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

So wow, it has been one heck of a crayazay-as week! Monday night Ching and I basically just went around and visited members for most of that time, taking pictures and saying goodbye. Tuesday I went to some “New leadership training" meeting since I never got to go when I was made District Leader last transfer.

a couple of the Sharon Murphy family members

So here's the situation with my companion, the area, and the branch. Yes, the branch. So the Craigieburn Zone is one full of Samoan and Polynesian members, so I thought mine would be no exception, but it turns out my area is the ONLY exception: instead of a ward of 150 - 200 of Poly's, I'm in a branch of about 25-30 of Aussies. It's a pretty tight-knit branch because there's not that many people, and I love it because it feels so family. Seymour is REALLY bush: it reminds me of that little town in that movie Old Dogs that those guys try to protect from the bikers. This place is about as uninhabited as it gets!!! We've got a few outer lying suburbs that are anywhere between half an hour to an hour and a half away, so we'll try to work in those areas if we can get to them. So I'm taking over from the last DL who went home last transfer, and I tell you what this place is dead! Cuenca said that his companion was pretty lazy and discouraged from the small area we worked in, so again, I'm placed in an area with no real investigators to work with and it'll be nothing but lots of finding and door knocking and talking to people to find people to teach. It's part of the mission! My companion has changed a lot from the time I knew him in the Gippsland Zone, and for the better. He's pretty open with me and we joke around with each other when it's appropriate. Like most of my companions he's pretty quiet when it comes to finding situations and talking to people and he has a hard time keeping up with conversations, and I think that might just be because of the language barrier, but then again, it might not be.

Saying goodby to incredible people Iv'e met

It's cool being a part of a full-on District, because now we get to go on exchanges every week with
other missionaries! Elder Summa and Swenson are in my District, and they are two awesome Elders that were in my District when I was in Moe, so now I get to go on exchanges with them which is pretty cool.

I want to talk about an experience that we had during the week. Well, two actually. As we were tracting we walked into and talked to this guy who was doing a census for the government since the online census was down for some reason and had to be done in person. He said that as part of it they account for who's all religious and who isn't, and he said that 49%, almost HALF OF ALL AUSTRALIANS, are completely atheist and are even against the idea of God and Christianity. It's really sad that is, because there's a member of the branch who's in the military on assignment here from America and he says it's sad too, because he works with a lot of men in military here in Australia and he says that almost all of them are atheist too. Yet in America, you can't find a man in the American military who doesn't believe in some sort of God. It's kinda strange in my mind, but I got an email today from my awesome little brother regarding it that I want to include:

"There was once a man who wanted to climb an insanely high and desolate mountain that no man had ever climbed before. He was determined to be the first. He trained for months, and finally decided to conquer the mountain. After finally getting to the top, he finds a little pool of water, and in that pool of water he finds a stopwatch. He heads down the mountain and wonders how on earth a stopwatch was at the top of a mountain that no one had ever climbed before! He takes it to scientists, and they decide that the most logical answer is that over millions and millions of years, the winds and waters and elements moved in just a way to create every part of that stopwatch, and after millions and millions more years, those same elements coincidentally moved all the parts perfectly together.

Instead of just accepting the fact that someone had made it there before him, he makes up a ludicrous theory of the elements and doing it. My roommate said it’s the same thing with recognizing there is a God. People would rather turn to a theory that the universe just coincidentally lined every single particle perfectly by itself, than just accept the simple fact that there is a God who created everything."

The Beautiful Melbourne Australia Temple

It's really true over here. BUT again, that's the mission! And amongst the thorns and thistles there ARE those who are prepared SOMEWHERE!!! There IS a needle in the haystack.

And my second experience. We were tracting the other day and found a guy who's from New York, and even though he wasn't interested I asked him about the massive juke box cardboard box that was in his yard, and he said "Oh I just got that yesterday, but I've got a smaller one that you can have" and he went back inside for a second and came back out with a 12" juke box (not a real one, just one you can plug a flash drive or iPod in). I was pretty happy he gave it to me, and when we walked back to put it in the car we saw a couple in their late 30's or so with a moving truck, and we had previously tracted into them and the lady was kinda mean to us as she shooed us away. We walked up to them and I said "Hey someone just gave this to us while we were door knocking but to be honest we probably won't be using it and won't have much for it: would you guys be able to take it off of us?" I think lady felt a bit awkward after just rudely shooing us away, but the man was like "Sure, I'm sure the kids would love it!" We then spent the next hour helping them move right then and there in our church clothes, and it felt really good to help them out. Even though the lady never really apologized for being rude to us, we said that we forgive her and ask her not to be as quick to judge Mormon missionaries next time: all we want to do is help.

It was a good week this week even though we didn't find anyone interested, but they're out there, I

the Nauta's

just know it! We'll keep on working throughout the weeks to come and hopefully some change will come our way, but like it did in Moe and in Eltham, the change is imminent if we grind our metal and put ourselves to the test of work and obedience. Love you all, and as always, God be with you till we meet again.

-Elder Landon Cook

Ponderize: Alma 20: 29-30 ( I chose this scripture because it wasn't that Aaron and his brothers were less righteous than Ammon, it just so happened to be "their lot to have fallen into the hands of a more hardened and a more stiff-necked people")