Holiday and Zone Conference, Burning Ties and Investigators

Hello family,
It’s been a great week. We had a public holiday on Monday so we worked that day and then Tuesday was transfer so that is why I am emailing today.  I am happy to say that I am still in Elizabeth Downs with Elder Sie.  I can't believe that I will be here for another 6 weeks. It is a good place to be though.  The people are very humble.

Thanks for sending me with the bug spray that you sent me with because it came in handy this week.  Not exactly for the bugs, but to burn our ties. Elder Sie and I both burned ties for our six month. We did a companionship tie burning. ha.

We have become really good friends with an Indian couple that are members.  They call us their kids and fed us like 4 times last week. They cook really good food too so I am not complaining. But the scale when I step on it complains. They make really good curry. I had never tried it until then though.  Elder Sie likes going there because they make fish for him so I have been trying the fish as well. It has been alright.  They made a Polynesian specialty of fish, they make it with raw fish and coconut milk and lemon and tomatoes. I tried it and it tasted good but I still couldn’t get over that it was raw. it was all in the mind.

We had a zone conference this week, and we went to the temple for that.  It was sweet because we had about 50 missionaries in the temple at the same time and also president and sister Poulton.

Elder Sie was telling me about a crazy guy in Tahiti that drinks cow pies.  His mind is all messed up because he uses the cow pies as a sort of drug.  So now I know why dad is so crazy because he used to eat the cow pies as well.

You asked a question a couple weeks ago that I never answered about how we find people to teach.  That is the trick here.  We are constantly trying to come up with new and better ways to find because tracting and stuff just aren’t effective enough.  The best way is to work with the members to get referrals from them. But that doesn’t always happen either.  The most effective way that I have found so far is to visit the less actives.  There are heaps of less actives in the ward.  So we visit them, a lot of them have partners or children that aren’t members and that has been the best.  

Like I said before though, we are always trying new ways to find people to teach so I had a great idea this week. we were on our way out to Williamstown and the whispering wall is on the way out there.  We had never tried to contact at the whispering wall before, and there are always people there so we stopped and tried it. It was funny to talk from one side and ask people if they have ever heard about Jesus Christ.  It was funny but not very effective just because most of the people were tourists from out of town, not in our area.

We have General Conference this weekend, they get it copied down onto a DVD and then play it at the churches here.  So it will only be one week late. and yes we also get the Ensigns each month.
Well, I love you all and hope that you have a wonderful week.

When you are down to nothing, God is up to something.
love Elder Hyde

AUSSIE TERM OF THE WEEK:
Bludger = kind of like a bum. someone who doesn’t do anything they just bludge off others.