Short But Great Week (June 10, 2013)

This has been a good week, mostly because of that 18 year old we taught. We taught him again on Friday and he had read what we asked him, which is cool because it seems that most of the people we begin teaching never read what we ask them to. Then we had a really good lesson on faith and Jesus Christ with him, and we can see how his faith has increased already. Every Friday we have volleyball at the chapel and we invited him to that. Then it was cancelled because it might rain, but we forgot to text him and he showed up. It wasn't too bad because we were staying there and having a BBQ so we were able to have a good chat with him and gave him a chapel tour. By the way it is really weird giving someone a chapel tour in a small building. Just walk down the hall and the tour is over, but it was still really good. We invited him to church and he came. He actually came an hour and a half early because he forgot the time, so the Branch President told him the correct time. He stayed for all three hours of church and enjoyed himself. Hopefully we will be able to help him learn and increase his faith. 

We also had another cool experience this week. We had just finished knocking the doors of a street and I saw this young man walking towards us. I felt like I needed to contact him, but Elder Shin had started to bike away. He was still too far away to contact him so I started to put on my helmet and get ready to follow. Then he called out and asked if we were from the Mormon Church. We started to talk to him and he was a less active member. He had seen us riding around and wanted to come to church  but he did not know where the church was. The timing had to be perfect because we had knocked on his house, but another person had answered the door and said he was not interested, and this young man was not home yet. When we had finished I'm not sure if he saw us when he pulled up, or if the person inside had said that we had come. But before that when we were picking a street we went to two streets and Elder Shin realized when we got to them that he had already done them. If we had gone straight to that street we would have missed him. It is cool to see how this all works out and the Lord is with us.

Also our teaching has really improved in the last couple of weeks, and it is cool to see how it has helped us. We just wait for the Lord to help us know what questions to ask and what to teach. It is really easy to slip into a pattern of how I teach. I never memorized anything, but you teach it and it is easy to say the same types of things each time. I was giving a rote presentation without realizing it. But now we have focused on turning to the Lord in our lessons to help us know what to teach, what to focus on, and what questions to ask. When we do this we learn a lot more about the people we teach, love them more, and are able to better help them. 

On some not so happy news I had my bike stolen on Friday. It was my stupid lapse of judgement. I normally lock my bike, but because we were going to be playing volleyball and have lots of people outside close to the bikes I thought it would be safe. But then volleyball was cancelled so there was not anybody around. It was good when we were outside, but we went inside to clean the chapel because it was a little dirty. So we were inside for about 10 minutes and in that time somebody stole it. We have back up bikes here but they are around 3 years old which is forever for a missionary bike. I told the mission office and because it was a mission bike I might have to pay for it, which will be fun, but they are going to call me back and let me know.

One thing I really like about Karratha is that it is so small there is hardly any light pollution, so you can see the stars really well. Unfortunately from our flat we only have a view of the Southern sky, and I only recognize a few of the constellations. In the northern sky there are constellations that are in our southern sky, but oh well, I will continue to enjoy the stars while I am up here.

I love you all

Elder Cook