G'day!
I haven't been singing unapproved tunes... just verses xD sorry, I've been working really hard on that one throughout my mission (I love music, what can I say?). But this one is particularly relevant because I find that my time upon this earth as a full-time missionary is very quickly leaving me, and I must soon take up my missionary grave. This is a thought that does not sit well with me, because some days I am really excited about coming home, and other days I am really not excited at all. That doesn't mean that I dislike home, I just dislike the prospect of having to give up being a missionary. I really do love being a missionary at the end of the day; it's not easy in all the areas of life (social, mental, emotional, physical, what have you) but it is the most fulfilling thing I can currently be doing. I guess I could come home and get the next ordinance (wink wink, nudge nudge ;D) and really start to fill the measure of my divine potential, BUT I kinda don't want to do that right now... just not too keen, at the moment; too much to do, too many souls to save, too many missionaries to help, too many places to go and doors to knock... no time for that kind of thing! xD
Anyways, we don't have any investigators at the moment, though we found 11 potential investigators! That is HEAPS for the Clarence Park area! And yet I think back to that night when Elder Aiono and I found 10 potentials in the space of two hours... ah, areas go through phases, I guess. But to speak of a few people, we visited M yesterday. He's always drunk these days, and one of our members, P (who's getting ready for his mission) moved in with him recently. P's folks are going through a divorce, so he needed to get out of the house. He doesn't really seem to be prohibiting M from doing anything with alcohol, but who is he to say that M can't drink? - he's living under the man's roof without paying rent.
So M hasn't come to church for 6 weeks in a row, now; he used to come regularly, and his language made sense and was structured and had logic. Now... it's pretty heartbreaking to watch someone slip into their own personal apostasy. My companion was trying hard out to teach him last night, but I couldn't feel the Spirit at all. I let Elder Fleming take, for the most part, the entire "lesson"; I wanted to leave because there was no point in us being there. M was saying things that didn't make sense in the least, and P wasn't adding to anything being taught. My companion was coming off too strong and I couldn't discern the direction he was going, so that made it difficult to back him up at all... it just wasn't a very good lesson. It's funny as I look at it, though; I did the same thing as a younger missionary up in Darwin, and Elder Covey (we'd been on trade-off) largely let me take the lesson, and it got to a point where he just ceased adding to anything I was saying. He told me later why, and it was the exact same reason why I eventually ended up not saying anything in the lesson last night- no Spirit, no direction, no point = no teaching. I think my companion was a bit peeved at me for that, judging by his demeanor, and I haven't had an opportunity to ask him about it yet, but it'll come.
The other people we were teaching was a Baptist couple, Matt and Eden. They are the most lovely Christian folk I've come across in awhile that aren't of our faith. They're both very young and they're raising one son. We've taught them about four times, and the first two lessons were pretty brief, but the last two were good (not that brief isn't good, because it is; we just didn't cover all the main points). The last concern they had was that of having living prophets- why do we need them? But during our teaching, we did lightly scratch the surface of priesthood authority and how the prophet holds those keys that allow us to seal our families for eternity (and we translated it into non-Mormon English), and that really perked Eden's curiosity. According to my understanding from what they've said, the Baptists hold it to be true that after death, we become angels in heaven, and that there is no marriage in heaven. When given the options to choose between eternal angel or eternal father/mother, Eden was definitely leaning towards the latter. But since discovering this revelation that we need to teach them about eternal families and marriages, we haven't been able to see them at all; just goes to show that the Adversary is working very hard, because that would have got them.
So we continue to do the same thing- look for potential investigators so we can have more new investigators so we can have more progressing investigators so we can have baptisms. Such is the Investigator's Circle of Life. But we're remaining hopeful and optimistic. To be honest, I'm feeling pretty happy as of late. I still don't know why- there's not much going in this area at all, and it's supposed to be a hard area, but I don't understand how some areas are hard and others are not. This one should not be any more difficult than any other area.
We have tea with the Casano family every Thursday- these are the equivalent Paewai's, except Brother Casano isn't the Branch President. They're from the Philippines and both served missions, and they are the best family. They've got two boys, Yaeden and Xavier (we call him "Coia" which means "Older Brother" in Tagalek), and they are the most missionary-minded members around, save for probably the Costagen's (both also served missions, and Sister Costagen is from Samoa whilst Brother Costagen is a full-blood Aussie). I've only had tea at their place once because they live in the zone leaders' area, but they are so cool! We made fast friends and they are keen and excited to do missionary work as well.
Oh! We did a service project recently, which involved building irregular shaped flower gardens of large quality. It was pretty muddy and foggy, but it was a lot of fun! It reminded me of what I used to do back home with Sister Welch and Sister Grovenburg- hard, manual labor! More so gardening with Sister Welch, which comes in handy because everyone in Adelaide gardens, but yeah, it was great fun! And we did a service project for Sister Grecenin the other day- she's big into family history and she had us over for tea once (most fun I've ever had, being in the company of witty, sophisticated old people cracking jokes and making each other the butt of them [kind of sounds like... home... ;D]). She needed us to dig out a stubborn root... I spliced my hands open because the blisters the pickax and ax made were quite unpleasant (in between the calluses I developed from riding my bike... dang), but that was heaps fun as well! I love service projects, they're the best!
But I've got to go for now! I love you all heaps, and I'll talk to you soon! Don't blink- it'll be over that quick (and don't even ask me about my thoughts concerning that topic @.@ it's not true!).
-Elder Schomburg
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