Amazing Week Down Under!

Monday (4.25.16)

Today was the senior couples P-day! Elder Eyring and I had a lot of fun sharing the day with them and being their taxi driver! We drove our 12 passenger van and it was packed with 12 amazing senior missionaries! 

Happy taxi for the senior couples outing.

We started the day at a small town called Sassafras. We went up and watched the Anzac Day (sort of like American Memorial Day) parade and then ate a lunch at a place called Miss Marples. 

Standing in front of Miss Marples Tea Cottage.

The food was SOOO yummy! We got spiders ( which is an ice cream soda drink) and I ordered an open faced sandwich that was delicious! 

The ony spider in Australia you can eat....or drink!!!

Open face salmon sandwich... Yum!

Then it was off to a MASSIVE garden! I think this was the garden that Mark Dibb (Mark served in Australia Melbourne and gave Tag lots of good information about the mission before he left) was talking about! On the way there we passed the Cockatoo restaurant, Mark told me about. We didn't eat there but I want to check it out for sure  after my mission. We stopped at a beautiful park where you can feed tons of birds. Unfortunately, everyone else in Melbourne had the same plan today! It was packed with so many people that we could barely move! We ended up walking around the gardens with President Maxwell talking about mission plans and some possible transfer changes! Then it was off to the mission home for a dinner with the Senior Couples to give a last goodbye to the Latteiers. (The Latteiers are a wonderful senior couple who served with Tag in the City Branch for eight months). That was our Monday fun day with the Senior missionaries!

Tuesday (4.26.16)
Today was a super busy day too!  We started out the day with a trip to the office to talk with the Senior Missionary Couple in charge of cars. We are trying to go through the K reports (kilometer reports for the amount the missionaries drive their cars) and see where we need to increase the allotment of kilometers for missionaries to drive and where we need to decrease the allotment. As Elder Eyring and I were busting through that job, we got a call from President Maxwell telling us that instead of meeting him in the office today, we needed to go with him and Sister Maxwell to an appointment right away so we could ferry a car back down to the office. One of the sister missionaries needed some quick assistance and President needed to get there as quickly as possible. All ended well with the Sister missionary and Elder Eyring and I had to go and check out some other things on the west end of the city anyways, so the abrupt change in our plans really ending up working in our favor. I have found that to be the case so many times on my mission. Every time I have something planned and the Lord has something else we need to accomplish it always works out wonderfully. I have learned to let Heavenly Father know I am willing and able to do ANYTHING He needs me to do to serve Him and his beloved sons and daughters and the day always turns out for the best!  
 

To finish the night, Elder Eyring and I headed back to the city so we cound do an interview for a baptism! It was totally awesome and after that it was time to head back to the Mission Home. We met with President Maxwell for a couple of minutes and then it was time to call it a night ourselves.

Wednesday (4.27.16)

Our day was just jam packed full of planning for the upcoming months! There are a few missionaries staying at the Mission Home so President Maxwell's time is a little bit tight but we finally got some time to meet with him and we had a great meeting with him that lasted about four hours.  After our meeting we ate a yummy dinner with the Maxwells and the other missionaries and got ready for a seminary devotional that was being held at the mission home.

Serving up a selfie and a smile before our devotional.

Elder Eyring and I were really happy to participate and work with these awesome young seminary students. We talked with them and did some roleplays on how they can become more confident while sharing the Gospel with friends. It is so wonderful to see kids preparing to share the Gospel before they are called to be full-time missionaries. The Lord is definitely preparing His future missionaries!

Thursday (4.28.16)

Today was one of those days where we didn't accomplish anything we had planned! But that is pretty much how my life as an Assistant to the President goes. Elder Eyring and I are here to serve President Maxwell and whenever he says we are going to meet.......that is when we are going to meet! And that is just fine with us. We LOVE being with him and we have learned SO much about being a faithful servant of the Lord from him. He is kind, loving and he knows so much about the Gospel! I absolutely love every minute I spend with President Maxwell and so does Elder Eyring! 


We spent the first part of the morning with Sister Horne in the office doing work on the key indicators. Following that we planned with President for a couple of hours on MLC (Mission Leadership Council) and we also got some planning in for the coming months as well......so that was huge bonus!  After we finished with President, we got a call from Brother Kumarnasamy and he invited us to their home to get some delicious donuts from them and we were able to share a quick message with their wonderful family! It was a great night being able to share a message again! I LOVE TEACHING THE GOSPEL!!! 

After we left the Kumarnasamy's we had a meeting with some STL's (Sister Training Leaders) on the East side of the city. When we were done with our meeting they asked us if we were hungry because they had some extra KFC!!! We are ALWAYS hungry...especaily for KFC so it was a huge blessing they were so kind to share with us!

Friday (4.29.16)

Lots of office work was on the schedule for today. However, when we got to the office we remembered it was a mission temple day today. So that meant there were a lot of missionaries in the office. We love seeing them and visiting with all of them but that means it is tough to get much office work done. So we shifted gears and helped shuttle missionaries to train stations and every where else they needed to go.  After all the missionaries were gone we helped the office staff recover from the bombardment of missionaries!  We all love having the missionaries visit in the office but sometimes it places us a few steps back! We also were able to meet with president after he finished some work. President, Elder Eyring and I met together and came up with our final plans for our MLC (Mission Leadership Council: a monthly training meeting with the Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders) this coming Tuesday:) After our busy day we were blessed to have an appointment with the Jonnasons for dinner! It was great to be with an amazing family, eating a yummy dinner and sharing the gospel with them! It doesn't get any better than that for a missionary! You realize how truly wonderful teaching the gospel is when you aren't able to do it every day anymore!

Saturday (4.30.16)

Because we didnt get hardly ANYTHING done in the mission office this past week with everything else that came up we were happy to finally have a day with the office to ourselves and the Linders (A wonderful senior missionary couple that Tag loves very much!) I had to make a few charts for the upcoming MLC and I also worked on a countdown for our baptism goal by the end of June! Elder Eyring and I are really just trying to think outside the box and come up with ways we can better help the mission:)

Rockin' to Motab... not really, just training.

The Linders were so kind to bring us lunch again (the Linders are so sweet to Elder Steele and Elder Eyring) so we took a quick break and had a great lunch with them and then it was off to Sister Horne's son's basketball game! We were able to go because he invited a friend who is not a member to come to his game too. His team won the game so that was a bonus and a great outing for us! 

Sister Horne's son after winning their game!

After the game, we jetted off to the city to attend a baptism with President and Sister Maxwell. It was such a great blessing to be able to see two baptisms in the city! This baptism was very special to me because one of them was the husband of a wonderful woman I worked with last May when I went back to the city the 2nd time. It was a blessing to help teach her last year as she was working to come back to church. It was an amazing surprise to see her husband be baptized!

So amazing to see the blessings the gospel brings to families.

It was also a highlight for me because I was able to see the the wonderful Goodall family!  They are doing great and it was soooo amazing! I was able to give Hannah a blessing and that was very special to me. She has turned in her mission papers and I am so happy for her. She will be an absolutely amazing missionary!!

 So happy to see the Goodall Famiy!!!

Sunday (5.1.16)

Another Fast Sunday has been put down in the books!! There are just not that many left! I cannot believe how fast my mission is going, I love serving in the Australia Melbourne Mission so much! Elder Eyring and I went to the office early today because now every Fast Sunday the APs are in charge of an fireside for investigators! It is a great opportunity and we love to see all the missionaries and their investigators. We worked on getting musical numbers scheduled and contacted recent converts to bear testimony! Luckily, we were invited to go over to a member's house for an early dinner before we had to shoot off to Deer Park to conduct the Fireside!  We spent about three hours in the car today completing all our duties. It was quite a wonderful Sabbath day and I was VERY HAPPY to be able to fast today!

Fast Sunday drive to our fireside.