Transfers and Happy Fathers Day (June 17, 2013)

So I am staying in Karratha and so is Elder Shin. It will be nice to stay in an area longer than a transfer. This also means that I will probably be here for at least two more transfers, one more with him and one more with a new companion. When I first came up here I had the feeling I would be here for six months, so we will see. At the moment I would love to stay here for a while. In the last little bit I have fallen in love with Australia even more than before. Something about the openness and knowing that I can look out and not see a person for hundreds if not thousands of km is fascinating. While I do not think I could live here permanently, I am enjoying it. It wasn't until this week I realized why I love it so much up here. Perth is not that big as far as cities go, and there is not much to do in Perth. Also it is pretty common to a US city. I did not realize that until talking to some French backpackers and they pointed it out. In Europe the cities are different because of all of the history there, but that is not the case in Australia and the US. Up here though it is the Australia you think of and in remoteness would only be comparable to Alaska. 

This week has also been really hectic. The first part of this week I felt like our area was dropping. Many of our investigators we have not been able to teach for a while. Also the 18 year old we are teaching was busy this week so we were unable to teach him. Then our area got a huge boost. On Thursday night our branch president called asking if we wanted a baptism on Saturday. A recent convert had his girlfriend visiting and is super keen but wants him to baptize her. So we were rushing trying to figure out if it could happen, and what we would need to teach her. But then something happened with where she is living so while she was already thinking about moving up here, she is not planning on it and is going to wait until she moves up here in a couple weeks. Lets just say I have never been so stressed out in my life, trying to figure out what she needs to know, how we are going to teach it in 48 hours, and then keeping everyone involved in what is going on. Then we met the 18 year old on the street and were able to talk to him and realized just how solid he is. Then on Saturday we were able to find a couple of potential investigators who we have been struggling on finding, and then we found a new investigator. It was also really cool how we found her. We were tracting and this guy said to visit this house because he needs saving. So it was kind of a referral  but a really dodgy one. We might have ignored it but we saw him walking and he told us to not forget to go there. I knew it would either be a super keen person or a person who would not want us there at all. So we went and the husband and wife were really cool. they came out and talked with us and brought chairs out. The husband is Aussie, and the wife aboriginal. I started to talk to him and Elder Shin was talking to the wife. I was talking to him about his beliefs and then I heard Elder Shin start to teach the Restoration to her. He was really nice but not super religious, but she became really interested when we were talking about the Book of Mormon taking place in the Americas. She started to think about her culture and how it would make sense that their could have been prophets among the Aboriginal people. They both said that they would read from the Book of Mormon. We also talked to her about baptism and she said that she wants to be baptized. I loved it because it gave me insight on how to use the Book of Mormon when teaching Aboriginal people. The last couple of days is really what this area needed. We were also able to get the schizophrenic person to church again, and it was cool because he got a white shirt and tie from his brother in law. We have also been helping him cut back on smoking, and this last week it has been cool to see him step up more.

I am excited for this area because we have a goal for two baptisms this transfer and we see it happening with four or five investigators we can see getting baptized. It has been cool to see the excitement we have really boosted when we needed it.

I love all of you, and especially dad on Fathers day.

Love,

Elder Cook