First on the agenda was my visit to the Maritime Museum here in Brisbane. It is at the site of the first dock built here, in the late 19th century. Today the dock, houses the HMAS Diamantina, a WWII frigate which after the war became a survey ship. A relative of mine works at the museum, and he gave myself and my companion and awesome guided tour of the entire ship, as well as the dock it is dry-docked in. I took many, many pictures, I'll be sure to attach a few of my favorite. We spent about three hours there, mostly on the ship and then Elder Monsen and I walked around the inside museum exhibits by ourselves. It was quite enjoyable -- I have a great love of history, thanks to my grandfathers and in particular my father.
On thursday, we had interviews training once again. During interviews training all of the elders and sisters have a one-on-one interview with President Langeland, our mission president. He'll be finishing this summer and we'll be getting a new mission president at that time (they serve for 3 years). I had a good talk with the president on how to strengthen my area even more (he congratulated me on my success so far). During each of our interviews President Langeland gave us something to consider: what if President Monson decided he wanted visit the field as a missionary like ourselves, and was assigned to be our new companion in our area? What would we do differently? It was an interesting topic to ponder. I think I would enjoy that quite a bit, haha.
On Saturday we had a funny experience. Elder Monsen and I had scheduled to meet with a korean investigator in King George Square, and he said he was going to bring a friend (referall!). The friend turned out to be 1/4 japanese, 3/4 chinese, although Japanese was still his mother tongue and Chinese his second, but that part was funny because of how surprised he was when he heard me speaking chinese (My chinese has improved a ton since I've been with Elder Monsen! Looking back, I see now that since Elder Lee was fluent, I didn't have many opportunities to use chinese before).
Anyhow, we proceeded to teach, Elder Monsen and a Korean member w/ the korean investigator, and myself with the referral. About ten minutes into our lesson (we were just sitting on benches on one side of the square), a group of 6 Taiwanese guys approached us -- english school classmates of the investigator and referral! When the referall told them about how I spoke chinese, they too were impressed. In the end, I ended up teaching them all at once as well, and set up another meeting. One of them in particular was interested, he said in Taiwan he had also talked with christian friends a lot. All of them had seen missionaries in Taiwan, of course.
On Sunday we had Stake Conference. It was a pre-recorded broadcast, for all of Australia and Papua New Guinea. We heard from Elder Baxter of the 70, Sister Stevens of the General Relief Society Presidency, Elder Christofferson of the 12 Apostles, and best of all -- President Monson! It was an awesome experience, although the little kids of the family we teach thought it was boring, haha.
That's it for today, I want to make sure to leave time to post pictures. Take care!
Elder J. Colton Ladd
(he didn't give any details about the photos, but obviously they're from the drydock and Maritime museum)
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