******* LANDON J. COOK ******* Melbourne, Australia Mission April 2015

Hey everybody! I'm doing well down here! This email will most likely be shorter than usual because my fingers can't type as fast because the library here is pretty cold and my fingers are stiff hahahaha.

Brother Gilbert, the ward missionary leader (he is the man)

Last P-Day Brother Mark Gilbert took us three and two other Elders in the ward down to Point
Napean, which is basically this huge place which was a WWII battle station or something like that and a quarantine station. We toured the WWII stuff because that's tons cooler than dealing with sick people haha. We took tons of pictures there which I plan on sending out.

Point Napean (Beautiful peninsula, honeymoon vacation spot when I get back home hahahaha)

McDonalds I've come to learn is CRAZY expensive here! Nothing on the menu is less than $2.50 except for the $0.50 ice cream cones. No such thing as a dollar menu there. But I guess that's what happens when the minimum wage is somewhere near $16.00 an hour.

Coming back from Point Napean on the shuttle bus

We went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders on Wednesday and I went with Elder Prettyman. We went GQing which is basically standing at a busy train station and greeting people and hoping they stop by. We weren't in my area, but it was a lot of fun. I had to get out of my comfort zone, but I was able to do that pretty quickly, thank goodness. We also had a lesson with a family who is planning on all getting baptized, and we had the kids reenact the first vision, it was a lot of fun. I got to be the pastor who was putting the hate on Joseph Smith for having the vision, it was funny.

It's usually cold and rains pretty hard in the mornings, but by the time we get outside to do our work the rain stops and it heats up, but not enough to not need a jacket. On Thursday we did some service for a lady who isn't up for lessons, but hey, doing service in our street clothes is always fun. We actually tracted into an older lady yesterday who is in need of service as well, and we plan on going back to her this Wednesday.

This week we were able to set an investigator named Julie with a baptism date for July 25th! She seems pretty solid, so just pray that she will be able to keep the faith she has gained and that Satan doesn't start working on her the same way she's worked with investigators in the past.

The 4th of July was pretty awesome, except for the fact that Boyd K. Packer died. What is up with this? We had dinner with some members, the Stinchcombes, and they are a super awesome family. In fact, this whole ward is just awesome, seriously.

Anyways, we've gotten some pretty diverse reactions from people who see us. Some guy pulled up as we were walking down the road and shouted "AT LEAST YOU'RE NOT PREACHING (______) ISLAM!!" I mean, if you don't like Mormons, I guess that's one way to look at it... We've had people flip us off, curse us out, SLAM the doors, give us nasty looks, all that good stuff. We always just laugh it off whenever that happens, except for yesterday.

our delicious Samoan feed last night

Since yesterday was fast Sunday we couldn't eat or drink water until dinner, and when we got out of ward correlation meeting at 2:00 we really were not in the mood to go door to door knocking: we were feeling really tired, hungry, thirsty, had headaches, and we all just had a low morale. The first door we knocked on said " *blank* off, and get the "blank" off my porch before I count to five" and started counting down while looking at us like he REALLY wanted to kill us. The second guy basically did the same thing, and the third guy looked at our name tags and said "Don't bother, get out". Not a good way to start out the day. But we kept trucking on hoping that something would come out of our work. And if not... at least we were doing the Lords work. When we got home at 6:00 for dinner we were really ready for food, and luckily a member family, the Samuelos, were dropping off dinner. Since they're Samoan, they dropped HEAPS of food off at our place, enough for the next three nights or so, it was AWESOME!!! We were pretty wiped out from the day, and Elder Worsencroft went to bed a little earlier, we were flat out exhausted. One of the investigators we went to go see said that I was looking pretty pale, so yeah, that's what happens when you're starving and go out to do physical and spiritual work hahahaha

I might be in Australia, but I'll always be an American at heart

Anyways, that's basically my week perfectly wrapped up in a tortilla, hopefully all y'all's week has been going just as swaggy as mine has. Love you guys, stay strong in the faith, and as always, God be with you till we meet again :)
-Elder Landon Cook