Straw-berri, Blue-berri, Ras-berri

G-Day!

Two cowboys were lost in the desert and were starving and hungry. Finally, they see a tree in the distance draped with bacon. "Look!" Says one cowboy, "it's a bacon tree, we're saved!". He runs to the tree but is suddenly shot down in a hail of bullets. Within his last dying breath he says, "it's not a bacon tree, it's a ham bush".

....and of course they weren't saved because it wasn't Jesus Christ.

Acts 4:12

"Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."

It was transfers! I got transferred to Berri again. I was there for a few days when I first entered Australia, but immediately ETd to Playford. It's good to be back and it's a great area with lots of people to teach which is surprising because of how small it is. Berri is in the bush and has very few active members. I am part of a small branch of 16 Saints here. We have a Branch President and mostly a bunch of old ladies. Only one Prieshood holder besides the Elders. I will definitely miss Onkaparinga and Elder Siania. We saw many miracles there and had the amazing baptism for Mark Saunders. I said goodbye to Mark and it was awesome being able to help him towards baptism and wanting to change his life. I gave him the shoes I painted right before I went to the MTC and he ended up making a facebook post about them! I will never forget how awesome Elder Siania was and his awesome friendship and the many outings to KFC we had, lol. Never doing that again! I gained too much weight. just about 6 pounds... lucky i'm 6 months too sexy. (6 months to sexy is a term in the mission we use to say that we have 6 months before returning home, so it's time to reign in the diet and start running so we can be "sexy" by the time we get home in 6 months)

About a week or so of the transfer I was not in Berri because there was a mission tour coming up. They didn't want to drive me 3 hours just to come back a couple days later. So, they put me in a trio for 3 days in the city. It was like a totally different experience in the city. You teach a lot of people that can't speak great English and teach them how to speak English as well. I didn't like it too much because I sat there most of the time while one of the elders spoke Spanish to the people in English class. But Elder Hawes and Elder johnston were awesome companions for 3 days and we saw some miracles happen. One cool experience we had was there was a guy we went to contact that said he was interested on the street. We had his address and we went by and he let us in. He had two of his co-workers there with him and we were able to teach all of them the Restoration. The spirit was very present in the room and they all mentioned they felt the spirit and wanted to learn more. It was a very cool experience. After a few days I stayed in a house for a few days before the mission tour with our whole zone except for the one companionship of sisters. Obviously, it was a blast! We just goofed around basically and played games and had lots of fun together. It was a 5 bedroom house and one of the senior couples packed it with food because we had 5 polynesians up in that joint ready to stuff themselves!

The mission tour was great! We were fortunate to have a General Authority come named Elder Muers. He's a General Authority over the Pacific Area. He talked a lot about working with the members and using the members to find people to teach. It's definitely a good focus because the branch here in Berri really needs it. I genuinely think that none of our friends are coming to church because the members in the branch aren't ready to fellowship them. We are definitely going to be doing a lot of member work.

We had a pretty good week in Berri. We do a lot of teaching which is great because that means less finding and I've been in areas my whole mission where you have to do heaps of finding all the time. We have a couple people with potential but they have some big roadblocks to get over at the moment so we are trying to figure that out right now. Soon enough Berri will be the Promised Land.

I am enjoying my new companion named Elder Keller. He is a greenie from Mapleton, Utah. He has been in the mission only 4 months. The lucky guy was able to fly straight to the New Zealand MTC, then onto the mission. He is only 18 and I'm realizing, now that I'm nearly 20, that I was pretty immature when I arrived in the mission field. I hope to think that I have grown up a bit since arriving in the mission. I will turn 20 on Saturday this week. The mission is going by much too quickly and I hope that I'm able to feel ready to come home in a few short months. For now, we will work hard as District Leaders and try to bring some more people to Christ. College will begin for me on August 21st and that sounds really close! I don't really want to think about that yet. It's a race to the finish!

Have a great week everyone! Jesus loves you.

-Elder Bishop

Pictures:

Mission tour at the temple

Mission Tour

Brother Brenton giving up his coffee and cigarettes

Mission tour

Giving up the coffee

Elder and sister Wilding

Temple

Post that mark made after I gave him the going away gift

Lesson with Elder Hawes and Elder Johnston