September 1, 2013 Letter

Hi Family,

 

Well I hope everything at home is going well. It is still Sunday back home while I am writing this, so maybe I will get some emails next week. I only have 50 minutes on the computer so I am going to be writing relaly fast.

 

For those of you that don't know, I have reached the promised land! Just kidding. But I have arrived in Australia. The flight was pretty long. I am not going to lie, I am still feeling the effects from it. Australia is beautiful though! I love it here! I even saw a kangaroo. I wish I could send pictures but I need to figure that out sometime when I have time.

 

So my new companions name is Elder 'Iongi. It is pronounced ee-ong-ee. He is a great Elder! He is from New Zealand and has been out on his mission for 13 months. I am excited to serve with him. We are living in our house, which they call flats here, with 2 other elders. We only have 1 bathroom and our place is pretty small. So we are getting cozy in there. We have the "what's mine is yours" policy going on. Literally, they were using my deodorant. We are going to be pretty close by the end of the transfer.

 

The area we are serving in is called Logan. It is a city just outside of Brisbane. It is a very ghetto area. My companion told me that this is the most dangerous area in the mission. We don't tract after dark because there are a lot of drunk people walking around. There was a man killed here a couple months ago. So it is just a little different than Utah. Jokes.

 

The work here is a lot different! We never tracted in Provo but here we spend a lot of time trying to find people to teach. We have a goal of 14 finding hours for each week. Finding hours are when we are out tracting and finding people to teach. So we try to do that for at least 2 hours a day. We also get a lot of names of people to visit from the ward. We only cover one ward here which I really like. I think that will give us a chance to get to know people better. And the ward takes very good care of us as well! It is pretty much all polynesians and aboriginals in the area. So all the polynesians feed us like crazy! They get offended when we don't eat so I am eating so much! It is funny because they feed us KFC all the time. I guess KFC is pretty big here. The other night we had a dinner with a member family and they had enough KFC chicken for each of us to have a bucket. I am going to gain a lot of weight. I know a couple of Elders here that have gained 80 pounds on there missions. Sounds good to me!

 

Guess what? We already have a baptism coming up! We are meeting with this girl named Waitai Iqua. She is 15 years old and we invited her to be baptized last lesson. We are shooting for the end of September. It just goes to show that the Lord is preparing people all over the world to receive the Gospel. I am excited to meet a lot of new people here. The names are really hard to pronounce though, and I often can't understand what people are saying. Their accents are so thick. I often find myself just nodding my head.

 

Some other exciting news is that I am driving a car! We share a car with the two other Elders in our flat and I am the designated driver in my companionship. So I am learning how to drive on the left side of the road. It is a little weird having the steering wheel on the right side of the car. Everything is backwards! But I haven't crashed yet. I am getting use to it.

 

For letters here they just have people send them to the mission office and the mission office gets the letters to us. The address is this:

 

Australia Brisbane Mission

PO Box 348

Hamilton QLD 4007

Australia

 

Well sorry if my email was all over the place. I am really trying to hurry. But I want you all to know that I love being a missionary! I love this Gospel. It is so true. The Gospel is for everyone. It is amazing to see how different the people are over here. It could take me a little while to get use to. But even though the people are different, the Gospel is for everyone. It changes lives. I have really enjoyed seeing how strong the members are over here. I know that we have a loving Heavenly Father. He knows all of His children and loves them all equally. I am so grateful for that. I hope you all have a wonderful week! Love you all!

 

Love,

Elder Low