Literally feels like five minutes ago that we were just talking. These weeks are ridiculous because they just plan themselves: we plan nothing. Literally, we're so busy everything practically plans itself out: our days are filled up day after day after day in a row. I haven't knocked doors in ages! Well just kidding we did this week but that's because we were on exchanges.

So last week P-Day we did absolutely nothing. It was great. I was a bit bummed I don't get to skype Austin, but hey Mothers day isn't that far from the corner so I'm not too gutted. Tuesday we just a bajillion little things to do in order to prepare for the Zone Convention that we've got going on. We have to get trainings, food, P-Day activities, and other things all ready. It's great. Wednesday we went up to Finley to just do some work up there, and we had a District Meeting over Skype. It was pretty dang cool considering that that was the first time I think this mission has ever tried something like that, but the Lord blessed us and there weren't ANY problems at all with the connection or image or anything. It was pretty dang great, especially since doing it over the phone is terrible but doing it over video call is much better being able to see everyone. We reported to President Vidmar on how that went and he said that he might just join us in on one of them sometime in the near future, so keep your ears open for that! We had dinner that night at the Grenier family and hot dang they are such a great family. Literally one of the best.

Gettin' the Family History booth all set up..

Thursday was taking the whole day to prepare for our family history booth this Saturday. We have a laptop that luckily Eric Grenier was able to double the RAM on, and with that laptop (we have it with permission) we went out and bought a broadband network thingymajigger (basically a portable wifi thing to use with the booth to help people with family history). Then we went to check out where we should get it set up for the day, along with a million other things that we've got to get ready. Friday was fun because I went on exchanges with Elder Knight in our District, and even though he's only been out for five months he's training a new missionary and is the District Leader. He'll be a Zone Leader before Christmas I prophecy. It was great, we visited a couple of crazy members and did some tracting in the rain.

Saturday was the day of the Family History booth, and all we had to do was just set it up and sit there

Elder Van Wagoner and I

and wait for people to come up and talk to us. And we did that for a good six hours. We weren't allowed to go and approach people like "Hey come to my booth!" because that would constitute as a "public annoyance". So we just had to sit there. Sister Naylor helped out and she had the idea to bring a bunch of balloons that said "Families can be together forever", and I don't think it's publicly annoying to pass out free balloons to little kids! And because I haven't got a single idea of what to do when it comes to family history (I've tried and tried but I can't get the hang of it) I just went out and gave balloons to little kids. It was awesome. So we've got a few people who are going to hopefully come to our family history class on Tuesday night this week, so we'll see how that goes. It goes a LOT more in detail than that on what happened but hey I'd be here for a few years if I were to tell you all the details.

Elder Van Wagoner and I at the Family history booth

Okay so as far as missionary work is going we've still got Meredith set to be baptized this weekend and we're REALLY excited for it, and a lot of the members up in Finley are too. It'll definitely happen. She's awesome. Weird to think that time is flying so fast, but hey that's the way the cookie crumbles! I'm officially the oldest missionary in the Zone (both in missionary age AND reality age: I turn 21 next week and everyone is younger than me!!!) Love you all, and as always, God be with you till we meet again!

Elder Landon Cook

Elder Van Wagoner

Balloons for the kids

Working so hard to try to let the Australian 

people know how important eternal family is

 Our first ever Skype District Meeting

 (Blazing a new trail takes a lot of bugs to get out)

Elder Knight and his goofy Aussie hat

Found this little frog in our chapel during District Meeting

The first birthday party at the Cokanauto's,

Birthday Cake and Cookies.. Totally Cool

Elder Van Wagoner's shoulder angel

Dinner at Nataleigh Harris home (good friend 

of our investigator who is getting baptised)

So wow this week has been pretty good but for the most part I'll let the pictures I'll send do the talking. It's been really hot this week except for today and it's cold and rainy, so of course the weather waits until now in order to get cold. And it'll probably get hotter than snot tomorrow so it'll be hot AND humid!!! Last P-Day was good we just kinda sat in the flatt and messed around, but only semi-literally.

Tuesday we had Mission Leader Convention and it's always good getting together with the missionaries. Elder Poulson, who's one of the best, came in with me and is going home at the end of this transfer, so as of right now my intake is starting to die off, but luckily I'm one of the longer lasting missionaries who survives the mission-visa problems. Elder Poulson and I have plans to be roommates in either BYU Idaho or Provo, depending on which one we get accepted to (he's still waiting for the news too), and that made me suddenly excited for returning home #NotTrunky. I've got jobs waiting for me, plans with other things, and for the most part I've got schooling set up for me (kinda), so I haven't got anything to worry about. But being a roommate with him will be awesome, he's the greatest. We've always seen each other in passing throughout our entire missions and were always like "Bruh, when we gon' be companions???" but it never happened, and now since he's going home at the end of this transfer it doesn't look like it'll be happening. Sad day, but hey college with him will be fun!!!

So we've got a couple of people we're working with still, and the most exciting one is Meredith, and she's actually in the OTHER area we cover! She's about 25 or so and she knows a lot of the members up there, and basically she went to a Young Single Adult convention last week and knows the church is true. She's been taught by missionaries in the past but one of the previous ones before her would flirt with her and just scared her away for a while until we came into the picture. She's getting baptized on the 21st and has already told one of her friends, who's a member, that she's getting baptized in two weeks. We're REALLY excited for it, especially since we made plans with her that we're gonna have TimTam slams for days afterwards. She's awesome. We've got a couple of other people and part member families, but I haven't really got time to talk much about them.

We also had interviews with President Vidmar this week, and that was pretty cool. Apparently the brethren are in Utah are finding that missionaries are "too stressed" according to the mental health people, so there may be a slight schedule change the way that we operate as missionaries through our daily schedules. Not sure what it is, but it sounds exciting. This doesn't get really officially announced for a couple of weeks, but that's the perks of being a Zone Leader!!

So that's it for this week!! I guess there actually was a lot to talk about. We had a bit of a miracle this past week while we were shopping, and while we were looking there was this one five year old kid with his mom looking at Pokemon cards, and being me, I look down at the boy and say "You like Pokemon cards? Man, Pokemon's the best isn't it?" And the mom started talking to us all nice and cheery, and then we end up talking in K-Mart for like 20 minutes!! As we were talking she asked who we were and we told her we were missionaries, and since she didn't live in the area we said that we have some other missionaries from in the Zone she could contact if she ever needed help. Who knew that Pokemon could produce miracles like that? Thanks Arceus!!!

All three of us have the first name of Landon, 

and we're the only Landon's in the entire mission. 

Aren't we great

I love you all, and it's been an amazing week. Still don't have iPads but we're really hoping. It would make our lives so much easier and the work progress faster, oh well, I doubt I'll ever see iPads in this mission. But I'm not bitter. But I love you all and will keep working hard! I ain't one to fizz out the last bit of my mission: ain't nobody's got time for that! Love you all, and as always, God be with you till we meet again.

-Elder Landon Cook

Ponderize: Psalms 91:11

We found these two huntsman spiders in the Finley 

flatt and we used aerosol spray to get them in a corner together

Elder Howell and Elder Bennion, our Assistants,

attending our DLC meeting with us during interviews

Elder Poulson is the man and I love him 

and we are brothers always and forever

Elder Howell and Sister Vidmar playing mad ping pong

 (Elder Howell served his entire mission playing ping pong 

with little Vietnamese people so now he's a pro)

Elder Van Wagoner made cinnamon rolls for a 

few investigators we have

The Viddler family up in Finley always feed missionaries 

for free, since we're only in Finley every now and again we 

always make sure to stop there. They love it and it's awesome

You put on these funky glasses and they make colorful

lights turn into snowmen. 

Don't ask me how it's just how science works

See what the glasses do to the lights... its great

Finley, nothing to really do, it was so dang hot, but we 

found these airplanes and we had to take pictures next to them.

Christmas decorations at the shopping mall with Elder Van Wagoner

Sit down and stahp talkin' everyone. My email has just arrived. So basically it's been another pretty awesome week just being the two of us. It's great because we're a normal companionship again, and now we don't have to deal with Elder Faanunu. I want to talk positively about him but man he was just so racist towards Americans, it seemed he didn't like people who were in leadership, and so him having two American Zone Leader companions just drove him up the wall no matter what we did. It was the dumbest thing ever and he felt like ball and chain for us. He was a good guy, but being around Americans he just completely shut down and quit. And he did that for a whole transfer. But now that it's just me and Van Wagoner without the ankle weights anymore we're runnin' full steam ahead without too many hindrances.

Awesome water fight with a few Elders

So this P-Day we spent it at the Mason family, which is basically a family in another area that's really close to Elder Van Wagoner because he served in their branch for about eight months. We had an awesome Nerf war and a water fight which was pretty awesome (because President Vidmar's real and even though there's no swimming he has no opinion on other water activities when it's about as bloody hot as it gets here). And Tuesday was basically just all day in the car. Literally, we spent about seven or so hours driving to and from places in the car. Wangaratta Zone!!!!!

Here's the massive storm that basically flooded 

Shepparton & the rest of the mission in about 45 minutes' time

Thursday was pretty interesting because we had our first real sit-down weekly planning session since I've been here because we actually had TIME to do it, and we continuously go down to the hospital to play the piano there because let's be honest, hospitals are pretty dismal places and us being there to lighten the mood always gets people smiling or thanking us. It leaves fantastic impressions on people about the church better than tracting does. Basically all of the mission was hit with a massive rainstorm Thursday in the evening, so it was pretty fun going boating down the road in our Corolla. Fun times in Australia.

Right now we're working mainly with a couple of part member families and getting them active and back to church. Adrian and Rebecca are the main ones right now, and even though Elder Van says they always come to church I've never seen them come yet, so we've got to get them activated and married too. They've got three little kiddies with them so we're really trying to help them, but they are making some fantastic progress in the gospel. We're also working with a less-active member named Jared, and he's about as sincere to coming back into activity as one can get. He hasn't come to church in about 20 years or so but really wants to join back with the Saints, and all of his questions are about like "What is fasting and how do I do it?" or "What does this mean in this chapter of the Book of Mormon?" He's come to church for the past two weeks (luckily he didn't come the week the all out brawl happened), but his family who's all inactive are really creating stumbling blocks for him and making it harder for him to return to activity. He's still working on it, but it's definitely not making his life any easier.

Church was interesting, as always, and points of doctrine are thrown around all the time that are just absolutely stupid to put out there. I don't even have the patience to give an example, but it's questions that go along the line of "What if an asteroid strikes the chapel on a Saturday night and the building is burnt down with a dozen orphans in it? Which orphan would you give a priesthood blessing to first???" and just the most ridiculous questions I've ever flippin' heard. It's no wonder there's so many inactive members: it's an hour of spiritual feelings in sacrament meeting, and then for two hours it's just arguing and bickering doctrine that doesn't even matter. So dumb, I could rant about it for hours if I wanted to, but I wont. Silly silly, just silly.

All of us having a great time with Brother Mason 

and his son Makai. Elder Christensen is the one 

wearing the light blue shirt and Elder Van Wagoner

is wearing the dark blue shirt

So that's my week, and I'm glad that's it. Today we're going to have a do nothing day, which will be great considering that we've been running around at breakneck speeds the past seven weeks including P-days. I love the heck outta my mission, and it's so sad to know that tomorrow marks the official day where I only have four months left. That's it. Really weird, and Elder Van Wagoner and I woke up yesterday and thought "Wow, so we go home this year. That's fascinating, never thought this year would actually come." And now it's here. I've still got a good chunk of time left but President Vidmar is concerned that all missionaries who go home soon (and I'm in that category) are comfortable with going home, because so many missionaries have the mindset of "If I just work my hardest now without ever thinking about home then it'll all just fall into place like a magical puzzle when I get home." That couldn't be farther from the truth. He wants to make sure that the sooner we get to going home, the more comfortable we are with the idea of returning to normal life and resuming where we left off. And I'm happy to say that I feel comfortable with that idea. No I'm not trunky at all, there's no time for that, but I am okay with accepting the fact that my mission is beginning to wrap up at the corners. Faith always points to the future. Love you all, and as always, God be with you till we meet again.

-Elder Landon Cook

Ponderize: Alma 55:31

`

Got Elder Van Wagoner in the neck real good
w/a water balloon (it was an accident I swear)

Here I am cooling Elder Van Wagoner down

 

Elder Christensenhelping Sister Mason out with dinner

Elder Van Wagoner helping Sister Mason out w/ dinner

Playing Monopoly Empire w/the Masons. They are a cool family

The Winfields got me another Christmas package!! 

And in it was an eye patch to remember all the crappy 

problems I had with my eye back in Moe and they 

gave me an eye patch so my eyeball wouldn't leak 

outta my head. Missions are so fun that way.

The Tuapepe family who feel like family to me 

  (minus Sister Tuapepe who took the photo)

Cool lizard outside our bathroom window so I took a picture of it :)