Sawyer's adventures in Australia

This week was crazy and it flew by. It's pretty cool because when Elder Graham and I got here 3 weeks ago, we had 0 people to teach and we had a couple days where we were just finding all day long. But the Lord has blessed us and we've been finding people and now we are so busy with appointments that we hardly have time for finding. Things are moving forward and I'm just loving my time here in the city.  We always go around the campus and talk to people and one day there was a stand for free ice cream so obviously we went over to get some. Then the guy opens the bucket of ice cream and it looks so good. It's a nice strawberry flavor and on a hot day it sounded perfect. But then he told us that the point of the free ice cream is to try an alternate food source: insects. The guy took a Tupperware full of crickets and mealworms and liberally dumped them into the ice cream. It was disturbing but at that point we wanted ice cream so we just watched while he mixed th...

What's up everyone, it's been a great week and things are going by way too fast. This time of my mission is just solely focused on the work. There are very few obstacles and it feels great to give my all to the Lord. The time goes faster and faster, and I'm trying to appreciate each moment. I took one of the new Elders to UNSW for a trade-off and we worked together for a day. It was such a blast, we taught an awesome first lesson and really felt the Spirit as we taught about the Restoration of Christ's gospel. The girl had a ton of good questions and we all left feeling spiritually uplifted. Then we had a prayer answered and had a total miracle. So last week we had met a guy named Frank who was having a really tough time and we had started teaching him. But after not showing up to church he stopped responding. That day, we had just finished lunch and wanted to head to the uni. I planned to call Frank once we got there and see how he was doing. Then, as we walked th...

This week in the city was awesome. We met so many new people and the work is going well. I love it here. Being in the city is different just because of the sheer amount of people. In my old areas, we would get in the car and drive somewhere, then walk around and find people to talk to, and then get in the car and drive somewhere else. In the city, I take one step outside our apartment and within 20 seconds I'm talking to someone about the gospel. And as soon as we finish one conversation, there's another person to talk to right after them. It's constant and nonstop, even when we go other places we talk to people at the bus stop and on the bus. And 80% of them are Chinese, so I end up having the same beginning to the conversation almost every time.  Me: Hi how are you? Them: ...Uh hi (awkward since they can't really understand much) Me: Where are you from? Them: China Me: 哇我会说中文！ （I speak Chinese!) Them: *has a mini heart attack* and then starts talk...

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. ...