Happy Turkey Day!!

Well I have a pretty embarassing confession to make. I have been in Australia way too long, because I fully thought that Thanksgiving was last Thursday. But it gets worse because in my district there are 3 and a half Americans and we ALL thought it was last Thursday. I had to have an Australian google and tell me otherwise Thursday night. Not that it really matters, because no one here even knows what Thanksgiving is. So HAPPY THANKSGIVING coming up not just passed. I hope everyone will eat a big turkey for me and love it and enjoy the cold and the football and family and everything. I'll just be over here in the heat getting sunburned and knocking on doors where it's just any other normal Thursday in the summer. 

We went to the temple this morning which is why I'm late emailing, and the temple is just great. Although we did just go two weeks ago so now it will be a long wait to go again. It's crazy working in an area that is so far removed from everything. We had stake conference over the weekend and we had to drive in an hour and a half both ways Saturday night for the adult session and again Sunday morning. It was also complicated by the fact that our car got left in Brisbane the week before(long story) so we had to bum rides off members. The two wards here in Toowoomba were in charge of providing the choir for the Sunday conference and we got asked to participate although none of us really sing, but they just needed numbers I guess. It was hard to invite our investigators to come along since it was such a roadtrip to get out there and I've been feeling drained from all the traveling because we got home late and had to get up early as well. Then we had to get up this morning at like 430 to make sure we got to the temple on time as well. So lots of traveling the past few days and not much sleep. Hopefully I can catch up soon. It's getting way hot these days too but thankfully we are up here in the mountains so it is a dry heat unlike Brisbane where it's super humid. This transfer from here on out shouldn't have too many more roadtrips until Christmas and then we are getting together but I'm not really sure what we will be doing and transfers is over New Years so the first day of next transfer is January 1st which works out nicely haha. 

Well I don't have much else to say for this week. I'll be back to normal with p-day on MOnday next week. Love you all and hope everyone has a great thanksgiving!

Sister Ramsussen

Pictures!

I haven't had the chance to send pictures in a while so I thought I would send some this week. I'm staying here in Toowoomba and so is my companion, so that means we will be here for Christmas! Should be fun and at least it doesn't get super hot here like it does in Brisbane. From my four-way Sister Alberts, the other American, got moved and Sister Tauti is training a new missionary. Sister Tauti started training the same transfer that I did and we have both been training ever since. 6 months of it. Except she's had a different companion each transfer and I've trained both mine for two. Anyways she's pretty burnt out, as am I sometimes, but we hang in there together. And it's the Lord's work, it's meant to stretch us and we know we CAN do it, it's just that we also know how hard it is. But I'm really glad I have her and she is staying because I think I'd go crazy if I didn't. 

Anyways here are some recent pictures, temple trips and what not. 

my district at the temple

Sister Tauti and I

Brisbane skyline from across the river at Kangaroo Point lookout where the temple is

My MTC district reunited again, minus my MTC companion sister Solomon. Eventually we will all reaunite! Even if it's on the plane ride home haha

Another Week of Craziness!!

Well Everyone I had so many crazy things happen to me the last week and a half that I don't even know where to begin haha

Maybe I'll begin at the beginning...It actually started off slow because my companion was sick. Our Zone came out to Toowoomba to hang out and go bowling during P-Day and I ended up sitting at our flat all day while she slept...lame but it helped her get back into working condition so we could do work Tuesday and not miss any time. The rest of the week was basically normal for a few days and then on Friday we went back to the wildlife ladies house to help her clean cages and stuff like that. She let me feed her baby wallaby with a bottle like a baby! It was the cutest thing ever. I didn't get any pictures but Sis Alberts did so hopefully I can steal them from her sometime. It's been on and off thunder storms here since Friday and Sunday night my companion and I got caught in one while biking home from the church and I thought we were going to get struck by lightning and die, but we are protected which is good. On Sunday our Sister Training Leaders came out and each of them paired up with one of our companionships to work, which isn't how they normally do tradeoffs, normally one of them and one of us would just trade spots for 24hrs, but they had to do it like that because we live so far out in the middle of no where. It was fun though and we had a crazy experience with her where we went to visit this less active member who lives in a retirement village. We didn't know anything about her except that she doesn't come to church and bishop said it's be good for us to drop around. Well she started off by saying/yelling "I'm a latter-day saint, are you my lot??" haha we said yes so she let us in. She is like 100% deaf and just started telling us her life story immediately starting with how she's dying of a disease that is so rare no one else in Australia has it and she really thought she would die on Friday and was so disappointed to wake up on Saturday. And the conversation just pretty much went from there, and by conversation I mean the three of us nodding and her just rambling crazily on and on. But I gained some great knowledge from her: 1. apparently the second coming will be sometime early next year 2. Apparently God has blue eyes 3. she told us several times that she's just thankful she has a good figure still and we should just pray we still have good figures when we are 88. There was a bunch more but those are the main points I took from the conversation. We were all pretty bummed to find out we wouldn't be able to be home before the second coming hahah jkjk She was a nice lady just lost her marbles a bit is all. It was also hilarious because like as she was talking we were able to talk out of the sides of our mouths without her hearing at all because she was so deaf, and that came in handy when she started telling us the exact same stories over and over. Finally I just told her I was going to say a prayer so that we could leave and I was like yelling a prayer at her so she could hear it. It was so great, just a day in the life of a Toowoomba missionary, heaps of elderly people, but I love them!

Monday I met a man in his 60's that loves surfing and wanted to know where is the history of the Maya and Inca people if the Bible is supposed to be the history of the world...so you better believe I told him all about that! He told us he will read the whole Book of Mormon in about two weeks and we should come back because he'll have heaps of questions. It was so great. That same day it was drizzling and we knocked on a ladies door, so she let us in and while we were teaching her it started pouring, and then after about 15-20min right as we finished teaching her it stopped, such perfect timing!

The last 24 hours have been a bit weird and the next 24 hours will be as well. So we had the temple this morning and we have zone conference for all the southern zones tomorrow, both in Brisbane. So our Zone leaders came up with this brilliant plan (SARCASM ALERT) so that we wouldn't waste too many Kilometers on the cars and gas money and all that. So they decided that we would drive into Ipswitch, which is kind of on the edge of Brisbane headed to Toowoomba, about 1.5 hours from Toowoomba. And they decided we would sleep in the elders flat there and those elders would go sleep in another elders flat and the Elders who are in the other ward in Toowoomba would also stay in some other elders flat. So we had to drive down last night and it was storming so bad. It was the worst storm I've ever driven through in my life. I could see lightning touching the ground all around us as I was driving and could barely see out the windshield even with the wipers turned all the way up. I was so scared, but we prayed before we left so I knew we were protected and I think it was better that we kept moving then stayed put in the middle of no where in the storm. So we finally got to where the elders had told us to go and found out that they gave us the wrong address....I could have killed them. So then they gave us the correct address..spelled wrong (cole rd instead of coal rd)...again I could have killed them...and finally we got to the flat we are staying at for two nights. Which upon further inspection of the map I realized that we were super close to some sisters areas where we could have just gone and stayed with them and avoided the whole sleeping in an elders flat thing, which even if they aren't there still feels weird a gross to me and those poor elders wouldn't have had to have their work disrupted for us to stay there. But obvioulsy the elders hadn't thought of that option. So I'm pretty annoyed with elders at the moment. I have no idea what we will do tonight when P-day is over because we aren't in our area and we haven't got a clue where we are really. So that should be interesting as well. At least we will be back home by tomorrow night after zone conference. So it's just been a great adventure the last few weeks! I hope you all are having adventures too! Thanks for all the emails I love it! Enjoy the cold winter Christmas season because It's getting hotter and hotter here and I just can't get in the Christmas spirit, forget Thanksgiving they don't have that here and there aren't many Americans in my ward to celebrate with. Next P-day I'll be writing to let you know if I'm staying in Toowoomba or not or if I'm staying with sister Tempany or getting a new companion. So lot's of crazy things going on here in the future.

Well love you all and have a great week!!

Sister Rasmussen

G'Day

G'day,

So this week was pretty good. We had the car for a day and a half which was nice. I can't remember if I ever mentioned that there are 4 companionships of missionaries here in Toowoomba, two for each ward, and we only have one car between us. So we really have to plan well, and get in shape biking up hills. But because we had the car we decided to go "down the range"which means going down the huge mountain that Toowoomba is on top of and to the little small towns in the valley. We have a handful of members down there and most of them are struggling to be active in church. Distance probably has a bit to do with that, but it doesn't really take all that long to get up/down unless there is traffic. Anyways that was on Saturday and in the morning we had one lesson to go to before we headed down there, so one of the YSA girls in the ward came with us and our lesson didn't show so we decided to drop in on a few people around there that we hadn't met yet that were in our area book. So the first house we go to has this sign out the front that says Wildlife Rescue League and when we knock on the door this lady answers and she has a baby possum on her head like burrowing in her hair, and next minute I look closer and there is definitely something squirming around in her shirt as well. So my normal door approach flies out the window and I say to her "wo! you've got something on your head!" and that broke the ice haha. So she starts telling us about all the other creatures she has, and goes inside and comes back holding a baby wallaby and talking about how it sleeps with her and pees on her bed all night and stuff...gross...but it gets worse because as she is talking and holding the thing it poops in her hand and she just takes the poop and sets it on top of the bookshelf next to her and says "oh I'll get that later"...nasty. But it was super cute and soft. So we go in her house and she starts showing us the rest of her animals. I guess she runs a wildlife rescue company and used to be based out in the bush but she has health problems (not surprising) and had to relocate to Toowoomba to be nearer to medical care. So as she's telling us this she keeps handing me animals to hold,(baby possums and the like) and I went to hand one to my companion who was like NO WAY and next minute the lady hands her this nasty thing that looked like a rat with a long nose, called a Bandicoot, apparently they get to be like the size of a small cat...gross. But my companion's face was priceless holding this thing. And we got the grand tour of all her cages and creatures, she had one of those flying squirrels and some cool birds and lots of possums. And then we were able to sit down and share with her a pretty good message and give her a Book of Mormon to read. It was just the most random thing to ever happen to me on a Saturday morning. After that we went down the range to meet a family called the Pynes. The mom is returning to activity and has two teenage daughters, one of whom was just baptized in May. We thought they lived in one of the small towns on the highway, but she kept asking us if we knew how to get to their house and finally just said we could meet her and follow her to where they live. And then we ended up driving for ages into the middle of who knows where farmland. It was super pretty though and reminded me a ton of south/central Utah. Very similar climate and vegetation except it doesn't ever snow or get as cold. So that was an adventure and at their house they had two dogs who sat on my feet and like proceeded to start fighting on my lap, and then they took us all around their property to show us their horses which was cool. Then after them we went on to drop by another family and the man answered the door in nothing but his green undies...and he was old and fat and bald and holding a tiny fluffy white dog, so that was also just an awkward situation. The last house we tried nothing too weird happened except I had another dog sit on my feet while I was standing talking to a man. We tallied it up and in all ended up touching or petting 8 different species of animals in one day. So I won't be needing to go to the zoo in this area, I had that all covered on Saturday. But other than that our week was pretty good. We are starting to see things happening here and building up a teaching pool and getting lots of work done. Halloween was pretty sad, because they don't celebrate it really here at all. We went to a member's house for dinner that night and they have twin 14 yr olds and a friend over and the boys tried to scare us by dressing up their moms hair dummies but that was as halloweeny as it got for me, so I hope everyone had a great halloween and has a great thanksgiving coming up too!

Love you all!

Mahal Kita (we have been meeting lots of filipinos lately)

Sister RAsmussen