February 12, 2018

It's so good to hear that Randy visited you guys. He's the coolest. I miss Jimmy Johns so much. They have Subway here and some other places that are kind of similar but none of them are the same. One of these days I'll special order some JJ's all the way to Scotland. When is it transfers for the Elders at home? My companion is pretty obsessed with Korean culture and he is pretty upset that he is missing these Olympics. I'm just sad I'm missing the World Cup, but I'm sure I won't miss much of it being in Europe.

Speaking of my companion, this transfer will be an interesting one with Elder Gunson. I'm happy I got a friendly companion. We have a decently sized teaching pool here which is good. Now that I've met our investigators I can talk about them a little bit more lol. My favorite is a Romanian family of Ioan (Ee-wan) his partner Rosalia and their son Alex who is 8. They want to get baptized pretty bad but Ioan and Rose need to get married and Ioan needs to stop smoking. He's almost quit but just a few more days and he'll be finished for sure. They're really polite people but in order to teach them we need to get a Skype lesson so other Elders can speak Romanian to them. The other family we are teaching is a huge Slovakian family. The dad has 14 kids and a crap ton of grand kids. We teach nearly all of them. It's crazy! We also get Skype lessons with them and to be honest I can see a few of them getting baptized this transfer. They also need to stop smoking. The Dads name is Yaro and that's like the only name I can remember. They all have super eastern European names so their pretty hard to remember since I've only met them once. Then our other investigator is just a uni student who is on date for the 24th of this month. She learns well and has a developing testimony. She is super awkward and doesn't really communicate but Leanne will talk when she has a question so that's at least good. So the teaching is going pretty well in Perth, which is nice to have so we aren't finding for 9 hours every day in the freezing. We only do that 5 out of the 7 days of the week now :D

The branch is crazy. There are about 20 people that come every week so that isn't too bad. There are only two speakers every Sunday and both give 20 minute talks. Guess who he asked to give a talk this Sunday. I was asked to talk about Priesthood next week so I think I might touch on using the priesthood righteously and delegating keys. I hope people learn from it!

So in general summary I feel like this past week was a good start. Perth has some cool things. I'm also pretty happy about the District I'm in, everyone in the Dundee district is super cool. There are no stinkin' sisters in our District. Sisters are cool and all, but when it's all guys it's so much more fun lol. Because Gunson is into Korean stuff we make asian food like every night for dinner which I actually like a lot. It's easier to make than I thought and it's a nice change compared to spaghettios and canned mac'n'cheese. In Perth the town put on a Chinese New Year festival and we went to it. It was actually pretty cool, there were fire dancers and lights and all that neat stuff, I'm not able to upload pictures at this Library though, I'll have to do it when we go to the Church some time later this week.

I hope you all have a good week, and since I can't show you any pictures today. I shall send you a meme. Enjoy.

Love you all,

Elder Erik Orchard