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

Hey guys sorry I wasn't on yesterday: busy busy Zone P-Day! But I'm on now! But you know what makes me mad? You know what just gets my water boiling? You know what just grinds my gears? You know what really flips my nine year old? When people we meet on the train never get back to us or never answer their dang phones!!! A bit of back story, but I'll get to that. Monday was pretty dang great because we were actually able to go out with the Stinchcombes. They're like an hour away from us so that took out a chunk of our monthly mileage, but that's alright because hopefully we're able to make up for it. Somehow. Anyways, it was totally worth it. We picked strawberries at this one place where you could eat as many as you wanted and then fill up a small plastic container with them, and they were sweet too. Sister Stinchcombe went to some forbidden area of the picking farm and said to all of us "Come join me over in the great and spacious building!" That was pretty dang funny, and what was great was that we even had to jump over this small river in order to even get there. We also went blackberry picking and to an awesome beach, and then we went to their home to turn our berries into syrup and eat buttermilk pancakes that were GREAT!!! All in all it was a greatly utilized P-Day.

We have our berry pickin' booties on!

Tuesday and Wednesday was basically just going back and forth on the train trying to talk to people about the restored gospel. Tuesday was fun because we went to go visit a nine year old recent convert who lives with her returning-to-activity aunt. Her aunt was a LITTLE bit drunk, so she and her niece were having fun and then suddenly she carried her niece over her shoulder. And, you know, being drunk and having no coordination, she fell and slammed her niece's knee into the concrete. WWE Superslam status. It looked like it hurt and I felt pretty bad it happened, but at the same time I couldn't help but laugh and what happened after the matter. And as far as contacting people on the train goes, I have no clue why, but literally in the past week I've had four guys who are absolutely off-their-rocker nutso come up and talk to me: all of them probably on ice. None of them talked to Elder Theurer, just me. I don't know, maybe I just attract the crazies.

Just street contacting on an empty train car. The best..

We had a pretty funny experience though while on the train. There was a couple of feet between Elder Theurer and I, and he got on the train before I did. Well, right as he got on the doors closed, and I was only right behind him, but the doors locked and went without me. I just kind of waved goodbye to him as the train slowly took off with Theurer in it, and so I was on the train platform by myself. Haha, sweet. I wasn't worried or anything, but I just asked this girl about my age if I could use her phone to call Theurer who had our phone. Well we she and I both got on the train and Theurer got on the train with at the next stop, and long story short that girl named Emily ended up being a new contact. I kinda knew that something like that would happen, because Heavenly Father just has the greatest sense of humor. "I'm just gonna go ahead and separate these two missionaries for half an hour so that they can do my work in a way that needs to be done". Ahh, good times. We'll be teaching her in about two weeks’ time or so when she's got the time, but as for everyone else we've met on the train, they're pretty hard to get back in contact with once they give us their number. It's kinda disappointing, but we ain't givin' up on them yet.

The Stinchcombes also took us to thebeach, it was awesome!

Thursday was great because we got to teach a new contact that Elder Theurer and his old companion Elder Babneau (my MTC companion) found, and he's one of the most genuine people I've ever met. He was SO open in discussing his questions that he has, and his questions were along the lines of "Why am I here? What's the purpose of life? How can I find these answers?" Gosh, so genuine in what he wants. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he said that he'll begin a slow process of reading it, and we're going to go see him on tomorrow, so wish us the best of luck!

Saturday was pretty great because we basically had nothing scheduled: usually in the line of missionary work that really sucks because it's "Oh man, I guess we just kinda fill our time with finding activities", but Theurer and I take the bus to the train station to find. It takes longer than driving, but it was fun to just kinda get lost on the bus and figure out where we needed to go as we went. We had that kinda time on our hands to use like that. We had some good conversations with people and I was able to give someone a Book of Mormon which felt really great. So, in door knocking I'm about as bold as it can get because Elder Worsencroft trained me that way, but I was never really introduced to real street contacting until I was in Eltham almost a year ago, so street contacting is still a foreign thing to me for the most part. Elder Theurer's trainer though, Elder Steele, was a street contacting master, and so he knows street contacting inside and out. Our modes of finding between Elder Theurer and I are COMPLETE opposites, but he's teaching me the ropes of it, and I feel like I'm getting better at it. You can still teach an old dog Elder new tricks. Yesterday was basically church, ward council, and eating. We taught an investigator named Eddie that's been coming to church for like the past four months or so, and he hasn't really had official lessons until then. He's 26 and Samoan, and he's pretty keen to learn but baptism might be a bit of a distance a ways. We'll see how he goes. Last night was great though because we spent the night in the Hastings flatt, and if you remember Hastings was my flatt of first inheritance with Elder Worsencroft. It was pretty cool going and spending the night there, but when Croft and I were in it the flatt was BRAND SPANKIN' NEW, but after almost two years of missionaries staying in it... it was a bit different. And dirtied up. But it was still kinda fun to stay there and be like "Hey! This was my first Aussie home!"

beautiful view at the beach in Australia

So last night after our Zone P-Day (I'll talk about Zone P-Day next week) we got in contact with Carly and Hailey. Remember, the two girls that we talked to on the train about 10 days ago and had high hopes for them? Well, turns out they were both about as plastered drunk as it could get and said that they wanted nothing to do with us anymore, saying that getting drunk and partying every night was the way to live. What the heck? It was absolutely gut-wrenching to see 15 YEAR OLD GIRLS LIVING LIKE THIS!!! Sure it's their life, but it's going nowhere very fast. It was really sad, and it disturbed me for the rest of the night. Even now I don't like to think about it... I hate to be dark and dismal, but the way I see it, this world is as the scriptures say "ripe for destruction".

So that's been my week, and things still keep going great. The transfer's already halfway over, which means I've only got nine weeks left. Strange. But hey love you all, and next week I'll tell y'all's about how this P-Day today went. I love you all, and as always, God be with you till we meet again.

-Elder Landon Cook

Ponderize: Helaman 1:21