Sawyer's adventures in Australia

Hey Sawyer- Two important events this week are the birthdays of Grandma Halverson(9/20) and Nana (9/23). We had an amazing Relief Society lesson today.  We were talking about times when the Lord has ministered to us as well as how to minister to children who "want to be lost" or aren't interested in the gospel.  When the lesson ended and it was about time to leave, one of the sisters said, "I need to share something."  Through tears she shared that when she was 19 she left the church and didn't return until 25.  She said she went back to church and one of her bishops felt impressed she should serve a mission.  She said no.  A few months later she went back and there was a new bishop.  He told her he felt impressed she should serve a mission.  She went home from church that day and told her parents she was serving a mission.  She left on her mission when she was 26 and returned when she was 28.  She served in San Diego.  Her poin...

Mom email: Hi mom I love you and miss you. We are going to the temple today until probably 1 PM our time. I'm not sure I'll be able to call. I might be able to squeeze in a few minutes at around 8 am my time (in just over an hour) Just letting you know, I got in a car accident two days ago. Im okay and so is everyone else, no one got hurt. So don't worry about me. And I wasn't being irresponsible or dumb or anything. I will send you my journal entry about it which will explain what happened. You can tell me if you think I should put it in my big email.  We went to mission office yesterday where we filled out accident report and what happened and everything. The church pays for the damage. I don't know how if affects my personal record I didn't hear anything about that. We got a new car immediately and just went back to work. However there is a possibility I won't be able to drive for the rest of my mission because the church just instituted a polic...

So many awesome stories from this week. And we found a ton of new people to start teaching. The train has left the station, we're picking up some momentum. To start off, I'll talk about a great time I stuck up for my companion. Some Chinese people are very disapproving of missionaries, especially my companion who is a native Chinese person. They think he is wasting his time and dishonoring his parents. This one old lady came up to us while we were advertising our English class and she began rebuking him in Chinese. I didn't understand all of it, but definitely enough to know that she was being very offensive. So, I decided to stick up for my companion. I interrupted her furious stream of Chinese swear words by asking her what her religious background was, if she had any friends who might be interested in the English class, and how her day was going. She was so confused by the fact that I knew Chinese and that I was asking her these things that she stopped and then ju...

As we say in Australia, how yous going everyone?  This week I have learned a lot and had some awesome experiences. I am growing and being changed every day. It's a process that I could only ever go through being a missionary, so I'm really grateful for the opportunity. This week we met with Pan a few times, our golden mystery man from Hong Kong who in the first 5 minutes told us he wanted to get baptized. So we've taught him a lot, but it turns out that he needed to go back to China, so he's gone now. We pray that he may find some members over there. Meeting with him and teaching him the gospel was really powerful, even though some of the time he gets distracted and starts asking me about American TV shows like Breaking Bad. And he speaks no English, so to try to get his point across he squints his eyes super tight to focus, then slowly sputters out 'Braeeee. Keeeeeen. BAD' It cracks me up. He also loves to discuss astronomy and will often get out this c...