What an awesome week it has been, just finished our 2nd week of transfers! Had 3 dinner appoinments with 3 familes in our little Footscray ward, broke our last record of 2 dinner appoinments in 1 week haha, my companion and I smashed a couple of Costco pizzas on Thursday night with the Wilkes family, the slices were humungus! I only had 4 and I was done, my companion managed to put down 3, we were toast after that. Was pretty funny walking up hill to catch the bus home with our stomachs full of American pizza. Definitely a memorable night.
On Friday, we woke up nice and early at 5:30am just to get ready and catch the 6:54 bus down to our local Yarraville train station, we hopped on a couple of trains and finally reached our intended destination which was the Heidelberg Stake Centre in Fairfield. There we waited patiently and reverently for our beloved mission president and his wife President and Sister Maxwell to commence our Zone Conference which was combined with the Craigieburn Zone. We received so much rich teachings, inspirations and trainings from our Mission President, his wife, the APs and our Zone Leaders Elder Smith, Elder Glover, Elder Su'a and Elder Faavae. What made this experience even more rewarding was the chance to reuinite with my fellow missionaries from the 14th of February 2013 MTC intake! Did a little catch up and wished each other luck in our various areas.
On Saturday we were called into the area of Flemington by a Sudanese family called the Duts who wanted to share some lunch with us, since we arrived 30 minutes early to the appoinment and there was no one around we thought we could do a bit of sight seeing before we headed in, so as we were walking under the Flemington bridge I noticed some graffitti on the foundation of the bridge and what do you know, somone from my area back in New Zealand decided to tag "Henderson West AUX" on it. Hendo allday everyday! haha.
What topped off this amazing week was when our good friend Arash from Iran decided to enter the waters of baptism. After teaching him and following up on the previous date extended by Elder Lubrido and Elder Pipers he believed it was time to start anew. He has given up so much just to follow in his beliefs as a Christian, when the bapstim was performed by my companion Elder Nyanhamo and as Arash arose from the water he stretched forth his hands in the air and yelled "YES!" haha, then he proceeded to give Elder Nyanhamo a big hug, the spirit was felt so strongly and each of them embraced each other and brothers in the Gospel, I was priviliged to speak at Arash's baptism on Faith in Jesus Christ and Repentance, my companion finished it off with his talk on Baptism and the Holy Ghost. After the service finished our bishop, Bishop Steed welcomed him into the Footscray family, he was so excited that when we got home he rang us and said "I am so happy!" He is proud to now be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Unfortunately when I arrived home, my companion informed me that the holes in my pants were no longer sewable haha!, these past few weeks I have been using my imagination and wearing my black basketball shorts underneath my tracting pants so that no one could see the holes, but after constantly jumping on and off the bikes the holes just kept getting bigger and bigger until they were past the point of no return. Luckily I had a spare pair of pants handy which were a bit smaller but nonetheless they did the job! haha. Mission life is the best! So many spiritual, hilarious, uptlifting, funny and inpspiring experiences, wouldn't give this up for anything!
