Nov 19 2012

I hope everyone is doing well! I'm sorry to hear about your accident, grandpa. It sounded terrible :( I hope you fully recover soon.

My week was very good again. One of the highlights was all of the meetings--there were quite a few. First, there was zone meeting Tuesday morning, which is an every week event for the most part (There aren't really any district meetings, I guess the emphasis has been shifting nowadays to zones). We have training from the zone leaders and district leaders. One thursday was the meeting for all the new missionaries, held at the Kangaroo Point chapel (where the temple is in Brisbane). All of the new trainees and their trainers were there, and we had training by the Assistants to the President, Elder Bellingham and Elder Hopoate. We then heard from our Mission President and his wife, President and Sister Langeland. After the trainings we had practice: the cultural hall was set up with chairs as "stations" for various roleplaying situations, such as contacting at the bus stop or on a train, or teaching about the Book of Mormon or the First Vision. Speaking of: In the training meeting beforehand, Elder Lee and I were asked to do a roleplay in front of everyone before it was President Langeland's turn to speak (we were told a few days before hand--every training meeting has a roleplay like this). We were to teach the Great Apostasy to the First Vision. As I began to relate Joseph Smith's description of the First Vision in his own words, I realized that I had forgotten the words in English! I asked if I could do it in chinese instead, and President Langeland said sure--as long as I make sure to learn it better in the future, haha. It was embarrasing. I was complimented on my chinese, though. :)

The biggest meeting was a special mission conference held on Friday. All of the missionaries in Queensland were present (except the ones in the Northern zone, like Cairns--missionaries have to fly up and down to get there and back). Before the meeting we took a picture with everyone. At the meeting, we had the chance to hear from President and Sister Langeland again as well as two of the local Area 70--Elders Pearson and Cummings. The meeting was very special, we were told about it less than a week before. The occasion was a new program, or I should say a new emphasis on existing programs in the Church. I don't know if it is worldwide or not, you might have already heard about it. The emphasis is on missionaries working with members more--splits *at least* once a week--and reactivation less actives. Elder Pearson reminded us all that it is a part of our purpose, which is:

"Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them recieve the Restored Gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and in His Atonement, repentence, baptism, recieving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end."

I'm super excited--it reminds me again of D&C 88:73. If this meeting wasn't enough, on Sunday there was *another* special conference! Not one, but two new stakes were organized--making there now ten stakes in Queensland. In about 50 years, Queensland has gone from just 1 stake to 10, a 10-fold increase. Maybe in my lifetime there will be 50 or 100 stakes in Queensland. The Church is growing rapidly here.

The Chinese program a little less so--we're still laboring on the creation of our own Chinese branch. (speaking of, if any of you have any knowledge or experience in how different-language branches in English-speaking areas, such as Mountain Park Spanish branch in Lilburn, email me your stories! It's been done before I know, I could use all the help I can get!) The work is going forth though.

There were a couple other fun stories from the past week. Elder Lee and I almost had the chance to meet with a minister from a different religion! I was super excited for it, it was disappointing when it fell through only a few hours before. We ran into someone who had been baptized a few years ago but had fallen away and was now attending another Church, and she asked us if we'd like to meet with her pastor (from the other church) there. We'll see what happens in the future.

Now the fun part: sorry to hear the news about the Hostess. Well, sort of. It's doesn't really seem that important to me actually :P Haha, but the other topic you brought up--TimTams!! Yes, they are actually popular here in Australia, although I don't know if they are necessarily Australia's *favorite* cookie (just like I'm hesitant to say Oreos are America's favorite cookie--just plain chocolate chip cookies in general are more popular I would say). But there's something called "TimTam slamming" you can do with TimTams which is delicious. I highly doubt the natives do it of course, haha. But Elder Lee, Chen, Allen, and I saw when we were buying groceries that TimTams we one sale for 3 packs/$5, so we got them to try it out.

To slam, what you do is you heat up chocolate milk--there's stuff called "Milo" (basically the Nesquik powder stuff) they have here--nice and good, almost boiling I'd say. Then, you take a TimTam and bite off two corners, diagonal to each other, so the cookie part is exposed. You then dip one end of the cookie in the milk and suck on the other end--because it's porous, some chocolate milk starts to come through, and it's like a straw! Then the TimTam starts melting (quickly) and it gets messy. But it tastes good. I would *not* recommend having more than 2 at a time though, besides being unhealthy the warm milk doesn't feel so good in the stomach, haha.

Hope I'll have more stories for you all next week! It's been good. Send more emails/letters! Love you!

Elder Ladd

[editor's note: Kylie verified that she learned TimTam slamming during her trip to New Zealand from an Australian friend, so the natives do, indeed, TimTam slam.  A sister in our ward just gave us some TimTams yesterday, so we're slamming for FHE tonight!]