August 30, 2015

 Hey Everyone,

    So this week was jam packed full of ... different experiences! I'm just going to start off by saying that the mission is so great!!! And it really is a bunch of awkward moments strung together by a bunch of smaller awkward moments! I love it. So awkward moment number one for this week! Elder Gunnell and I were knocking doors all day and we were so dead tired, we kinda started getting a little goofy. We knock on this apartment door and this huge guy answers the door, so just imagine a huge manly Australian guy with a full beard... and he says in a way low voice "what do ya need" and I was waiting for Elder Gunnell to talk and he was waiting for me, and so after a long awkward pause we both at the same time say "we are missionaries" in perfect unison. I don't know why, but we both started to kinda chuckle! and that chuckle turned into a laugh. and then we both lost it! we both started laughin SOOOOOOO HAARRRDDDD for no reason! we couldn't even talk! We probably laughed for thirty seconds and then I tried to apologize, and I just said " I AM SO . . . . HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA". I can not imagine how the guy felt, he just opened his front door to two young men that were giggling uncontrollably hahah! it kinda softened him up though. After a while he started to laugh with us, and then he said he wasn't very interested but he was really nice about it hahah! it was great

    One morning during studies Elder Gunnell went to get his shoes on, and on the way to the room he decided that he wanted to throw a punching glove at me as hard as he could. So I look up from studying the good word to see a punching glove flying in my direction, so I ducked it! but since it missed me, it hit everything on the desks and ended up shattering a huge glass bowl, tipping over some glasses that were full of water all over his electronics, and just made a grand mess! so we tried our best to have companion study while sweeping up glass shards!

     Oh this guy backed in to our car and destroyed the back left light! The trunk doesn't shut unless you slam it but its still drivable! The guy felt so bad! he apologized like four hundred times! oh and another great experience! I was able to eat some raw pickled octopus!!! and the thing that is weird, it was not that bad! I mean I wouldn't buy it for my self but it was actually pretty good!

     So today was a hard week for our investigators! It seemed like everyone lost interest all at once. But I told you about Algie a few weeks ago! The one that has a really hard life and its really hard to teach him because he talks so much! Well we gave him the book of Mormon on tape, and we stopped by randomly. He didn't know we were coming but he had the tapes playing and he said that he had listened to 3 ne 11-16 and mosiah 1-9 a few times each! and he told us that he loved listening to them! and for some reason this time he let us talk, we taught the restoration and then he said that he would pray to see if joseph smith was a true prophet of god! so we are really excited about that!

       I told you about Rebecca last week and this week she invited us back! We planned a time for service and she was super excited! We ended up weeding her whole front yard and if i must say, it looked pretty good! and then at the end we started to work our way into the lesson. and she totally shut us down! it seems like she lost all interest and that she kinda used us for our service. We tried to set a return apt but she just kept saying no! WHY CANT SHE SEE THAT THE GOSPEL WILL HELP HER!!! it made me pretty sad but we gave her a few days and we are going back to try again and start over!

       But I had a really cool spiritual experience on Friday! I was at the mission office waiting for Elder Gunnell to get out of a two hour district leader council. And this random guy just walked in and started talking to a bunch of us elders and said that he served his mission in Melbourne twenty years ago! so we talked about that for a while, and then he said that he was struggling with some really bad neck pain and that he would really like a blessing! he chose me and Elder Niaker to give it to him!  and after he figured out that Elder Niaker had been out for over a year and that I had only been out for a month he wanted me to give the blessing! So I had him start out with a prayer to invite the spirit and right before we put our hands on his head he said "oh elders I have been inactive for 10 years" and then we started, I have no idea what I said but it was a lot more bold than I ever talk, about returning to church, and the spirit was so strong! I can't even explain to you how strong it was, but when we finished he stood up and was crying and then he hugged me said thank you and then basically disappeared! it was so out of the blue but the spirit was so strong. and it strengthened my testimony even more about the power of the priesthood! I thought it was so cool that that man had the faith to just come in out of the blue and ask for a blessing! and so I have been thinking a lot about faith this week! and I read this story about a man that needed to cross a lake so he hired a young boy with a row boat to take him across! While they were going across he noticed that on the end of the left paddle was a large F and on the end of the right was a large W. So the man asked why, the boy answered that F stands for faith and W stands for works, if you only paddle with the Faith one then you go in circles, and the same with the Works paddle! you have to paddle with both faith and works to go in a strait line! same with us humans! we need to use faith and works to get us to where we need to go! i love this gospel so much! it truly does bless the lives of all those that come into contact with it! I am so glad that I get to share it with everyone! I love you all! have a great week 

-from Elder Wiser 

this is what we did on p-day. we went into the forest and just messed around all day hahah! we couldn't find any hiking trails so we just played around on service roads. these pictures are hard to see but we are balancing a really heavy stick in the air!!

this is my first day tracting in the rain!!!! I was soaking wet!! this trench coat I found in the closet, it was so dirty hahah. it was freezing! and it rained so much!! I wish I could show you the videos of the rivers down the roads!!! it rained forever. oh and when the rain ran off my coat onto my white shirt it like stained this nasty yellow color!! it washed out though hahah ewe

August 23, 2015

So this week started out great by us all playing ping-pong on p-day! We have two tables in our chapel and so the other two companionships in our district came and we had a blast! Elder Gunnell challenged me 5 times, but I was never defeated. This Wednesday was one of the most crazy days! It was zone temple day and it was golden review! So we got to cut our studies short and go to the temple. The temple here is really small but it is so amazing! I had such a fantastic experience. I went with a whole ton of questions and all of them were answered by one chapter in the Doctrine and Covenants! I will never forget it! The feeling that is in the temple is so fantastic, I wish I could go every week! And then right after the peaceful feeling of the temple I had to go strait to the stress of golden review. So golden review is when they test you on what you have learned, and its like competition style. We had to have a bunch of stuff memorized including the first three lessons and all of their key points with a scripture to go along with it. Then they just put you on the spot and ask you questions about what you know. It was kinda funny because Elder Wheeler and I were called up very first to see who could write all the points of the first lesson and a scripture to go along with each one the fastest! So we were both writing like maniacs, it was a pretty good time. And then we just had a bunch of trainings from the mission president and his wife and the assistants to the presidents! and then Elder Gunnell and I gave a training on finding, which I was in charge of putting together! 

     But we had some really cool things happen this week. We had a few miracles. In the beginning of the week I felt like I should just randomly call one of our new contacts that we had a hard time getting a hold of, and when I called she was like "oh ya I would love to meet you, can you meet me right now?" and so we buzzed over and gave her the first lesson and she got really excited about it. She invited us back for Saturday. So we went back on Saturday and we took a recent convert member so she could have someone she knew in the ward other than us. The lesson was powerful but I think she was really overloaded with all three of us there. But she still accepted a baptismal date. So we are really excited to meet with her next week. She is honestly so prepared, when we got there she said that we were sent from God because she needed help, and she had a list of all of the things she wants to change as well as all of her strengths!!!! She is so fantastic. 

     The other miracle that we had. We arrived at a dinner apt about ten minutes early so we decided to knock some doors. We said a quick prayer that we would be able to find a new contact to share the gospel with and then we just walked to one of the neighbours house. This girl in her mid 20's answered and she had no idea what missionaries do and what gospel means and if she believes in God or not. But she was very curious and so she invited us back! When we went back she wasn't there because she got called into work but she left us a note..... how cool is that she actually remembered we were coming. She remembered our names too! but were going back this week to talk to her! her name is Teagan.

     So I went on exhanges this week, and guess what I got to do! I got to drive!!!!!! YA I DROVE A CAR! it was probably one of the most scariest things I have ever done! Everything is backwards! They drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right side and the blinkers are on the right side. So every time I tried to blinker the windshield wipers would turn on!!!! and they have all of those crazy roundabout things which are super confusing expecially when your on the wrong side of the road!!!!! But it was a very good experience! I didn't die, so that was good!

This Sunday I was called last minute to give a talk in sacrament! I was actually super excited to talk. So I wrote this talk about having Christ in the center of our lives! and right before I go up to give this talk, I leaned over to Bishop Beckworth and asked who was speaking after me, and he said "there is just a hymn" so as I am up there sharing my talk I look up at the clock and there is still a long time until the meeting ends and I was the last speaker. So I just really started to dive into my stories and get really deep into the scriptures, I just got really into my talk and about five minutes before the meeting was supposed to end, this little piece of paper flew from behind me and landed on the pulpit. guess what it said? "NEED TO CLOSE - THANKS FROM BISHOP"  and so I shut my talk down and went back to sit. and I soon realized that the hymn after me was just a rest hymn and then there was another speaker! OOPS my bad! Needless to say that meeting went on for quite a long time! I felt so bad hahah I was so embarresed! but the bishop was really cool about it!

 I love you all, have a fantastic week! and I would encourage you to go to the temple as often as you can! the temple is so amazing and you will not regret going!

Love/ Elder Wiser

this is Elder Gunnell and I knocking doors in the sunset

Elder albrectson and Elder wheeler and I at golden review

A funny picture of the book of Mormon sun set! It's the word of God! 
You can tell by how its glowing!

A picture of me wearing dads name tag while knocking doors

A picture of the wonderful spring day!

August 16, 2015

So this week, like all weeks was crazy!   Monday at Olinda falls, it was so muddy and I got mud all over my leg, when I went to wipe it off there was this ball of mud that would not come off so I kept hitting it! and then it stuck to my hand! and then I realized it was not mud .... it was a leech, A LEECH WAS SUCKING MY BLOOD! But that was only the first of many! it was like the leaches were raining from the trees! we both got them everywhere and you can't feel them because they are covered in this numbing stuff! it was crazy.

      Earlier this week I was asked to give a training to the district and it was on the Christ like attribute of hope! Hope is so amazing some of the stuff I talked about was that hope is shown by confidence in what you are saying is true, optimism, enthusiasm and perseverance! when we show hope with confidence, optimism, enthusiasm, and perseverance, then we are blessed, which then strengthens our faith! its a really cool cycle!

      oh and I got to see David Archuleta, Brad Wilcox, and President Dudfield who is an area seventy! It was the coolest fireside ever! there was only like 100 missionaries there and it was held in a chapel! David sang "Be Still My Soul" and "Glorious" it was so amazing to hear it live. The spirit was so strong! and then he told us about how he left all of his fortune and fame and a deal that he had with Sony because he knew he had to serve a mission! He said that just like us he didn't feel adequate to preach the gospel but through trusting in the Lord he received strength to do the large task ahead of him! Then Brad Wilcox talked and he is an amazing speaker! He had us laughing so hard! He talked about how as members of the church it is our job to spread the gospel! In his words it was a "birth right" because we get a double portion of blessings but it is our duty to take care of the others! He related the our life on earth to a cruise ship! As believers in Christ we are like the crew and the rest of the world is like all of the guests on the ship! As a crew we are blessed to know where we are going, but sometimes it is tempting because all of the guests are having so much fun! They might seem like they are having a good time but we are receiving something that they are not.... a pay check! A pay check of the spirit in our lives! As believers in Christ it is our duty to get the whole ship back to safety and help it run smoothly along the way! That is just a really condensed version of what he said but it was so powerful! and the President Dudfield didn't have much time but he bore his testimony as a special witness of Christ!!!! it was so powerfull! 

    This week we had some cool things happen with investigators! We called one of the former investigators named mawite but you say it ( moo-ee-tay) she is only 17 but she was asking some of the best questions like " how can I get a stronger relationship with Christ?" and "so how can the book of Mormon help out my life?" it was amazing and so we had this fantastic lesson and then extended the baptismal question!!!!!! and she said she had already been baptised so we are currently trying to help her understand that it is necessary for her to be baptised by someone holding the priesthood authority of God! And then we have this other investigator named Algie! He has had the hardest life I can imagin! He wasn't born of his father he was born of his next door neighbor but nobody knew about it and his mom disowned him and has never ever talked to him! His wife left him because he got hit by a car and couldn't bring home enough money and then when he was recovering he tried to live with his son  and his son came and stabbed him and almost beat him to death with a cricket bat! but all he has left is God and so we get the wonderful oportuninty to help him find strength! he can't read because his son really messed him up with the bat and so we gave him the book of Mormon audio and he loves it! But he is so nice he is so kind! despite all that has happened! he is a talker though and he talks so much that we cant even get our testimonies in and so I started raising my hand! Ya I just sat there and raised my hand until he gave me a break to start talking! I had my hand in the air for about two minutes before he finally stopped talking! it was crazy but we have such a strong relationship with him! I hope he comes to church next week! and we had this other less active guy named Colin and his house smells so bad that last time I was in there It made me sick for the rest of the day! so Elder Gunnel and I thought of the best idea! We got paper and covered it in this very nice smelling mint chapstick and crumpeled it up and then stuffed it in our noses! so we both taught a lesson with our noses plugged with chapstic paper! And he didn't notice so that was good!

We got to go to a baptism of a man in our ward named Conrad! He was excommunicated but now he changed his life and he has the strongest testimony! he asked if I would talk at his baptism so I gave a short talk on baptism! it was such a cool day! 

A spiritual thought for the day! I want to commit everyone who reads this to go and listen or read the talk "Self Worth" by Hyrum W. Smith! it talks about belief windows! it has helped me so much and it can help you to if you apply the principles into your life! I love you all! the church is true and it blesses families every day! have a great week 

  

 Love Elder Wiser

these are some pictures of my flat

this was mount Dandenong again at some falls called Olinda falls

elder gunnel and I knocking doors at 8:30 in s dark area

August 9, 2015

So this week has been so awesome. I had a lot of growing experiences. My companion is such a boss! We work hard but we have so much fun! Here is little side story. During lunch we found this laminator and I thought it would be a good idea to put a bunch of sticky notes through it. And I turned them into ninja stars, so now we have like 5 ninja stars and we just throw them at random times. But when I tried to make more I got grounded from the laminator:( but we are like best friends already. I told him about eggie and so he is trying to learn it. Whenever we are around other missionaries we try to speak it as fast as we can! Every morning we do crazy insanity workouts. Which leaves me sore for the rest of the day! Elder Gunnell was like a gym rat before he came out so he loves working out. He can bench 265 pounds and he only weighs like 150, its nuts. During one of our workouts we accidently locked the back door. So we were locked out in the freezing cold and so I had to crawl through this tiny bathroom window.... it was soo small. And then I did some acrobatics so I didn't fall in the toilet!. Sorry that my thoughts are so scattered I will try to pull them together. Last week (my first week) we had so many meetings and planning sessions and trainings that we didn't even come close to reaching the zone goal and so we wanted to make up for it this week and so we made a goal of getting 20 finding hours. And that's probably not that much compared to what everyone else does but we ended up getting 24 hours (that's the most in the mission) and we were blessed by finding 17 new contacts! It was super amazing. One of the contacts name was Amy. We knocked on her door and she tried to make every excuse that she could think of right off the bat. she was like "I'm sick, sorry my husband is not home and wont be until six, and I'm really busy, and I just don't think I can handle something else in my life right now." ect. ect. But we decided that we should go back and try at six to see if the husband was home. So we knocked on the door and when Amy answered she was a completely different lady. She was like "I'm sorry my husband is not home yet but I think this is something that I should look into.... I really need Jesus in my life" Elder Gunnell and I were so stoked we were like skipping down the sidewalk for days. And we had continuous stories like that all week, people would just come out of nowhere and want the gospel. We met this guy walking on the street when we were headed into an apt. And he was like "if your missionaries you probably have something for me to read?" but we had already given out our Books of Mormon so we handed him a pamphlet, and in the top corner of the pamphlets there is a picture of the Book of Mormon. He stopped and pointed to the picture and he was like "what is that?..... I want one of those" it was so awesome so he walked a couple of blocks with us back to the car to get a book of Mormon! so amazing. Another thing that was crazy, this Saturday we went on splits. But not any splits, they are called to serve splits. My companion was a priest from one of the neighboring wards. so my companion who has no idea what to do and I, who also has no idea what to do, were out teaching lessons in the park and tracting and trying to meet less active families! That was a pretty exciting experience! You never know how much you don't know until you have to train someone else! It all turned out good though! We both had a good experience. 

So you know how I drank that cup of milo and then my companion gave me a blessing. ya he is dead convinced that he took all of the symptoms from me and is suffering them instead. This week he had every symptom of being a celiac and it like wrecked him! Now we always joke that we are so unified that if I eat wheat he feels it and if he works out too hard then I am sore the next day! He is now proxy celiac. Guess who I get to go meet this week. David Archuleta and Brad Wilcox are coming this Wenesday to do a fireside for our area! and we get to go! I am so stoked! 

So awkward story! We found this beautiful house and the front yard was amazing.... but it was more like a-maze-ing. It took us forever to get to the front door, but there was this beautiful lounge deck and there was a swimming pool and so we knocked on the door and this lady looked very frightened as she opened the door and the first words she said were "why are you at my back door" hahahah we had been wondering through her back yard some how and ended up knocking on her back door! How scary would that be to hear a knock at your back door and open it to see two men in suits!? haha so that was awesome! so here is my spiritual thought for the week. Neal A. Maxwell once said "lets not write checks with our tongue that our conduct cant cash" so basically be humble, if we are humble then the Lord will make us stronger than ever before. James 4:10 says "humble yourself in the sight of the lord and he shall lift your up! that is such a cool promise. and that leads me to another amazing scripture ether 12:27 the Lord gives us weakness so we will be humble. but that's not bad because through Jesus Christ and his Atonement all weak things become strengths. well I love you all have an amazing week! love elder wiser

this is the plane I flew in its huge!

here is the city of Melbourne from the plane

this is some tag art right when I got of the plane. this picture was taken out of the bus window! that's Melbourne up close

THESE are pictures from the Dandenong ranges last p day they are beautiful. it ended up snowing on us ! it was crazy. so around here all the birds are like beautiful parrots! like what we have in zoos back in the states. they are so common!

this is my suit with my new shoes I got from an op shop

August 2, 2015

Wow so this has been such an awesome week!

My home address is 16 marlow street Mooroolbark, VIC 3138

So my companion is Elder Gunnel!! He is the mantis!! Or in other words he is a stud! We get along so well. He is from Mesa, Arizona. We wake up at six every morning to do insanity workouts, so I am getting big out here! I'm already training for you sterling! He is so flippin funny! We work hard but everything that we do is so funny as well! He reminds me of Sterling just a little, but he is a lot shorter! He looks kinda like Link off of Zelda! hahah he is funny!

Ok so there are some main differences that I thought were really funny. Everyone here drives on the left side of the road!!! I literally scream every time we make a right turn haha. there are only small trucks and the roads are pretty skinny in the suburbs. every other car down here is what they call a ute but it is a el comino like the cars with truck beds. everyone is crazy about them down here! uh they call trash cans rubbish bins and they are tiny. the trash can that you pull to the street only goes to my waist and its like a foot and a half wide! they call breakfast breckies and they call mcdonalds macca's so that is different. the d word and the h word are not bad so the bishop uses them when he talks to us and my comp uses them while explaining the scriputres. its so funny to me it catches me off guard every time! they say mate ...... they actually say it.....  and they say heaps ..... they say it heaps.. chirp is like an agreement word.... so if you said that food was good I would say chirp. I thought that was kinda funny. and when they describe things they instead of saying oh wow that is as cool as a freezer they just say wow that is cool as.... does that make sense... if not sterling can explain it to you! so the awkward moment for the week I was talking to these chinees elders and i asked them where they were from and they said they were from main land china ..... but to my very American ears I heard "made in china" and for some dumb reason I decided to be a parrot and I said out loud ... hahah made in china. and nobody laughed and I didn't realize what was going on until my comp explained that they said main land china!!! so ya we got a good laugh out of that. so they are really good about gluten here! the store has a little more gluten free food than back at home. and all the members know what it is .... but my companion doesn't... so when we were in an investigators home and they offered us milo he said yes and I just drank it thinking it was hot chocolate.... but it is pure barley.... which he rememberd after I drank it all:) he felt soo bad so he called over the other elders and gave me a blessing so it wouldn't affect me and that was three days ago and I am going strong!!! the power of the priesthood is real!!. so we have two people on date for baptism brian and cathy. brian is a stud he is going to counciling for word of wisdom things and cathy is a little on the edge with things but we are working on her. we have 6 investigators and one of them is named barry... I called barry from the area book because he was a former investigator and he is super exited to meet with tomorrow. and another is named algie he knows so much about god. and most of his beliefs are correct but he talks so much that we have a hard time getting in our beliefs!!! he is so funny so we just have to be really bold with him. we are going back to teach him on Thursday!  so ya I am loving the mission! it is quite a lot of adjusting but its all for the better! I love getting to study for two hours every morning and then I get an extra hour for golden study(study because Im new). and I love bearing constant testimony. my testimony is strengthened every time I share it and so I share it as much as possible. I got up and bore my testimony at church this sunday and guess who got up right after me..... elder lynch... well brother lynch now. he was the elder from Australia that served in our ward and  went home right before I left. ya I am serving in his ward now! he stood up right after me and then pointed right to me and he said "brothers and sisters this is staaann ... oh crap elder wiser. I served in his area on my mission" and then he bore his testimony on missionary work! it was so good to see him. he is taking us out to lunch today and then feeding us at his house twice this month. oh man iiiiiii loooovvvvveeee auuuusssstttrrraaalliiiaa!!!! its chilly here but I only need to wear that wool jacket that we got right before I left. it is raining as we speak. and it rains quite a lot. but the church is true. and the book of Mormon is the word of god! look up this scripture romans 8:38-39 god loves us individually and nothing can change that! have a good week back in America!! love you all       love elder wiser

oh and guess what I am killing my companion... this is his last transfer... so we are at opposite ends of the spectrum I am new as and he is near the end. but he is still a gun.... he works hard and is super obedient

I ran out of time to send pictures. but I will send them next week. I love you all so much have a good week! and read the book of Mormon ;)