Week 8

Everything is going good over here. It’s starting to get really hot, but it’s not too bad. I love the warm weather.

The teaching is going good. We about had our investigator drop us because he was going to move to another area for work, but he flies back every weekend to take the lessons from us. I think he is going to be a great member someday, but it will just take a lot of time because he has a lot of questions.

Mission life is going great. My basic everyday goes kinda like as follows:

6:30 Wake up, exercise.. We have been playing tennis and basketball, and we have a lot of gym equipment that we use, so it’s pretty easy to exercise.
7:00 Breakfast and get ready for the day
8:00 Personal study
9:00 Companion study.. We usually prepare lessons during that time.
10:00 Language study.. My companion is Japanese so he needs this time to study English, so I usually either do laundry or another personal study.
11:00 12 weeks, which is a training program for new missionaries.
12:00 Lunch
1:00-9:00 is [spent] looking for people to teach and also teaching members, non-members, and less actives; and basically talk to anyone that will talk with us. Dinner is somewhere in there if we have time or an appointment. It is usually around 5:30 when we eat.

That’s basically what we do every day besides Preparation day and Sunday.

This is now my second transfer. I am staying in the same area with the same companion, so it’s going to be about the same for the next 6 weeks. I look forward to hearing from you all. Thanks for everything you do for me.

Love, Elder Newman

Week 7

Well this week not a whole lot happened, but I am having lots of fun, and I am enjoying it. It is becoming a lot easier to talk to strangers, and I see the growth in my testimony and the affect the mission is having on me. It took a whole transfer, but I am getting into the routine of missionary work.

I am loving it in Australia. Right now we are just focusing on finding new people to teach. It hasn’t been working too well. A couple days ago we knocked on like 30 houses, a whole street, and nobody wanted to talk to us. The longest conversation we had was like ten seconds.

But this week I had the opportunity to speak in Sacrament [Meeting]. I had a couple hours to prepare. Luckily it was an easy topic. It was about preparing for a mission. I think it went great considering I had only a few hours to think of stuff to talk about. But yeah, that’s how this week has gone.

I love you all!

Love,
Elder Newman

Birthday celebration for Elder Iino!

Week 6

We are teaching two people. I asked one to be baptized, and he said yes. It is Fahad. He is very curious and very smart. He has some tough questions, but it’s all good. We set a baptismal date for December 5th, but we might have to push it back a little farther than that just because it’s hard to teach him with his schedule. But he hasn’t missed a day of church since we met him, so that’s really good.

This Sunday a guy that we never met before came to church. He was deaf, but it was pretty easy to communicate with him. He could really feel the spirit. It was a great meeting for him to show up to; it was fast and testimony meeting. This guy (Paul) loved how he felt there. He couldn’t hear the testimonies, but he could feel them. And I thought that was really cool!

So this Sunday we had three investigators come to church. Two of them now have a baptismal date, and it’s going great! I can’t wait to hear from you guys.

Love,
Elder Newman

A blue tree at Mount Annan Botanic Gardens.

Week 5

Camden is good. This week went by super fast. I am really enjoying it. There isn’t anything new that didn’t happen last week, but I did see my first kangaroo today. I love it here, but I do miss home. I ate some Tongan food, and that was different. They had gasava [cassava?], and that is like a potato. But they also love meat. They had a meat salad, and it was lamb and some greens. And like you would be eating it, and you would have to stop to pull out bones and fatty tendons, but it didn’t taste bad. It was just the texture of some of the foods. I have tried more foods, but I forgot the name of them. They make sure that [we] are fed.

This week we were doing service for a non-member, and they gave me and elder Iino a weight lifting set. So we have three adjustable dumbbells and a barbell and a bench to do bench presses, so that’s good. I was getting sick of pushups. And we also have a forearm thing that is pretty good for your forearms.

We are only supposed to do four hours of service, but this whole week was service. Like we had no one to teach, but we had heaps of service to do, so we got that done. I got a little sunburned, but not bad.

Saturday morning we were playing basketball at 5:30 am. I jumped to get a rebound and came down on someone’s foot and rolled my ankle and its purple and blue. It hurt to walk on it the first day, but it’s getting better. The young men of this ward love me and Elder Iino. We always are laughing when we do something with them.

That was basically our week. So it wasn’t busy with like teaching, but it was with everything else like service and making connections.

Love,
Elder Newman

Burragorang Lookout near Oakdale, NSW:

Week 4

Well this is my second week in Australia. I'm doing good. I am starting to get the hang of things as a missionary. My trainer is awesome. His name is Elder Iino. He is from Japan, and he speaks pretty good English. There are times that he is hard to understand, but we are both still learning. He is pretty new also. The food is pretty similar to home, a lot of meat and potatoes, but there are some new things here. I'm going to try them, and I will let you all know how they are.

There is a famous rugby player in our ward, like he plays pro rugby, and we are eating at his house this Wednesday. His name is Sam Perrett. Like almost all of Australia knows him.

Yesterday I blessed sacrament because they had no priests to bless, and then before I sat down I was asked to introduce myself, and that wasn't too hard. But then we got to elders quorum, and then the Stake Presidents wanted me to teach the lesson. I was about to, but then another elder helped me out, and we started to talk about conference talks, so I was like picked on all day.

And then we got a new investigator yesterday which is a good thing. He is really interested in a girl that goes to our ward, so he is willing to basically do anything. He wants to join the ward choir even, because she is in it. We gave him a Book of Mormon, and he said that he would read it and mark any confusion he had. We didn't even have to invite him to read it; he just said he was going to read it. He also said that he prayed for the girl he likes in sacrament meeting. He is from Pakistan, and he is in Australia working. He is a pastry chef, but does cakes mainly, so he baked her a cake. He is really persistent. I hope it works for him, because that would be a cool story.

But that's basically everything that has happened this week.

Signing off.
Elder Newman

Week 3 - Australia!!

It was a long flight. The first day in Australia I got sick. I think it was a combination of jet lag and sleep deprivation, but I'm alright now. I got sleep that night and woke up feeling great.  

It's pretty similar here, but the food is different. There is a lot less sugar in the food, but I am gaining heaps of weight. It's a pretty big culture shock here, but it's all good. I'm adjusting well. I miss our home foods, even the mayo tastes different, and everything's expensive here.

There was a lizard that got into our flat, and there are heaps of spiders. I haven't seen big ones, but there are heaps of them, and they are scary looking. Haha.

 

My trainer is Elder IIno. He is from Japan. He is so cool. He turns 24 pretty soon. I'm having so much fun here. Everyone loves my accent. Haha, I'm not the one with an accent, but okay. They like Americans here, which is good for me. 

Thanks for everything. I love you guys so much!

Elder Newman

Week 2

In my zone there are 12 other kids going to my same mission and like 24 going to Australia. When I said I had a bad day, I meant as in I didn't teach very well. It wasn't like I was missing home. I love it here! I am in charge of 8 missionaries right now, but we are leaving today at 11:30. I have seen Riley a couple times. Everyone thinks it's cool that we are twins. I have probably seen him like 5 or 6 times. 

I have taught my first real lesson to an actual non-member. The first lesson was kinda awkward.  It was like he didn't want to listen to us. And then the next lesson we kinda just got to know him and then share a quick message with him, and we could really feel the spirit. I felt like he was progressing a lot, but I have only met with him like 4 times. He will take lessons from other missionaries, so it's all good.  I hope he watched conference like we asked him to because it answered a lot of the questions he didn't know he had, I felt like.

Love,

Elder Newman

This is today's pic.