Following sending an email, the district (both companionships from River Terrace YSA and both companionships from Brisbane Ward) went out to eat at a pancake restaurant named "Pancake Manor." Here in Australia it's common to have pancakes with vanilla ice cream and maple syrup. It was good, albeit expensive -- $10 for a stack of 3, a single scoop of ice cream, and a teenie bit of syrup. :P And it' wasn't as good or Waffle House or IHOP anyway, hahaha.
But after that, Pday was a lot better. The original plan was to go to the gardens in the city and play sports on a field, but it was raining, so half of us decided to go to the Queensland Museum and Art Gallery (in a place called south bank, just across the river from the gardens). It was awesome! Did I mention I love museums? I ought to have a few good pictures to attach in a minute.
On Tuesday, we had english class at the Chapel -- but it fell through, because it was raining. Oh, by the way, asian people don't like the rain. At all. If it is so much as sprinkling, they are wont to cancel meetings. It's funny too because when they're in the rain, they always need to cover the crown of their head, like with a newspaper or something -- I asked on of the other Chinese missionaries about it, and he said it's because they belief that the rain can cause baldness. Maybe it does, because of smog and acid rain in China, Vietnam, and Taiwan. Who knows.
Wednesday was fun -- the Zone Leaders went on trade-offs with Elder Monsen and I. Normal trade-offs are for 24 hours, from one planning session at 9:00 PM to the next, but the ZLs just went with us for 2 hours during the day. They said it was because we speak Chinese and all that, and they don't. It was nevertheless fun indeed -- I went with one of them to the campus for QUT, right in the city. The semester starts today (Feb 25) and last week was the start of Orientation -- a perfect time to catch students, many of them first year. It was quite successful.
Most of the rest of the week was pretty normal. Our most progressing investigator is all set for his baptism next saturday, we just need to make the program with him (which we'll do tonight). The family we teach will likely stay with us after all, and they should be able to be baptized a week after our other investigator. Hooray for March Miracles! 75 baptisms in March is the goal! We also had a lot of 1st lessons this week, getting some new investigators into our pool. I'm especially excited about one, who it turns out is from the exact same small city in China as one of the other missionaries we live with. Zhanjiang, a smaller city in Guangdong Province.
Unfortunately he wasn't able to come to church this week -- but that didn't make church any less hectic. We had one person call us the day before who wanted to know where our church was and when we met. That rarely happens, it certainly made me excited. He was from Taiwan, and brought along a Thai friend. One girl came who I talked to while with the ZLs. One fellow came with a Taiwanese member who just moved into the area (from Taiwan) -- they met in the airport and he wanted to come along to church. Our investigator who is being baptized was there of course, and there were also two more non-members, a Finnish and a German backpacker who had met some of the YSA members the night before and were invited. Sundays like this are busy but exciting.
After emails today I think I'll look around some bookstores in the city for cheap pocket dictionaries -- the one they gave us in the MTC isn't pocketsized at all, it's more comparable to the quad I have, haha. Also, I might look into Cantonese language learning materials for the future -- I think I mentioned a while ago that I have the desire to learn Cantonese as well, and my Mandarin is pretty good these days to the point that I might be able to start learning Cantonese in the not-to-distant future (maybe in another 6 months, around my year-out mark).
Take care everyone! I'll go find some pictures from the Art Gallery and the Museum to post.
Elder J. Colton Ladd
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| flying carpet |
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| big snake/dragon skeleton |
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