Heaps!

                                                   Happy Day!  The baptism of Mavis!!
12/16/2016

Dear everyone,

Temple Day at the Brisbane Australia Temple

Wow this past week and some has been really busy!  Sorry for sending an email on today here (Friday) and not on Monday.  It's because we went to the temple today. But it has been a really good last little bit. 

So to start it off I'll talk about Mavis. So it turns out that the complications about her baptism were a confusion and we didn't actually know what was up. Her family didn't disapprove of her being baptized but it was something to do with her family that is down in Sydney- they were wanting to fly her down the day before the baptism but they kind of got that sorted all out. But Mavis has such strong Faith and we know that Satan will do all he can to stop the work from progressing. In the end it will always move forward! So we had our last lesson with her last week and it included a lot of stuff to cover because she was getting the baptismal interview the next day.. haha, but it all went smooth and on last Friday we were able to witness the Baptism of Mavis Boateng! So cool and she wanted me to be the one to baptize her so I was very honored and it was just pretty awesome! We had her confirmed on Sunday and Elder Meyer did it and when sister Tapaitau was like Elder Meyer we want you to do it and she was like do you think your English will be good enough.. and he was like I BELIEVE IN THE GIFT OF TOUNGES! haha so that all went good as well.  

Then last Thursday we  Did the stop smoking program with Tenielle.  It was a fifteen step program that had her doing all sorts of things like drinking grape fruit juice and taking vitamin c tablets but she was so excited and so ready to stop smoking!  And yesterday marked the seventh day where she has had no coffee tea or tobacco!! And she is very keen to be baptized with her family so we are excited there! Thank you all for all of the prayers that y'all have said for her! We can tell they have worked and the Lord is blessing her heaps! 

Tenielle and her family

But honestly it's been like a blur but I can't even remember all that has happened the past bit but it was great :) haha I have been able to see many miracles and small tender mercies of the Lord. Anyways, I know the Lord lives! And he loves each and every one of us and I am so glad I am here bearing His holy name! But I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Pierce

                                                             Just thought I'd share, haha

Busy, busy

                                   The random little Christmas tree we found in our flat. :)
12/5/2016

Dear everyone,

  

So this past week was like a blur it was so busy.  But first things first GOOD NEWS! Neither me or Elder Meyer got transferred! so we get to keep going in Pimpama! which is exciting because we have been seeing a lot of progress!

On this past Monday we had a dinner at Tenielle's house with our ward mission leader and I thought to give Tenielle my usb so she could watch Meet the Mormons, which was on there, and now she says she has watched it about 3 times... hahaha so that was pretty awesome. She has been talking with us saying that she wants to be baptized before Christmas and the only obstacle we have left is smoking... so we are trying to push that one. She wants to stop but i think she just needs that extra bit of help! So there is a stop smoking program that is supported by the church that we are going to try and do with her so it should be good!

But we have also been making heaps of progress with one of our other investigators Mavis who is a foreign exchange student from Ghana. She is about 23 and is pretty much a dry Mormon. We had set a date for her to be baptized Dec. 30 but when we had a lesson this week and talked about it she said that she wanted to be baptized this Friday... and we were like uhhh YES of course you can do that! But we did find out that there is some big opposition in her family back home from Ghana, so we will see if it goes through this Friday. she knows it's true and she loves the church but we will have to see.  We'll find out tonight.

Us teaching Mavis

We also did a fair bit of service with painting some members' house and also on Thursday there was a baptism of one of the kids in our ward and the mom asked us to be the witnesses, so we went and it turned out when we got there that the bishop also asked me to conduct the baptism so haha that was pretty crazy.  We also had our investigator Mavis there and then a miracle is one of our other investigators Mathis and Makeu showed up at the baptism even though we didn't invite them.. turns out they are friends of the sister whose son was getting baptized so that was pretty awesome!

Then since it was last week of the transfers we had our deep cleaning of our flat and also our ward Christmas party which was at a lake where all the kids went swimming (Christmas here people just go to the beach and pool and have bbq's) But it turned out none of our investigators made it to the activity so we were only there for like 30 mins. But ya and then on Sunday Tenielle made it to church again! So ya a busy busy week but a good one full of tender mercies of the Lord :)

I know the church is true and that Christ is our Savior!

Everyone have a great week,

-Elder Pierce

 The Christmas tree we set up in our flat ( because there was a random Christmas tree in our flat)