December

hello my family and my friends!
this has been such a crazy week! firstly becasue it rained. and rained. and rained some more. its raining right now. not that i mind the rain here. its warm! nothing like oregon rain. but i suppose its more like the winters that i know, so it SORT OF feels a bit more like christmas than it did last year at this time. i keep walking in to people's houses and seeing their trees up, and going, oh ya, it's christmas time... yay. its just so weird with it NOT being cold. i'm kinda glad i wont live here forever, but at the same time, i think christmas next year would be fun to come here! we'll see though. anyway, sounds like everyone had a good week. Dad, i totally feel your pain with being sick but being uber busy. its no fun. although, i'm probably not as busy as you, but there are some days when i feel like it'll take a miracle to get me through the day. especially the days when we're on the bikes. but i survive, every day. honestly dad, in response to your questions, i'm tired. i always try to not be worn out, or at least act like i'm not wearing out, but i feel like giving up some days and just sleeping for a week. Its pretty hard sometimes too, having the motivation to get up and go to work in the mornings, in light of the fact that i havent had a single baptism for the entirety of 2010. and now, i feel like i'm running out of time. the end of the year seems like it's my cut-off point, even though i have until the end of march. so that's what is REALLY going on inside my head. i know that being a sower is just as important as being a reaper, but sometimes i just wish the reapers would let me help once in a while. but while all this runs around my head sometimes, i have nothing to complain about. i certainly didnt expect my mission to be a "bowl of peaches," so all things considered, i am still very blessed to be here, and i feel the lord's blessing every day. it is ALWAYS there. my patriarchal blessing instructs me to "trust in the lord. do not doubt him, or fear." i've learned that these are quite serious instructions, and they're not always easy to follow, but when i follow them, i have NEVER been let down. and so it has been a week full of blessings. first off, nearly everyone who even sort of knows me in the ward, said happy birthday to me yesterday at church, so that made me feel good. then this last week, we were tracting, and i've been really working on getting out of my timid ways while tracting, and had a chance to be bold. i knocked on a door, and no one answered, but we could hear them around back of the house- normally i feel like i'm intruding walking around to the back of someone's house, so i normally dont, but that day i just felt like i had had enough of being afraid of people. the message i share is more important than whatever they're doing. so i walked around the back of the house, and there were 2 men and a woman, and a little boy. one of the men and the woman are partners, and the boy is their son, and the other man was a friend of theirs. and they were suprisingly warm and friendly, and even though at first all of them said they werent that interested, all of them perked up at some point, as they allowed us to teach their almost 8-y-o son the first lesson. then, the dad, who was very atheist volunteered to take his son to church not this week but next week, and they invited us back for another lesson this week! so that was good. that was probably the best thing that happened all week. the other awesome thing that happened, was that we went to a family called the Wolffs for dinner this week, and they had a good referral for us that from the sounds of it, is golden. so we're excited to be able to teach her, but the other thing was that Bro. Wolff is a physio! but he's not just a physio, but apparently one of the best in Australia, and FINALLY someone told me what was wrong with my back! basically, all the joints in my back got sprained when i had the open heart surgery, and all my muscles got "confused" and then tightened up, and then i subconciously favored those parts of my back, and now they're all out of wack, and my back muscles are significantly weaker than they should be, and way too tight. so he gave me some stretches to do, and recomended this thing called a thoracic back extension rack. he had one at his house, and i tried it- basically its just an arched piece of plastic with two ridges on it, and you lay on it, and it digs into the muscles and loosens them up. he said that its the best thing out there for this type of problem, and is supposed to be used basically for the rest of my life. intitially, every day, but once i actually start to heal up, it'll peter out to about once a month. it costs something like $150 australian to get one, but for a lifetime tool, i think it's not too much, so i asked him to order one for me, and i'd pay for it. but i wanted to run it past yous, especially dad, first. so just let me know. i want to fix my back asap. and bro. wolff is also giving me free physio sessions starting in a couple weeks to help me heal up completely. its awesome! then on saturday, there was district leader council, so elder prina went to that with the other DL and the zone leaders for the Gold Coast zone, and i went on a trade off with the other comp. they're the chinese missionaries in gold coast, and they had a lesson, so we went to it, and i pretty much just sat there, cause the lesson was in chinese, so i didnt know what was going on, but apparently it was a good lesson. anyway, that was pretty much the week. not too much else exciting happened. just hoping to find, teach and baptize someone ASAP! your prayers would be much appreciated. :D anyway, i hope yous have an amazing week! i love you all so much!
Love,
Elder Tayler Christensen