So this week has again been fast as "lightning on grease" as dad described the last year of my mission and that ain't no lie!

P-Day was pretty normal, just chill at the flatt and workin' out trying to get that muskal back on me and lose the fat-boy slim fat on my face.

Sunday we had the training from regional and Stake leaders in our Branch regarding the Book of

In preparation for the Book of Mormon musical coming out..Just for fun

Getting pretty good at my jump pose

Mormon play and how the church is putting up advertising like mad down at Southern Cross. And now all the members are really pumped for it! We did a roleplay during church with all the members of how to bring it up with non-members, and all the members are like "Wow we suck at this. Let's get the missionaries to come to our place so we can practice this roleplaying stuff and get good at it in real life." Freaking heck FINALLY the member-missionary vibe is kicking in! So this entire month we've only gotten I think two or three feeds, but suddenly this entire week on every night we've got a feed and a lesson to help members out with their member missionary work efforts. Now we're talkin'! I don't care for the meal as much as I just want to get the members fired up for it, but hey free food is cool too. But literally the one person who wasn't participating or excited for this training at all was our one and only Branch President. I don't really get what his deal is sometimes, like literally it's almost as if he's made it his entire existential purpose to stop member missionary work. Kinda frustrating, but Elder Vaiouga and I have the thought that if he's not for us then we won't pay him any heed until he gets the chip off his shoulder. We'd love and appreciate his help, but if he won't give it then we'll just keep rolling on with it with everyone else.

Also this week has basically just been busy again with tons of exchanges. Well, two, but for one week

that knocks out quite a bit of valuable time. I went on exchanges with Elder Swenson and Elder Halsey who's one of the Zone Leaders who goes home in the next couple of weeks. Out of the nine total missionaries in our District, seven of us return home, or "die" as missionaries call it, within the next six months. Crazy to think about it that way, especially since I'm in that list. All goods though.

When I was on exchanges with Elder Halsey we did service for this older woman probably in her 80's we previously tracted into named Irene Spanolo. Spanolo is literally "Spanish" in Samoan which I thought was pretty funny. So we just sat and pulled weeds for her for about an hour and a half, which is literally one of the easiest and least stressful things a missionary has to do. Not service because sometimes that gets cray cray, but just sitting and pulling weeds is so dang easy and brainless. I love it. So we did that and she asked if we wanted tea and coffee with biscuits, or "bickies" as they call them here in Australia. Literally everything here is shortened and abbreviated: breakfast is "brekky," chocolate is "chockee", tennis shoes are "runners", sweat pants are "trackies," and the list goes on. But anyways she offered it to us and we declined, but said that Milo would be good. We didn't finish the service so we'll go back sometime this week, but she's now curious as to why we don't drink coffee or tea and she agreed to learn next time we meet up. We'll just have to see how that pans out! We also did service for a member and we shoveled horse manure. Yup, that gets checked off of the "iconic things that missionaries do" list.

My Companion Elder Vaiouga giving it a try.. haha

 Exchanges with Elder Halsey
 

On exchanges with Elder Swenson

But as much as how much our teaching pool has increased...well, it hasn't. Like, at all. Except maybe for Irene. But life goes on! We're teaching quite a few members about how to get them excited for this, and a couple of less-active members as well, and slowly the amount of less-active members that haven't come in ages are making the slow steps to progressing back. Life's good and it goes on. But that's my week y'all's, and I'll talk to you on the next one! Love you all, and as always, God be with you till we meet again.

-Elder Landon Cook

Ponderize: Psalms 20:7

Not for sure but believe this is a Catholic Church

Not sure why they have these gargoyle looking statues on the church

I believe this might be a statue of Mary?

Me in front of this church holding my favorite book :)

Elder Vaiouga putting up a fence at Brother Thomsons farm

Cool looking Land Rover on Brother Thomson farm

We ran out of laundry soap mid-week so we improvised

The improvision worked great!