Sydney Week 5

Hello from Hot and Muggy Australia! :)

 

This week, set an all time record for the hottest it's ever been at midnight last..... Tuesday here. It was pretty insane haha! Our last pday we went out and saw the Giant duck. It was literally the hottest I've ever felt in my life last tuesday. It got up to 43 degrees celcius which is around 112 farenheit and was HUMIDDDDDDD!!!! For lunch, we decided to stop into a vietnamese restuarant, and guess what I ordered?? Spicey beef noodle soup. What was I thinking?????? Spicey while it's over 110 outside? Obviously my brain wasn't working because I was sweating like no other eating my lunch hahahahahahah! But all is good now. It's cooled down quite a bit and even though the nights are still pretty warm, I'm able to sleep pretty well.  

So I need to say thank you to all who have sent me money for Christmas and at other times. I'm very bad at writing personal thank you letters because postage is pretty expensive (2 bucks for one letter to the US from AU, but only 1.05 for US to AU??? Not sure how that works out...) but thank you for the money because I actually needed to buy something this week with money from home. My athletic shoes I had in the MTC were destroyed by the end of the MTC and so I left them there. When I arrived here in AU the previous elder had left his and they worked okay for a little while, but it was time for me to get my own pair instead of old, stinky, hand-me-down shoes haha :) So I went to the cheapest place you can around here and still get good shoes and I bought some nice Puma's that remind me of Mark everytime I put them on for my morning run to go play touch. So thank you for the donations for Christmas from family (Jay and Sharon and Linda and Jim) and others, because things here in the City are a lot more expensive than I'm used to, and even though the shoes were 50% off, they are still the most expensive shoes I've ever bought haha :) But I really like them and they are MUCH more comfortable than the past shoes I was using to make due. I forgot to bring my journal for this week, but I will try to think back on specific experiences that happened:

 

- I'm not sure if my street contacting is getting better or worse.... This last week I was contacting people and talked to one person who must have been an ex-sailor and currently worked as a plumber from Texas (Evan may be the only one that get's that specific reference :)) because not even joking, every third word was a cuss word. But anyways... I was talking to him for just a minute and then He invited me to have a beer with him and his mate haha! So I don't know if I'm getting better in the fact that I'm willing to talk to everyone and invite all to learn, or if I'm getting worse because people aren't able to see my role here as a missionary lol! I'll need to do some more thinking on this. But I really do try to talk to everyone because I've had 2 different people talk to me and ask why we as missionaries "target the Asians." I'm always nicer in my response but I want to say its because they are pretty much the only people who ever stop and talk haha! The natives here usually either just cuss you away, are too busy, or are a mixture of both :) But I still love being able to go and talk to ALL people so that It cannot be said of me that I target a particular group because the gospel of Jesus Christ doesn't have any familiarity to race or ethnicity.

 

- Not sure how much I told you all about Simon. He's the Underground Christian from Pakistan. It's very interesting to meet with Him because He has such strong faith in Christ, yet he lives with 7 other people who most likely would persecute, and maybe even physically harm him if they knew he was christian. I am so grateful that we have religious freedom in our country.

 

- This saturday after the baptism of Jin (another missionary companionship's investigator) we all decided to go to "3 mamas" a really good thai restaurant in the City and I honestly ate HEAPS of food haha! The chinese people we were with were so suprised at how much I ate because for some reason, I was just absolutely starving and couldn't get full. I had 2 servings of pad thai, and 2 servings of masmun curry, 1 of red curry and 1 of green curry! hahaha, I was stuffed when I was done, but it was so worth the 15 bucks I had to pay for that feast! that's the nice thing about eating in larger groups is that everyone just pitches in the same amount and then you all just share dishes.

 

I am able to see more and more how awesome my companion is. The more he has gotten to know me, the more willing he is to open up and talk about Himself as a person. A lot of times we are able to share very cool experiences together and this helps to bring us together so much. We do speak Cantonese with each other as often as we can, especially when it's just He and I. He keeps helping me learn and keeps the laughing to a minimum when I say something really wrong and sometimes embarrasing in Cantonese. He's a very good companion to have and He's very patient which makes him a great trainer as well.

 

Love you all!!

 

Elder Shafer

The lego characters are who we do practice teaching to in the morning haha! When  Elder Wan and I need to practice our transitions.... we teach legos which can't talk back. it works out really well!  :) gotta be creative!

Also, here is proof that people really do eat kangaroo here because you can buy it at your local supermarket :) 

So here are some pictures of the Giant duck. It was over 50 feet tall! Pretty random but pretty funny too.

Also saw some random person just hanging out on the swing that I thought was an interesting way to relax... so I thought id grab a candid shot :)

The other pictures are in the Queen victoria building which is a giant mall here. The clock towers are really cool though! They hang from the ceiling and they have different scenes from AU's history etched into them and every hour they play music and the pieces act out a scene from history. I thought it was unique and interesting.