Mt. Isa

Mt. Isa

Sunday, April 22, 2012

April 23, 2012


A photo of the countryside near the Somerset Ward building in Plainland.

Hey Family,

The week has been interesting. We're short on km's since we had to drive into Brassall (Brassall is a suburb of Ipswich) twice for General Conference weekend so that put us over the pace for km's. This week we've had to try to use the car as little as possible so as to catch up. We don’t want to go over at the end of the month. The good thing is that we now have a good 700 km's to use until the end of the month. We should be set. I hate having that limitation to doing Missionary work. We had to get our car serviced this last week. In the last 5 months I've put so many km's on that car it is crazy, we just drive heaps. I think in all I've put 15,000 km's on the car. It is at almost 85,000 km's now so it will most likely be traded in sooner or later. The Corolla is running like a champ all the same though, even after many crazy Missionaries thrashing it and it being in the country.


Monday we got picked up by the District Leader who drove us to a Zone P-day in the city. We just played sports and hung out. Some ward member had left a bag of frozen Dim-Sims in the freezer and one of the fresh missionaries put it in the microwave for 20 minutes and went back to play sports and forgot about it. It smoked up the building. Luckily it didn't catch anything on fire but it was kind of sad all the same.

A Dim Sims is Chinese-inspired meat dumpling-style snack food popular in Australia. The dish normally consists of a large ball of pork or other meat, cabbage and flavourings (ginger), encased in a wrapper similar to that of a traditional shumai dumpling. Dim Sims differ from typical Chinese dumplings in that they are often much larger, have a thicker skin and are shaped more robustly. They are primarily sold in Fish and chip shops, service stations, corner stores and Chinese or Asian takeaway outlets in Australia.

Tuesday and Wednesday we just worked hard and visited a lot of people we hadn't seen in a while. Thursday was Elder Howard's birthday. Tuesday though one of the members had put on a little birthday dinner for him and it was good fun. He got a nice cake and a couple of presents. Thursday was his birthday but we had training in Ipswich so we took the train in.

I got my package Thursday. Just so you know, all the other Elders were jealous I got such a big box. Thank you for that I really need those things. Everything got through alright. The shaver is good and works really well. I love the Snap-On calendar too. I opened it at a member house. It was funny because when they saw the calendar they though it was definitely not going to be a G-rated calendar and why my parents would sent something like that … lol. (it had cars only...not girlie pictures) It was funny. All good though. I gave away the Twinkies away. They're not all that great.



Lake Wivenhoe

We had to visit with a member way up in the top of our area on Saturday. Another member took us up and on the way we stopped at Lake Wivenhoe Dam and took a couple of pictures. It was very beautiful and a really cool thing to see. A year ago the Lake was filled to capacity and when they had to let out heaps of water it flooded all of Brisbane city (Kiefer participated in some of the clean-up from that flood). It was an interesting sight to see. Oh and on a spiritual note, we had a good experience Friday. We have an investigator about 30 minutes from where we live that we've been visiting for a while. We have been trying to catch her at a time when we could teach a lesson. She and her sons have quite a bit of property and horses so we've helped feed horses and do chores around the place just to build trust. On Friday though we were able to sit down and have a good discussion and get to know her. We didn't teach much but at the end of the lesson we simply asked to close with a prayer. Elder Howard offered a simple prayer and after that she was just in tears and said no one had ever done that for her. She was definitely touched by the Spirit. We'll be working with her in the coming weeks.

I talked to the Missionaries in the area where Allison (Arlene's daughter – a Hatch cousin) is she just got married to an Aussie guy that I met when I was there. He's pretty interesting and I'm sure they're doing well. They're coming to church and doing pretty good. I'll prolly end up running into them again before I leave.

Other than that not a lot is going on. This next Wednesday is ANZAC day. It is basically like Australia's Memorial Day. Proselyting on that day will be challenging but we'll do our best. Thanks for the emails have a great week. I'll be praying for you. We'll talk to you next week.

Love you

Elder Hatch

No comments:

Post a Comment