The Lads Of Berri

Aye Mates! Good day! I am In Aussie!!!!! So excited to be here!! Sorry for the big delay on this email. While traveling I was so out of it, that 25 hours was just a blur. lol

If any of you guys are wondering if a 15 hour flight is fun, think twice, it was crappy lol. But, I met a lot of missionaires going to different parts in Australia which was fun but I was dying to get out of the airport, couldn't be there any longer. The flight from LA to Sydney was a haul!  After arriving in Sydney, I still had take another flight to Adelaide. 

My last days in California were great.  The awesome Mattern family had a little diner for me to say goodbye, which was so kind.  I was able to go visit my friends that I've been teaching and tell them goodbye too.  Kunal, my friend from 7-11 is on date to be baptized in July, so I will miss that great event, but I'm so happy for him.  The ward mission leader ended up taking me to Roseville to meet up with some other elders.  I was able to spend my last day in California with some fun elders.  One of them was Elder Riley Shelton.  We came full circle in the mission.  I met him in the temple doing my first endowment, so it was fun to begin and end with him. Since it was my last P-day, we decided to do something a little crazy.  Of course it included eating a lot of food.  lol. At the local Leatherbys in town, Elder Larsen and I decided to do a food challenge.  If you can eat all of the food they give you in 15 minutes, you get to be on their Wall of Fame and your food is free!  Free food sounds good to me, so I was all in.  Missionaries are poor you know!  We had to eat a burger made with 1 pound of meat + bacon, and the buns were grilled cheese sandwiches, a large fry and 2/3 gallon of ice cream.  It was quite the challenge! I ate almost all of it, just a few more bites of ice cream and I would've finished but I didn't want to puke. But Elder Larsen packed it down in 11:56 min, quite insane, I was at about 15 min,  still got on the wall of fame and we got free t shirts 

To get to the good stuff, I love Australia! This is the complete outback of Australia, Im in Berri. Berri is the bush, just nothing out here, we have a branch with 5 active members that attend.  The population is 10,000 people or less, very small, but lots of work to do up here still. I have an awesome native companion, He is from adelaide. His name is Elder Holt, quite an amazing Lad. We get a long super well and he is just a very loving genuine Lad with an awesome accent. I tell everyone that here but still, I want the accent so bad. 

So here instead of apartments they have flats, and they super nice! All the Aussies are like, 'this flat sucks!", and I'm like, "What are you talking about? This flat is nice compared to what I had in California!" LOL. I love my new mission president, President Johannson. He is a big Poly that has the dryest humor and I love it. My kind of jokes haha. He loves to feed the missionaries so he took all the new ones that came in including me, to this very nice steak house. My steak was $42! Great steak tho. I'm excited to grow this area here in Berri with Elder Holt and work really hard! I'll update you guys on Monday for me, but Sunday for you lol. I am 15.5 hr ahead if you live in Utah. 

-Elder Bishop

Pictures:

Elder Holt, my new compainon and me

Elder Larsen and me before the food challenge

Wall of Fame at Leatherbys

Cool Sunset while flying

Me by Murray river in Berri

The food we had to eat

My fantastic steak 

2/3 gallon of ice cream

Wall of Fame Photos!