My first full week in Brisbane is over! It was good of course. We now have a new investigator (from Beijing--I love his accent so much) who is awesome and super sincere. We also set a baptismal date with another investigator! This investigator was a referral from a Sister who is the only member in her family, from Taiwan, who served a mission in Perth. That sister is awesome, we are also currently teacher her little brother (we've play a Chinese card game with him based the Three Kingdom period of China, which is kind of comparable to Arthurian mythology in the West in terms of it's place in culture. It's *completely* in Chinese though so I have no idea what is going on most of the time, haha). Teaching investigators is probably one of my favorite activities here so far, even though I don't participate in it very much since I don't speak Chinese very well. Although, for our Korean investigators I teach a good portion I suppose. I'm still learning.
Speaking of Korean investigators--we had the couple we teach come to dinner with us to a member's house, and taught them afterwards. The members were awesome! They are an old couple, the husband from England and the wife from Scotland, and have had such interesting lives. The husband came to Australia when he was a young man, by making a trip across Europe, Turkey, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and the Phillipines--it took him 10 months. It was also funny seeing how well they became friends with the two Korean investigators we brought over. The food was good too! It reminded me of mom's cooking--Stroganoff, Hamburger-helper like stuff, and Sweet & sour chicken were the three dishes, with rice--all things that my mom makes. It made me happy :)
Continuing on the topic of food--We try to schedule as many dinner appointments with members as possible, because not only is it a good way to get food but it is a good environment to bring along and teach investigators. Last week was pretty good, with about half of the nights with scheduled dinner appointments like these. It's a goal of Elder Lee and I to get the ward more involved, and part of this is trying to do dinner appointments like this. We generally eat at home for lunch, and we always eat at home for breakfast. Breakfast is usually cereal for me, or an omelet if we are out of milk, or toast, butter, and jam if we are out of that too. Lunch is PB&Js, leftovers and rice, or something quick Elder Lee or Elder Chen make (with rice). Everything is with rice, haha. We like to think of our flat as being an Asian one--we take off our shoes before coming in and everything.
I'll guess I'll say a bit about our daily schedule. We get up between 6 and 6:30 and work out until 7. Between 7 and 8 we eat breakfast and get ready (we only have one shower so we take turns; I usually have breakfast before showering since I'm the last to get it). From 8 to 9 is personal study. Then we sing and pray together and have companionship study, starting with reading from the white handbook and then usually planning for lessons and whatnot. From 10 to 11 we have language study; Elder Lee does whatever (since he's basically native in two langauges) and I study Phase 1, a language study program designed by one of the mission presidents in Taiwan a while ago and now used by many different missions to learn mandarin (Phase 1 is the PMG lessons and grammar, Phase 2 is general vocabulary, and Phase 3 is characters). My language is progressing slower than I would like, but at the same time I suppose I've only been here for a week and a half so I should give myself some slack. Anyways, later in the day we schedule in another hour for training study, which is a part of the 12 week program.
We try to spend at least 2 hours everyday finding, either tracting (which I tried out for the first time this week--more on this later) or contacting at the bus stop. The rest of the time is usually spent going between lessons. We have 4 main methods of transportation: bicycling, walking, bus, and car. We use them all for different things. We just got bicycles last week, so I am still relearning how to ride one, but we use that for going to nearby lessons and also tracting. Walking is for *very* nearby lessons, i.e. at the McDonalds, haha. We also walk around when tracting. We use the bus for many things during the week, when we need to get anywhere quickly, it's probably our most common method of transportation. Lastly, we share one car (with 8 seats) in EMP, so we only use it if 4 or more elders need it.
So tracting! It's an interesting experience. Since I'm a Mandarin elder, I didn't expect to tract, but the problem is that contacting at the bus stop is with only a small portion of the population--young adults, usually students. No families--we haven't found any families to teach yet beside the part-member family I mentioned above. So here in EMP they have a system to tract. The ward clerk (or someone else, I forget) has gone though the yellow pages to get all the names of people living in the subdivisions here, and has taken the 30 or so most common Chinese names (ex. Lee, Chang, etc) and has given the addresses of all these people to us. It's still kind of rough going; we run into Korean and Cantonese people alot, and sometimes the people have moved away and it's new people living there who aren't even Asian. But I think with time it may prove fruitful in leading us to one or two families that the Lord has prepared to receive the Gospel.
The community is really interesting here. Sunnybank in particular is a completely Asian suburb, that's why we go to the Sunnybank bus stop to contact quite often. In addition, the universities in Brisbane (Queensland University of Technology and Griffiths University are the ones I've noticed the most) attract a lot of Chinese. So while I struggle to really *surround* myself in the language, for purposes of learning, we never stuggle to at least find people to talk to in Chinese and then teach. 6 of the 12 Mandarin elders here in Brisbane are basically fluent in chinese (and at least 3 or 4 of these are native, including my companion), a 7th is close, and for the rest of us it's a slow, slow, slooooow process, but I have hope. I understand maybe 15%-30% of conversations held in Chinese (i.e. two natives talking to one another)... not enough to actually be able to tell someone what is being said, but enough to know what the conversation is about in general. Lessons are better, I understand (maybe) 30% to 50% of the conversations between Elder Lee and the investigators during lessons, still not enough to know what all is being said but more clearly able to identify the topic of the conversation and the general viewpoints of the two speakers. That's good, right? Haha.
So yeah, I heard Obama is the president again. Funny thing, I first heard it from the people Elder Lee and I were tracted. It seems weirdly insignificant to me though, haha, I guess a mixture of being in a different country, talking to people of a different culture, and of course being a missionary. Good luck though! Also send Elder Griffiths up in New York my good wishes in regards to cleaning up after the hurricane, I hear more and more that it was pretty bad.
Take care!
Elder Ladd
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