What's New Down Under

Sorry, I know this is a day late but we had the Temple this week so Preparation day was moved to Tuesday, hence why the email is coming right now. Man I love you all! I hope you are having a blast down in Brazil, the Southern hemisphere rocks! The Mission is so good I am loving it! I feel things are finally all clicking and falling into place and I am finally understanding what it takes to be a good missionary! I am far from where I want to be but everyday I coming closer and closer to becoming that missionary I want to be. I seriously love it so much! Just a side note, uhh, I need my other journal here as soon as possible. It might even be safe to say I need two more… so if you could send them down here that would be great. I looked at the distribution center here and they don’t have them and I really like the ones with the three rings because I can put pictures in it and stuff, so yeah that would be great! I love you all so much. Jordan, Dalton and Caleb don’t destroy the house I want to see it again.

Just so you know expect an email from a member from here named Rachel Laugery, just wanted to give you a heads up.

First off thank you Sanchez, Van Natter, Tilley, Gillette and Terry families for sending me a letter and your Christmas card. I loved them! Also thank you Bishop Askins and Morgan Rogers for the letters!

This week has been so good, also super hot, but it has still been good! Lets break it down!

Building the Kingdom:
Brendan Burke- So we taught him last week and yesterday. Last week I taught him about the Word of Wisdom and luckily he didn’t have a problem with that! We also taught him about keeping the Sabbath Day Holy, which is kind of tough for him because he is a manager of a Pizza Hut but he is really trying hard to make it work out. Then yesterday President Scruggs came out teaching with us because he just wanted to I guess, I didn’t want to ask too many questions but I was sure nervous. So Elder Vernon and I taught the Gospel and President chimed in a few times, it went very well and we set a baptismal date for the 30th of January so it went way good and we are way excited and President was very impressed so that was relieving!

Judy Chang- Judy is going back to Taiwan for six weeks and she leaves Saturday! So that is kind of sad but this past week when we taught her she brought a friend, Grace, who is interested and she understands a lot more… a lot more, she lives in an area of our area called Toongabbie so the goal of our next appointment with Judy, which is tomorrow is to pick Grace up and get her information so we can start teaching her!

Luke- Luke was a potential that we talked to. He is a little slow but wanted us to teach him, so we did. We taught him the Restoration. It was so neat when we were talking about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon his face lit up and when we challenged him to pray to know if it was true he threw us a grin and said I already know it is true! Which he really does, the veil is thinner for him! It was a really nice experience!

My Week:
This past Preparation day we played Ultimate with my district and some members and I tore it up! I represented the U.S.A. very well! No worries there!

I went on an exchange with one of the Zone Leaders, Elder Weston, he is from W.A. that’s Western Australia and he leaves at the end of this transfer, he is a way good guy. I was a little nervous for it though because it was in my area so I was the one leading us around and planning for it, but everything went really well and I found out I am not that bad of missionary, it was nice to learn that. Also we had a planned member lesson and I had the opportunity to share Stephanie Pickharts conversion story and it went really well so here is a shout out to Stephanie! Thank you so much for letting me be a part of that! I loved both your letters, they made my transfer!

So I had my first real Zone Conference, it went really well and I learned so much from President Scruggs and the other missionaries. We talked about this past year! Our goal for baptisms for 2009 was 252. Right now we have 251 and Church headquarters has 260 so we hope at least one of those nine will be ours, but still from what president said it was an incredible year. 33% increase from last year, not to shabby! We also learned how important members are. We learned as missionaries we spent 80% of our time ( Finding, Tracting, Street Contacting, etc) on 7% of the baptisms. We spent 20% on the other 93%. Those baptisms came from member referrals and part member families. I think that is amazing! Member work is so important so if you know of someone who you think might be interested; ask them, it won’t hurt anything.

If any of you are interested, Sister Scruggs started a blog, I think this is funny, for the mission. www.australiasydneynorthmission.blogspot.com. So if you want go check it out be my guest!

Mom you will love this! I have gotten multiple comments that it looks like I am losing weight!

Interesting about Australia:
So, no one here, well a lot of people don’t have air conditioning here. So the way they keep there homes cool is by getting these metal blind things that cover the window, and some times the door, completely so the sun won't come in. It is funny because it looks like they are expecting to be bombed or something, especially when you are tracting and you come across a home that has their windows and doors covered. I found it funny.

So when you are learning to drive here you have to put these metal plates on your car and it identifies what level of driver you are. It is nice because when you see those plates you stay as far away as possible!

Well it has been an amazing week, an amazing couple of months down under! Thank you all for your support and love! Keep in touch!

Love,
Elder Landon Raphael Brough