Tranfer Week

Hello family,

Tomorrow is transfers and we will find out tonight if we are going to be transferred.  There are some reasons why I would like to stay, and those are that there will be a couple getting married and then the husband will be baptized, and we also have a teenager that will be baptized, so we are having good success in the area that I am in right now. 

I had a great week this past week.  We had what we call trade off, where we trade companions for the day. It ended up that I stayed in my area for the day so I had to do all the planning for the day and be kind of like a senior companion. I was kind of scared to take over but it all worked out and I had a great day.  It made me go out of my comfort zone but it made me more confident in my missionary skills.

I cut my own hair this week. I just did all one length but it is pretty short!  I am running out of time but  I love you guys and hope that you have a great week.

love Elder Hyde

AUSSIE TERM OF THE WEEK

They say "reckon" a lot instead of "think"

heaps = a lot

My favorite saying is when they combine these two words in a sentence like "I reckon it’s heaps good"

Testimony of Prayer and Aussie Lingo

Hello,

I can't believe that I have been in Australia a month now, but it is even harder to believe that Derek is getting married this week. I am excited for them and wish them the best. It is funny to hear that you guys are getting the cutout of me, that should be interesting.

Sounds like the jazz got lucky with their picks, should be exciting. The last couple of days it has been really rainy here also. I woke up in the middle of the night to rain that sounded like a jet engine taking off.  I don’t think the roofs here have much insulation because they don’t really need it, so when it rains it is loud.  People have told us that there is a lot of flooding in America, is that affecting places around you or no? 

I am excited to hear that Ben is getting ready to enter the MTC and that everything is going well.

I have had a great week this week.  We had a zone p day on Monday and for that we played rugby.   It was actually hard to get the hang of it, probably because it doesn’t make that much sense to me that you have to always throw the ball backwards even though you want to go forward, but it is really fun.  

Tuesday was my companions 6 month mark so we burned a tie for him.  Funny thing is that we live right next to a petrol station so we were kind of scared to burn it.

My testimony of prayer was strengthened this week. In the middle of the night I woke up and I was having a fever.  I was worried so I decided to pray and ask that I would be able to wake up and be able to do the activities that we had planned for the day. sure enough when I woke up in the morning I didn’t have a fever and the only thing I had left was a minor headache and I was able to function for the day which was good because that was the day we had a training with Elder Callister.  He was the area seventy of the Australia missions and now I believe he is going to be serving in the presidency of the seventy.  So it was awesome to talk with him and learn from him.  We got invited this week to go to a brekky with a whole bunch of ecclesiastical leaders.  We thought that we were going to be bible bashing with them and stuff but it turned out that religion wasn’t even discussed very much.

There is never a dull moment and I am learning new things all of the time.  Good luck with the wedding and enjoy life.  I love you guys.

love Elder Hyde

In my letters now I think I will write a little section of interesting lingo that I have learned for the week.

AUSSIE LINGO FOR THE WEEK

whipper snipper (weed wacker)

touch wood   (knock on wood)

rocked up  (showed up)

zed  (the letter Z)

Blessings

Dear family,

Sorry I am in a hurry, I have been having computer problems this morning so this will be a quick email.

I gave my first blessing(s) this week.  My companion had a tooth that was bothering him so he asked if I would give him one.  Then the next day an investigator asked us for one and he chose me to do it.  I was kind of nervous, but I just relied on the spirit and it went well.

We ate at a less active families house on Wednesday and they made us lamb chops, they ended up being the lamb that we caught the previous week.  It was kind of cool to catch and then eat it.

I played my first didgeridoo this week.  It is harder than it looks, but the member that showed us is pretty much a professional.  His name is brother Ween and he looks like Steve Irwin and sounds like him.  Next time we eat with him I am going to ask for a picture with him.

Sorry this is such a short letter but I want you guys to know that I love you and the work here is going great, we have a few potential baptisms on the way so hopefully those work out.

love Elder Hyde

My Flat

My flat is actually somewhat nice, it has two bedrooms, one has our beds and the other has an ironing board.  We have a living room with our desks and some nice chairs.  We also have a kitchen.  We have a bathroom and a laundry room with a washer but no dryer.  We have to hang our clothes to dry and use the iron because they get wrinkled.  Then we have a garage for the car.

Sharing My Happiness

I forgot my camera stuff to send pictures, so you will have to deal with a short letter instead. Sorry. I will remember it sometime. it was awesome to talk to the whole family and see how everyone was doing. Was Connor excited when he found out he would have a brother instead of a sister?

I have had a great week. it started out with helping people catch some sheep. We pretty much had to chase them around until they got tired and stopped running. We were able to trap a couple and jump on them to catch them though.

I ate at a members house this week and I guess they have a new missionary initiation thing.  They have pure chili extract that is super hot, they keep it in a glass vile, if they kept it in plastic I’m sure it would burn through it.  It is so hot that to get it out of the container you have to use a toothpick and only get a little drop. they made me eat it and my mouth was on fire.

One cool experience that happened was an investigator committed himself to a baptism date without us asking. his name is Jason. The gospel has changed his life so much. At first his family’s house was messy and it didn’t seem like they had much love in the home but as we have been teaching them, their house is always clean they are all happy and you can tell that they love each other more.  This is the true church and I love it, it is awesome to be able to share my happiness with others whether they want to listen or not.

I love you guys.

love Elder Hyde

Moving People in More Ways than One

Hello family,

First of all I will be calling next week on Sunday, I believe it will be 4 5 or 6 o’clock there, so just make sure you are by the phone. Don’t worry about adding international or anything I will just buy a cheap card here and everything will work out good.  My companion said the cards are very cheap. I also forgot my camera cords and stuff but I will try and get pictures home somehow. I don’t think that I will be able to write in a day by day format yet because there are so many things that I want to tell you guys about but I can’t remember what days they have happened and stuff like that so I will just tell you a bunch of stories not necessarily in chronological order.

I tried my first vegemite this week and I actually liked it because it reminds me of ramen noodle flavoring. Since it reminded me of ramen noodle flavoring my companion and I decided to try it on raw ramen noodles and it reminded me of the good ol' days.

 

I’m sorry to disappoint you guys but I have yet to flush a toilet that flushes in a circular motion, so i don't know if they flush the opposite way or not.

Something that you will have to try is TIM TAMS, they are delicious, and they eat them with stuff called MILO which is basically like unsweetened hot chocolate. but the trick to eating them is you bite opposite corners of the TIM TAM and then use the TIM TAM like a straw and suck up the hot chocolate, after a few seconds the TIM TAM starts to melt from the inside and you have to slam it in your mouth. They call it TIM TAM SLAM. If you can find any in America I would encourage you to try it. I crave it every night before bed.

Last p-day I learned how to play some rugby, it is fun and tiring. Today we are herding sheep so I might see some koalas or kangaroos, it will be fun if I do.  

We have helped a lot of people move. It is kind of funny because the roads here aren't very big, which also means they don’t have very big vehicles or anything. so they just hook up little trailers to the back of their cars and pile it full of stuff.  It is kind of funny to see little cars pulling big loads of couches and stuff.  I don’t think Luke’s truck would be able to get around on the streets here.  

I got my first taste of how ineffective tracting is this week.  We tracted a whole street and didn’t get any return appointments.  Most the people just shut the door right away when they saw us, some were polite though.  One incident was kind of funny when a lady opened the door and we saw a dog the size of a horse, luckily the screen door was still closed or I would have been scared.  When we saw the dog we said to the lady that is a big dog, her response was "yeah, and it doesn't like strangers" then she shut the door.  

We have seen a lot of success contacting people different ways though.  I have been meeting some very neat people here.  A lot of people smoke in this area and most of them want to quit and have told us that they have tried before. When we have introduced them to the power of prayer and the Holy Ghost a lot of them have been able to quit, it is an awesome testimony builder for me.  I love it, it is fun to meet new people and the situations they are in and try to help them out by bringing them closer to Christ and his teachings.  I have seen the changes that the gospel brings to people out here for the better.

Well my time is out, I love you guys.

Love Elder Hyde

My Flat

My flat is actually somewhat nice.  It has two bedrooms, one has our beds and the other has an ironing board.  Then we have a living room with our desks and some nice chairs.  We also have a kitchen.  We have a bathroom.  We have a Laundry room with a washer but no dryer so I have to hang my clothes to dry and use the iron because they get wrinkled.  We have a garage for the car.