Second things second: I am a trainer! I have no idea how it occurred, but there you have it.
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| Elders Ladd and Anderson |
It was a short interview -- not much longer than 5 minutes, I'd imagine. I said the opening prayer, and we talked about study journals for a while (he had instructed us to bring them to the interviews). Then, with one minute remaining, he told me that tomorrow, I will be a trainer. I was surprised, at first I didn't even know if he was being serious or not. Sure enough, he was.
We got a call just after 6:00 AM the next morning (we were still asleep), telling my companion and I to be at the mission home in one hour. Elder Allan drove for his first time in Australia, which was nerve-wracking enough. The other missionaries had to drop it off for us, since we don't have a car. We took a few unplanned detours along the way, and since we had to fill up the car with petrol (gas), we arrived 10 minutes late. President and Sister Henderson were waiting outside, beside a missionary who looked a lot like me! American, white, tall, skinny, dark haired. His name is Elder Anderson, and he is from a little town called Mona, Utah. And he's a fireball!! The very first day, We went contacting in the city with him, and he found more numbers than I did. On his third day he found more numbers than Elder Allan and I combined! His Chinese is better than mine was when I arrived, I'd imagine -- the MTC must have stepped up its game! He is fluent in Spanish and speaks Portuguese pretty well too. I'm very lucky, he doesn't need much training anyways. :)
On his very first day he set up an appointment. I think the first return appointment I set up personally was in my second transfer? It's great. He was in the MTC for 11 weeks because his visa was delayed. According to what he tells me, the MTC has changed a ton, such as: There are well over a hundred missionaries learning Chinese at any given time -- they've split into two branches/zones! There was a second MTC in Provo, one of the housing complexes rented out. Tuesday devotionals are at the Marriott Center, so both MTCs travel and meet there. There are 8 Chinese missionaries coming here next transfer or soon thereafter: 1 elder from the Phillipines who already served for a while because of visa delays, 3 American elders, 2 American sisters, 1 Hong Kong sister and 1 Singaporean sister. That will be interesting! My current companion will almost certainly train and reopen River Terrace 2, and they will open a few areas down in EMP as well I imagine.
Some of you probably know a lot of these things already, but it's news to me. Exciting!
This was the main thing that happened last week. There was one miracle -- we got a random text from someone and set up and appointment with him. We learned that he had met missionaries 6 months ago in Sunnybank. Isn't that crazy? No effort is wasted.
On Sunday we had a number of people at church -- 7 to be exact. It was the fast breaker, but actually only 3 of them stayed for that. Kind of ironic. This week will be good because it is our Jolt week.
Take care everyone!
Elder Ladd
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| 20 years old! |
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| making the cake |
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| blowing out the candles |
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