Week 56 Staying in Gold Coast

Wow we are back to seeing good things in this work. It was a fun week full of fun and spiritual experiences.

One family that has never shown any interest in the church since they were baptized 4 years ago just showed up to church last week. They also came this week. We got in contact with them and now have weekly visits set up with them. They have felt the spirit and the need to endure to the end the right way. So they are having the lessons again and becoming active members again. In there inactivity their son hit the age of accountability and is now 11. He sat in the first lesson we had with them. We have high hopes that as they become active they will want their son to join the church also. It is really looking up. Their name is the Gonzales family.

Oh I guess some really big news too is that I did not get transferred and will be staying in Gold Coast with Elder Sharma. The fun part is we are getting 3 new missionaries in the zone. Elder Martin that just baptized Angus is coming down from Charters and Ayr and will be moving to our flat. So we will have a 4 man flat for the next few weeks while they try and find a house for them. We are going to have heaps of fun!! Having new missionary's in the zone will be really good. They always bring such a strong helpful spirit. The lord blesses them so well. We will be seeing miracles this transfer. It is going to be great!!

Last week we got a call from our assistant. They asked if I would be willing to participate in teaching the English class that our mission has for new missionaries who need the extra help. It was so hard but really fun. Elder Choi was in the class, so I got to spend the day with him. I miss him heaps!! Teaching English is really, really hard. We mostly read from PMG and then asked what words or phases they did not understand. From there we simply defined all the words so they could understand them. They did so well. It was a really neat thing to do. I would have died if I learned another language on my mission. I am so glad I got called English speaking. It is so hard to learn another language.

Upon door knocking last week a girl, Taylor, age 19 answered and invited us back a few days later. She did not seem overly interested or "the one" but we kept to our word and came back. Her father was working in the yard and kindly yelled at us that he did not want what we were selling. We asked if we could see his daughter Taylor. He looked confused for a sec and then went and got her. He is not interest but said it would be ok if we taught his daughter. So he went in and we sat on a bench outside and started to teach the Restoration to Taylor. She is pretty cool. She believes in a "higher" power but has no clue. So as we shared you could see her really thinking about it and having a Heavenly Father and Savior. She had to go to work and the lesson ended with out a prayer but we got her number and got a day to come back. I hope she felt the spirit and will continue to meet with us. It was really cool.

On Saturday we had to go back to the flat for a sec to grab a visual aid for our dinner and as we left the flat the door closed and we realized we left the keys on the table. It has the car key, flat key, and FOB to get into our building. The building manager is gone and so we were on our own. The member who we had dinner with gladly picked us up and dropped us off after dinner at the Tallai Elders flat. Since it is the weekend of transfers it was a nightmare in the mission office where our spare key is for our car. We have a spare key for the flat in the car.

Bear with me in this story. Since most of our zone is getting transferred, we had all the Elders meet at Nandos for another dinner to say our goodbyes. This was all planned before we got locked out. So when the member dropped us off at the Tallai flat we had 4 elders no car and 2 bikes. The restaurant was about 5 ks away and we thought we would walk it. Instead I said lets ride the bikes together. haha yes it was crazy. I sat on the seat and peddled and Elder Laspinas sat on the metal bar between the seat and hand bars and while I peddled he steered and did brakes and gears.

Now I have to say. If you want to bond with you zone members ride a bike with them. It took so much concentration and communication to successfully ride a one man bike with 2 people. We made it safely to Nandos and right as we were about to walk in with the other Elders our AP called and said they were too busy at the office. Call Elder Johnson and use his car to drive to us to grab the spar key.

All in all I missed Nandos and we finally got into our flat. It is like fort knox at our flat. It was so easy to break into the flat up in Charters Towers and Ayr. So fun though.

Church was great and we had the Gonzales family come. We were super excited for them.

After church we got our transfer deliberations and notified the zone. We had to be to Brisbane really early and had to pick up the Tallai Elders so instead of waking up even earlier to go pick them up we had them pack and come to our flat for a sleep over. Since we only have 2 beds we all went out onto our veranda and one slept on the couch and the other on pillows. It was fun to sleep outside and it almost, almost felt like camping.

What a week we had. I am so excited to meet all the new Elders on Wednesday when they come. Hope everyone back home has a good week!

Love,
Elder Cahoon