've had this question about thirty times this week.....no, we are not Jehovah's witnesses.

 

Love ya Heaps!

 

Elder Gibb

 

 

It's Getting Better All The Time

Dear family and friends,

 

This week was full of miracles!  It's funny how when they happen you don't notice it, until you look back on the week and realize that it's been pretty good! The first miracle, we got over 20 lessons! Now I know to some of you this doesn't seem to be a very big achievement, but in this area, we have struggled to get more than ten a week.  So it's a huge improvement!

 

We've been using a new finding tool called, THE SURVEY.  It's this really high tech way of finding people to teach, where you take a paper that has some questions on it, use it to start the conversation and then BAM, you're teaching them about the Book of Mormon... Unfortunately the only people who wanted to keep learning, live outside of our area, BUT we all play for the same team, and what goes around comes around!

 

Another miracle happened on Saturday.  A young man who we have been trying to see for ages, and only talked to him at the door to invite him, came to one of our stake activities (it was a multi cultural pot luck, you'll all be happy to know America was represented by apple pie, and Jell-O). He had so much fun he came to church on Sunday with us! And we're going to start seeing his family! 

 

There was also another miracle Sunday... but I'm not allowed to talk about it yet... but it was really quite neat and really good for the ward!

 

I hope all is well, wherever you are in the world!

 

Love you heaps!

 

Elder Gibb

 

Elder Gibb and Elder Han

"A powerful combination" according to Sister Howes