Lead Zone Leader Now

Good day everyone! Big changes coming for me! Or I guess they have already happened! My companion got called as the new AP! And so I have been called as the lead zone leader in the Nephi Zone. Which means that I have to do all the driving, and I will have the sim card, and will have to take care of the zone of 27 missionaries! Yikes! Kinda stressful having to finally lead out and be the one completely in charge, but I know in whom I have put my trust and I will really learn how to rely on the Lord! My new companion used to be the district leader and has been out on his mission for a long time. I will be in charge of training him on how to be a zone leader.  

With this in mind my email won't be as long as usual because I have lots of things to do! 



Hope everyone's week went well and everyone is enjoying their winter weather. I am so used to the summer over here that it blows my mind that it could be snowing on the other side of the world…



Fun Australian things:

-Ok when I first saw this one it about blew my mind haha. Grocery carts here can just be taken away or pushed home….so as you can imagine there are just grocery carts laying around everywhere. There are carts in yards everywhere because people just push them home….I guess there is a cart collection team that stores send out to go and recollect their carts. Literally, some people in Darwin just have heaps of carts in their yards and the stores have to go and collect them. The stores have tried to make it less convenient to take the carts away by making you push a dollar coin into a slot to unlock the cart….it seems like the cheapest cart I could ever buy! One coin for one grocery cart….seems like a great deal to me haha. 

-So Australians like to do everything their own way and be very Australian. It is funny because all the candy bars have different names even if they are the exact same candy bar in America. They just change the name and like one little tiny ingredient, but it all tastes the same haha. 

-I don't know why, but all the Asians in the city dress very nicely and are so stylish. It is truly remarkable.



Weekly Highlights:

-Well I guess the big transfer news came for me one week ahead of transfers haha. 

-Elder and Sister Yaggie of the seventy came and visited the mission this week! They are the area seventy over the pacific! They were awesome. Sooo cool! However, there were so many meetings we had to attend this week! It was crazy! Every day I had two meetings and they were 2 hours long! 

-I have grown, which is crazy!

-Our church attendance for our companionship is all over the place. One week we have a million dollar profile person from china walk in with a full on suit. And then the next week we have a homeless lady whose name isn't even her name and she slept behind the building the night before and we have a kleptomaniac show up to church. 

-We had some beast lessons this week! Truly incredible! We met with some Italians that were catholic, but were interested in what this church is all about and the Book of Mormon and we had a great lesson and they are coming back to learn more! We met with a guy named Joy and he is amazing! I have never seen the eternal truth that we are Sons and daughters of God hit someone so hard! It truly meant so much to him! It was so special to witness it! The Holy Ghost had prepared him well and it has been a long time since I have felt the spirit so strongly in a lesson! Just pure doctrine being accepted and cherished by him! We also met with a guy name Monday on Sunday after church and he just wants to learn about truth and God. We invited him to pray and we are excited to see how he progresses!

-Our friend Leah may stop meeting with us which we are super sad about. But our friend Dean invited us to go have burgers with him after our lesson this Thursday which I am looking forward to! 

-Made some good food this week and it was a great last week of Elder Gardner and I together….I am really going to miss him, but it is time for me to grow and stretch some more. 



Spiritual thought:

Let’s start out with some quotes:



“The Lord does not require perfect faith for us to have access to His perfect power. But He does ask us to believe.”



“When you reach up for the Lord’s power in your life with the same intensity that a drowning person has when grasping and gasping for air, power from Jesus Christ will be yours. When the Savior knows you truly want to reach up to Him—when He can feel that the greatest desire of your heart is to draw His power into your life—you will be led by the Holy Ghost to know exactly what you should do. When you spiritually stretch beyond anything you have ever done before, then His power will flow into you.” President Nelson



Ezra Taft Benson 

“The great test of life is obedience to God. The great task of life is to learn the will of the Lord and then do it. The great commandment of life is, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength” (Mark 12:30). May God bless us to put the first commandment first and, as a result, reap peace in this life and eternal life with a fulness of joy in the life to come.”



There is a story I heard this week where this community would cross 5 rivers and 2 mountains for the sacrament. They understood what it meant to remember Jesus Christ. They knew the gospel was true and chose to remember Him and think celestial even if it meant crossing 5 rivers and 2 mountains to get to sacrament meeting. That is true sacrifice and dedication to the Lord!



Everyone is trying to find happiness….

Finite happiness can be found anywhere but Joy (lasting happiness) can only be found in Jesus Christ and the plan of our Heavenly Father. 



What is an ant? It is a little annoying, but it creeps in our houses and garages and gets in things. No fun. What is another kind of ant? 

ANT-Automatic negative thought is something that creeps in mind. These are thoughts that we tell ourselves that are negative. I think if you noticed your thoughts you would notice all the ANTs that creep in….not good. Gratitude to God is an antidote to an ant. Gratitude and saying a prayer and remembering all that the Lord has done for you can help with your ants. Create a delete key in your mind for these ants. Delete them out. Sing a song, say a prayer, repeat something...By small and simple things are great things brought to pass. Small negative thoughts can bring about horrible things in the long run. Small happy positive thoughts can bring about incredible things. 



Jesus Christ is the why:

We can rely on Him. In following Him we can learn to pattern our own lives after Him. Jesus asked Heavenly Father to glorify Him so He could glorify the Father. Jesus glorifies and redeems us so we can glorify the Father. 



No greater faith in Jesus Christ than action in Jesus Christ.

If we don't act we can’t and won’t change. This life is about choice. Choice is an action. Those choices are us exercising our God given agency. I plead with you to choose Jesus! Seek that Jesus! 



Sorry for the short email.  It was the most crazy p-day that I have had my whole mission!

I will respond to any emails I received next week when things hopefully have calmed down…

Here are the photos for this week…

https://photos.app.goo.gl/c2SQ4SN1aQ6PUK457



Thanks for everyone’s prayers for me! I can feel them all the way in Australia! Love you all! See you all in exactly a year and a half! 



Cheers,

-Elder Jones (zhang zhanglao) 




















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Testimony

Dear President Johansson, I first want to thank you for extending the invitation to the MLC to have us write our testimonies and send them to you! I was so excited for the opportunity to write my testimony!  I want to bare my testimony of the reality of my Savior, Jesus Christ. He is the light, the life, and the hope of my testimony! I am converted to Christ. He is the only name by which I can be saved! I am eternally grateful for Him. I have felt His atoning power in my life! I am so grateful for the chance to repent and I often ponder with awe at what He did for each of us! What He did for me personally! He suffered and died for me, so that I may have the opportunity to live both spiritually and physically again! I am grateful for Him and the power of the atonement and the power of the resurrection that is made possible only through Him! He is truly the rock of everything that this gospel stands on. Jesus Christ is my all! Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afr...
Read more

As If In A Dream...

Image
G'day, 哈喽啊, I hope and pray that everyone had a great week! It has been a busy crazy filled last 2 weeks, but I have enjoyed and found joy in serving our Lord and Master!  Weekly Highlights:  -Spent a good amount of time in Rundle mall the last 2 weeks! A couple highlights are that we found 7 new friends to teach in only 3 hours! We had a run in with a crazy homeless guy! He approached us and asked if we believed in God. We, of course, said yes and tried to end the interaction because anytime anyone approaches us, it is unusual and usually means trouble! He instead gets really close to our faces and said "Aliens built the pyramids so that means there is no God so go kill yourself. Go kill yourself right now. I mean it.” And then he walked away.  I thought I had heard everything people had to say to me in that crazy mall, but even for me it was a new one! I didn't really understand the logic behind that statement haha!  -We had a zone conference and that was good. Pre...
Read more

6 Months!

Image
Good day everyone! Hope everyone had a great week! This week was so busy and long for me! I feel a little worn down, but I am happy because I know that the Lord will sustain me! We accomplished so much this week and are looking forward to next week with an eye single to the glory of God!  Australian things: -There is a Chinese saying for football and it translates kinda to olive because the football looks like an olive. Kinda funny. But wow, I love the Chinese language!  -Alright here is a super Australian thing….on every recyclable bottle there is a 10 cent symbol if the bottle can be collected and turned in to claim that 10 cent…soooo if you can imagine there are people who are obsessed with getting all the 10 cent bottles. So we walk down the mall and there are these homeless people or just crazy people who dive into these garbage cans with tongs or just their bare hands and grab all the 10 cent bottles people have thrown away. They have these massive bags or shopping carts...
Read more