We need Noah's ark

Hey everyone time is flying here in Sydney especially since this week has been AWESOME. I'm loving every minute of life in the city. It's been raining so hard the past few days and basically the whole city flooded but today was bright and sunny and we played some fun volleyball in the park. I used to be a little scared of big cities but I love this place now.

This week I picked up my new companion, fresh out of the MTC. His name is Elder Graham and he's from Utah. He likes swimming and doing missionary work, and he's called English speaking. So it's been nice to talk to someone in my own language. It adds this whole new aspect of joking around and having fun that was harder to come by before with companions of different cultures. Elder Graham was a little nervous at first but he has a great desire and just wants to do his best (just like me!) so it's been pretty great. I've worked him hard this first week of his mission and he's totally killing it.

I'm the district leader for the 16 missionaries in the city  and as I was thinking about what to do for the district training I kept thinking 'send it'. In my previous life SEND IT was my motto, usually associated with doing flips and jumping off cliffs. I talked about how when you do a flip, unless you fully commit, it's better to not do it at all. As I prepared to give the training, I felt that Spirit giving me all sorts of scriptures to use and different ways that I could make the subject really resonate with the missionaries. We discussed how the Lord will always require of us that which is hardest to give up. I'm so glad to be in a district where all the missionaries are so excited to be fully consecrated to the Lord and give everything up to Him and become tools in His hands. So now everyone in the city is becoming a SEND IT missionary. It's very common to hear people say 'we sent it during that lesson or 'don't be scared to talk to him, just send it'. I love it.

For Elder Graham's first day of finding, Australia decided to dump a huge rainstorm that literally soaked through all our clothes. But, we still got out there and grinded and felt so happy. I feel that the people here at UNSW are more receptive to the gospel and it's going to be really good. Since it was raining, we also employed some great tactics like walking without an umbrella and then someone offers to share with us just since we look so cold and wet. Perfect opportunity to share the gospel since they're literally stuck a foot away under the same umbrella. Good times. This area really is the 'promised land', I have a feeling that we'll be pretty successful here.

Elder Graham's first lesson was straight fire. I've never taught a more knockout lesson my whole mission. We show up to this random classroom on the UNSW campus and meet up with a Chinese guy named Charlie who we had texted just having his number in the area book. This guy barely spoke any English so we did most of it in Chinese. Honestly we barely said anything, it was so different from most first lessons where you get to know the person and everything and then start in with the gospel- this guy Charlie didn't want to talk about anything else but the gospel. He has such strong faith already and was so hyped to read the Book of Mormon, then invited himself to the chapel for next week for another lesson. It's always so refreshing to meet someone who's totally prepared for the message and to discover truth for themselves. I think God gave us that lesson the first day at UNSW to show us that there are people out there who are ready.

When another rainstorm hit, all the Chinese people (most of them fear rain like the Corona virus) ended up being ferried around by us as we helped them walk across the street with umbrellas so they wouldn't get wet. It was pretty fun, we would walk across the street and escort this old guy, and then the ladies cowering under a store cover would see and hope we could do the same for them and then get so happy when we come over and escort them to the other side. It was really great to just do that simple service for people. And man that rain was coming down hard, I don't even know why they wanted the umbrella since you got soaked to the skin either way.


We were 3 hours into finding in the rainstorm and just absolutely grinding. We started up a conversation with this guy holding a ton a papers and using an umbrella to shield them from the rain. I was just bringing up the Book of Mormon when suddenly a bus drove by and went right through the water that had pooled on the side of the road. It wasn't like being splashed with water, we were literally surrounded by a wave that knocked our umbrellas out of our hands and drenched all the guy's papers. The plus side was we were forever bros after having endured that together. It was exactly the same effect as having jumped in a pool we were so soaked.

On the way to church it was raining and storming so bad that we literally couldn't even walk because the wind pushed our umbrellas back. Eventually the umbrellas just totally broke and we gave up on them and sprinted the rest of the way. By the end of the day both my pairs of shoes were so soaked that I ended up wearing sandals around the city. I love the feeling of going out in the rain and doing all we can to share the gospel.


I have loved the feeling of being too busy to even stop for lunch, going from meeting to lesson to onto the bus to stopping people on the street on the way there. Things move faster in the city and it's much easier to feel like a missionary- just flying all over the place and spreading the gospel. I LOVE IT.


We're giving our all and it's such a blast. I still get to use my Chinese all the time since all the students at the uni are Chinese, it's been really good. I'm excited for this area I have really high hopes for the work we can do here. I'm feeling totally consecrated to the Lord and pray that He will continue to use me to spread this message of happiness.


Have an awesome week and stay dry for me
这里的下雨太大了！
Elder Halverson 







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