Another week gone by

G'day!

Another eventful week has gone by. There's not a whole lot to report this week- Doris is still our investigator, but she's pushed back her baptism. She's dealing with a lot of things lately with her roommate and her family (we fond out she has a husband and children, but they live in America!), so she has some issues to sort out before she can prepare herself for baptism. Hopefully she'll keep letting us come over!

We did meet a lot of potential this week. I met a girl on the train named Sherilyn, and she's golden, but unfortunately she left later in the week to go home to China for holiday break. She said she wants to meet with us again when she gets back, but that's not until March, so it won't be for awhile. We also met a man named Denis, he's also Chinese and is pretty golden as well. Luckily for us he's staying, so we'll get to see him a lot more often! He is agnostic but has a lot of christian friends, and wants to find out for himself if it's true or not. Pretty perfect, wouldn't you say?!

Elder Han and I did quite a bit of finding this week in Strathfield, which is like the little Korea Town of Sydney. I was super happy to be able to finally practice my Korean, but unfortunately it's not where I would like it to be.. haha. I was able to share a message in Korean, but I didn't know what the heck anyone's response was. I think it was a good wake up call for me though, and is really getting me motivated to study harder! Even with the language barrier, we did manage to get in contact with two Korean guys, Min Jae and DK, both of whom don't speak English.. and so we get to teach them!! I'm super stoked about that, because that means I'll get them to teach me Korean in return. Speaking of learning Korean, our Korean Teacher, Shin Ha-seon, left home for Korea yesterday. It was really hard to say goodbye to her, because she had become our really good friend. She promised though that if I ever went to Korea, she'd show me around! I think that settles it- Mom and Dad, better start saving up to go to Korea for the 2016 Olympics!!

One other piece of news you may find funny- I tried baking cookies for mutual on Wednesday. I started making chocolate chip cookies, but we didn't have enough butter, or chocolate chips, or flour.. but I didn't know that until I had already started making them, so I improvised and put some other things in just to try to fix it. I have never realized how convenient mixers are until I tried mixing without one! Needless to say they were more than a little grainy.. anyways I wasn't sure how they were going to taste, but I took them to mutual anyways and turns out they were alright! I was more than a little surprised, but happy that they weren't terrible.. just a little interesting! Haha. I figured it might make Mom proud to know I attempted baking, and that it didn't end in a disaster.. rather unusual for me! 

Other than that, a fairly uneventful week. Here's the Australian culture tidbit of the week: All the bogans (aka country people; hicks; super outback-Australians) say "Fair Dinkin" almost every other word! I'm not even entirely sure what it means, and I don't think they do either, but it's just a slang word they use for everything, good or bad. Example: "This fair dinkin weather is great. I'm so fair dinkin tired I'm gonna rest on that fair dinkin bed, fair dinkin." Make sense? Yeah, it doesn't to me either.. but it's pretty fair dinkin hilarious!

And now for the Spiritual thought. This week especially, Elder Han and I have really been focusing on helping less-actives come back to church, and inviting our investigators to come to church. The scripture we've often shared is Moroni 6:4-6. It talks about the reasons we go to church: to be nourished by the word of God, to talk with and strengthen friends, and to take the sacrament. When we don't go to church, we miss out on these great things, the most important of which is the sacrament. How insignificant it may seem, going to church is one of the most important things we can do to keep us spiritually uplifted and resistant to temptation. Also, through the sacrament we can repent and renew our covenants... sounds pretty great to me. I think if we all really understood what it means to go to church, then there'd be no barrier to big to keep us from getting to the meeetinghouse every week. Just food for thought.

Hope all is well on the other end of the world! Have a great week, and enjoy Thanksgiving! (I almost forgot- isn't it this week??). Get fat on the eats for me!

Love you all,

Elder Easton