New Companion in Elizabeth Downs

G'day family,

It has been a very good but busy week. For pday we went to St. Kilda Adventure Park again with the whole zone that was fun.  We played capture the flag, and it was the Americans in our zone against the rest of the world.

Yesterday I was able to give the guy that we baptized last week the Aaronic priesthood. That was a good experience.

Now for the information that I know you are dying to hear.... I am still in the Elizabeth

Downs area... but my companion has changed.  My new companion came into the mission the same transfer as me. His name is elder Sie. it is pronounced like sea. He is from the wonderful island of Tahiti.  He is still learning English as we go because amazingly he was only in the MTC for 2 weeks even though he didn’t know English before. He speaks very good for not being out very long. It is funny because he gets some words mixed up like whale and while, and his conjugation is funny.  He speaks both French and Tahitian.  He tells me of some stories of what he does back home, and pretty much every day he would go gun fishing in the ocean and he would see a lot of sharks and eels would attack and stuff.  It sounds like the life. I am excited to do the Lord’s work with him.

Have a sweet as week. I love you all.

Love, Elder Hyde

AUSSIE TERM OF THE WEEK:

The weather is starting to get warm so the Aussies aren't going to need there trek pants and jumpers anymore.

trek pants = sweat pants
jumper = jacket or sweater

New Investigator, New Member

Hello family,

The weather here is starting to warm up which i am excited for because i am a little tired of the rain.

On Monday we went to St Kilda adventure park. It is sweet there, it is like a playground for adults. They have huge slides, a long zip line, big swings, and these quad swing things. I will send some videos home of it. We went last Monday as a district and today we are going as a zone.

We got a new investigator a few weeks ago and for the longest time we thought his name was Bjunus, we called him that for a few weeks and he didn’t seem to mind, he is from the Congo too so there is a bit of a language barrier. But anyway, one day we were at a member’s house and they were telling us about how much mail they get for the previous tenant and that they were tired of it. When we looked at the name it was Djunus. We connected all the dots and at that moment we realized that we had been calling him slightly the wrong name but he never told us. I just thought that was kind of a funny story of how we found out his real name.

They don’t build basements over here, so people always ask about them and wonder if we really have them because they see them on American movies and stuff.

This was the last week of the transfer and we had an exciting way to end it, with a baptism. Elder Pack performed the baptism and they asked me to do the confirmation. It is always awesome to see people realize the blessings that they have been missing out on in life and then make the necessary changes to get these blessings.  He had to go through a lot of changes to get to the point of baptism such as smoking and drinking coffee, but as he quit those things I could tell a difference in him. It actually took him a long time to get over coffee but we went over one day and I could tell there was something different about him for the better and then he told us he was off of coffee and I then knew why he looked different.

It is transfer week so farewell for this week and I will talk to you next week from wherever I am. Have a good week. Love ya.

love the studly Elder Hyde

AUSSIE TERM OF THE WEEK:

Since you guys are starting the draft for the NFL fantasy football

If you say football here they think you are talking about their Aussie rules footy so,

NFL = gridiron

catch the ball = mark the ball

Wildlife Refuge, Got Milk? Baptism to Come

Hello family,

It has been a great week. I guess I will start out by describing the experience at the wildlife reserve.  We had a sweet investigator take us , it is actually the RLDS lady. At the reserve that had all sorts of the Australian animals such as emu, Tasmanian devil, kangaroo, wallaby, wombat, koala, and some dingoes. Most of them were used to having humans around and you could walk up to them and feed them. The kangaroos were sweet, they have some sharp claws and they would eat right out of your hand.  I actually got to see a baby roo jump into its mums pouch and I took a video of it so I will probably be sending another disc soon. The emu would eat from your hand also but it hurt because he would bite your hand and the food.  Wallabies are cool, they are just like little kangaroo.  I was also able to touch a koala, they are so soft it kind of reminded me of touching an afro, but even softer, and the claws don’t look so nice either.  The Tasmanian devil was funny he just ran around in circles.

This story isn’t necessarily spiritual but it is interesting. Because we went to the reserve last week we weren’t able to do shopping on pday, which means we would have had to figure out a meal time to go shopping during the week. The good part is that we already had enough food at the flat, we were only missing a few items such as milk.  Before we were able to go shopping we had a tea date with a member, and he must have been inspired because just before we left he asked us if we had milk at our flat, we thought that was a weird question because it’s not very often that somebody asks us that. He said that he bought an extra one and offered it to us so we had milk and we didn’t have to give up meal time to go and get milk which was awesome. There are some amazing people here that will do anything for their missionaries.

We have a baptism this week of a man that has been investigating for about 8 months, he quit smoking earlier but the only thing that was holding him back was coffee. He finally decided that he wanted to be baptized and enjoy those blessings more than the enjoyment he got from coffee. He is awesome.

I had my first tacos this week. They don’t have much Mexican food here. I forgot how good they were though.

Well, have a great week, I love you guys.

Elder Hyde

AUSSIE TERM OF THE WEEK:

We had kind of an embarrassing moment this week we were talking about suits for some reason and about our slacks, and the guy was laughing at us because slacks here are pants that girls wear. So they are suit pants not slacks here.

Short Letter

Hey family,

Sorry I don’t have much time to write today because we have an investigator that is going to take us to a wildlife park to see Australian animals. So even though i don’t have much time to write this week I will have a lot to write about next week.

I had a funny dream this week. My mind has gotten so used to driving on the other side of the road, that every time I have a memory of driving back home it is on the wrong side. So in one of my dreams i was driving and as I was driving I realized I was in America and all of the sudden I switched sides, it was just kind of funny how our minds play tricks on us.

Have you guys fixed our fridge yet because we have an investigator that is having the same problem with their fridge so if you guys fixed ours maybe I could tell them how to fix it?

Hopefully those pictures and videos make up for this short letter. sorry I have no more time but I love you guys and promise that I will write a lot more next week. Have a good week.

Love Elder Hyde