Baptizing Brisbane: Week 12 -- It is hot!!! But the work goes on.

Well I am done being trained. I have gone through my first 12 weeks and am doing great!! We had a great week up in Charters Towers!!

With all of our finding efforts from last week we had some great lessons with some of the people that we found. It was one of the hottest weeks so far!! It got up to 46 degrees( Celsius) not Fahrenheit
I wish it was 46 Fahrenheit. So if you convert that to F you get about 114 degrees!! It is hot!!! But the work goes on.

We had a sad day; one of the members had a heart attack and died. We attended the funeral and the wife asked if I would get up and read a few scriptures. I was honored to do so. It was the first funeral that I think I have been to where I was old enough to really understand it. It was a sad day. I don't think a normal funeral is that crazy! They put up a slide show of him and there was some nice classical music playing to it but out of nowhere it changed to really loud heavy metal music. Boy did that wake everyone up. Then when they were carrying the casket to the car the same thing happened, loud heavy metal music. It was quite the funeral.

Every morning we still go work out with Angus and help him understand what he read from the Book of Mormon that night. I said last week he shared it with his family and this week we got to sit down with the family. They are not as solid as Angus but the Lord has giving Angus such a strong testimony and he is going to be able to help his family come around. During the lesson he did more teaching then we did. We would start with Joseph Smith wanted to know.. and Angus would just step right in with so much energy," So he prayed and God came to him" and from there Angus just gave the lesson and we just helped here and there. It was so fun to see him share it and go through it with other people. On Sunday he got up and bore his testimony in front of everyone and he is not even a member. It was so great!! He also asked when he could give a talk. He was so prepared by the Lord.

We visited the Lowery's a ton this week. They make me feel like I am home. Just the way we talk and laugh and tease each other. It is so fun. They are a great family!! It is so good to have them in the branch. Brother Lowery gave us some gifts. One of the coolest ones is a bunch of hand drawn pictures of all the historical building in Charters Towers. They are really beautiful and super cool. They also gave me and Elder Talaipa matching Aussie shirts with all the Aussie slang on it. I have so much love for their family and for them.

We had to go back to Ayr a couple of days early to make it to a Christmas Party. It was really fun to be apart of. The members in Ayr have so much love for each other and they help us so much. Brother Yip gave me a referral during the party. Later in the week we went to contact him. He works in the police and we got to know him and talked for a good hour about things and then slowly brought in the church and he was open to having us come by again. So I am praying that this guy will be good. He has no smoking or drinking problems, which is the big thing that is holding us back from baptisms.

The Yips also had us over for dinner this week and they took us out to see all the Christmas lights. Some people here go really crazy with the lights but it is nothing compared to Hidden Oaks at night with all the trees lit up. Even though it is Christmas time and looks like Christmas, it does not have the same feeling with out the snow. I heard it snowed a little bit for you guys in Utah. That is so great!!

The transfer ended this week and my companion Elder Talaipa got moved down to McKay and I got stuck with Elder Cadiang again. We will see how it goes. It is crazy how fast the time is going by so I hope it stays that way these next 6 weeks. I drove Elder Talaipa to Townsville and picked up the Townsville elder so we could drop him off at the airport. So right now I am in a tripanionship until the Townsville elder gets his new comp.

Things are hot but going good. Thanks for all the love. Talk to you next week.

Love,

Elder Cahoon