Greetings from down under!

This week has been a fun one! It was my birthday on Tuesday and my first birthday away from home! It was weird waking up and thinking, I'm 19. I appreciate all of the happy birthday emails and letters and gifts that I got, they were all great! One of the sweetest things happened early that morning. During personal study, at around 8:15am, we hear a knock on our door. We were kind of confused because no one knocks on our door, we're the one's that knock on people's doors! I go and answer the door and standing in our doorway is this older woman in our branch, probably around 70 years old, Sister Peate. In her hands was a cake, birthday card and a little baggie of presents for me for my birthday!! WHAT!? She knew my birthday because she was baptized on the same day! One of the little presents was a candy that sings happy birthday when it's lit... that's so cool! Later that day we stopped by the Kamer's for haircuts and then lunch. It was a super fun time and a really good way to celebrate my birthday, playing games and eating food. But then Momma K comes out with a surprise, she made German Pancakes!! :D That was fan-freaking-tastic!! Throughout the day I got presents from others in the branch too and I was impressed, and slightly creeped out, by how many people knew my birthday already! It was a great day (:

Elder Coats got another injury this week. While doing the dishes, he broke a glass cup and it sliced his thumb open so I drove him to the hospital and he got stitches. Also, Elder Petterson, our District Leader, was over this weekend for District Training Meeting and he was riding a long board, fell off, and had to go to the hospital to get it checked out and all cleaned up. I'm going to be quite the expert on injuries by the time I get home from my mission!

We had 6 missionaries in our flat (apartment) this last weekend and it was a blast! I got the wonderful opportunity to see my MTC companion, Elder Salter, again. That's always fun (: We had a district p-day so we went to the glasshouse beach and threw a footie ball around and tried catching a fish with our bare hands. In the end, Elder Salter was the champ! He caught the fish and we were all freaking out and super excited! (:

Saturday was a really cool day. We went out with not much of a plan for our day. While we were out driving around, we drove by a house that Elder Coats recognized. We went to the door but no one answered. Elder Coats noticed that the names on the mailbox were Dan and Liz. He called a Dan and Liz that used to investigate the church, but didn't want anything to do with missionaries the last time we'd heard. So he called them and we set up an appointment for tomorrow afternoon! Hopefully a good teaching/learning opportunity will come from this! Keep your fingers crossed! We later visited a less active member of the branch and had a really good conversation with him and his son who was visiting him for the Christmas season. He knows he needs to go back to church but is a little scared to go back. We invited him to the branch Christmas party that afternoon and him and his son came, along with the wife who is a member.

The Christmas party was great! We played basketball with the kids and ate heaps and heaps of food! It was held at Islandview in Narooma. There were about 50 people there, which is really impressive because we only have 25 or so members of the branch! There were visitors from Sydney, inactives, less-actives, and nonmembers that all came to party with us! It was a great experience for them, I think. I loved it (:

I heard a great quote this week, "The Lord will bless us to the degree to which we obey him." I've been thinking a lot about that. The Lord loves us a great deal and wants the best for us, but he's not going to bless us as much as He'd like to if we aren't obedient to his commandments. Do everything you can this week to follow God's commandments, when you do, I promise that you will see the blessings from God overflow in your life!

I love you all heaps! Have a great week!

Elder Macfarlane