Here is my email, essentially for the last two weeks (sorry this email is late this week!). I will continue from when I last emailed, which was a week before last Thursday. Friday marked a great Zone Conference among the Gold Coast and Coomera Missionaries, held at Mudgeeraba Chapel. Following the Conference, I went on trade offs with one of the zone leaders there. The zone is doing well, the missionaries don't possess any extraordinary skills or talents but they are unified, obedient, and hard working. As a result, they are seeing miracles. I went tracting for a bit, had dinner with the elders quorum president there, and visited less actives members while I was there.
On Saturday, we were invited to participate in a free carwash and tour service project put on by the members of the River Terrace YSA. All four companionships now assigned to that ward came, along with myself and one of my companions. At the temple, there is a currently unused lot adjacent which is owned by the church, and the YSA put it to use by opening it up. About 20 to 30 YSA helped out, about 1/3 washing cars, 1/3 doing tours in the chapel, and about 1/3 standing on the streets and holding and waving signs. The missionaries split up, some staying at the chapel and helping with tours, while myself and others walking up and down the path at the top of the cliff, GQing people. My companion went with one companionship to the walkway at the bottom of the cliff. He talked to a young couple who accepted the invitation on the spot to take a tour, and took them around. I also talked to a man walking with his young daughter on a Saturday morning, who later stopped by again to take the tour. Overall I would say it was a success: several people pulled in for a carwash off the street, generating about 5 referrals for the missionaries.
We've had a great miracle of someone who was just referred to us from the sister missionaries in the ward (he lives in our boundaries). He is a refugee from Iran, although not Muslim. He has incredible story of coming here, and how he met the sister missionaries as well. He came to church with us on Sunday (he wanted to be baptized on Saturday, because it was his birthday, and we explained that he had to come to church first). On top of all of this, he is a boxing champion! I will let you know how he comes along, temporarily he has flown down to sydney to visit a friend.
After the zone conference on Friday, President Henderson felt like I should go on trade offs with the chinese missionaries in Gold Coast. They aren't struggling per se (there performance is slowly coming along) but there seemed to be other issues, like stress. I began the trade-offs on Monday by being dropped down with the Isle of Capri Missionaries. I stayed there until Thursday, and on Friday and Saturday I spent the days in Mudgeeraba. Long trade-offs like these have come to be some of my favorite things --- it feels great to simply shrug off all of the worries and concerns of the office and say, "that's not my problem!" :D
I began the week with a cool miracle, 5 minutes before we finished GQing for the night. I spoke to a lady from New Zealand who actually attended church in New Zealand and who would love to come back. She is moving to an area called Upper Coomera, the fastest growing area in Australia (a lot of people are moving in from New Zealand especially).
On Tuesday, I had two more miracles, a Venezuelan man I found, and Chinese student. In addition, a miracle came from one of the missionaries I was with: At night we were GQing at the bus stop, and I started speaking to a woman from Taiwan. Elsewhere, a Chinese lady overheard me conversing in Chinese, and approached my companion: "Wow, he can speak Chinese!" My companion, of course, immediately engaged with that lady as well. It turned into a lesson on the spot -- she has experienced a lot of trials this last year and she was in tears as he taught her about the Plan of Salvation and prayer. Knowing she would return to China soon, we left her with a Book of Mormon in Chinese.
On Wednesday, I went with the next companionship --- I had my first opportunity to visit the major university where most of the Chinese students go to, Griffith University (that may sound familiar to you because there are campuses by Sunnybank which we often go to there!). We taught a few more lessons and GQed there at the university.
On Thursday, I went with the last companionship in Isle of Capri ward. Luckily, I was there for their missionary correlation meeting, so I really got to get an idea of what missionary work in the ward was like. We visited less actives that night from a list given to us by the ward mission leader, and succeeded in one account, finding some less active members who were at home and were open to meeting with the missionaries. I left Isle of Capri Thursday night, to start in Mudgeeraba.
Mudgeeraba is an area which has frankly been struggling -- there simply aren't enough Chinese in the area to support Chinese missionaries, although because of the sheer number of Chinese missionaries we have in the mission now, we were left with no alternatives. There is just one university in the area, nowhere in size (or in population of Chinese students) compared to Isle of Capri. I really got to see the area and understand what they are going through. Although they just recently had 5 baptisms all in one weekend, 4 of those 5 baptisms came from english investigators. The Chinese baptism was a member referral, but nothing has come from the efforts of the missionaries themselves with either GQing or Tracting.
I will have to finish this email tomorrow morning because I simply have no more time to email tonight. Sorry!
Elder J. Colton Ladd
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