Karratha, W.A., Australia
Tuesday, 17 July 1990:
Today was TRANSFERS and right now I’m on a bus set out for KARRATHA, up at the top of Western Australia.
This should be interesting, trying to write on the bus.
They’ve just created a new Zone up in the Northwest, of which I get to be the single zone leader.
I’m the first one, so it should prove to be pretty exciting.
I’ve got me and a couple in Karratha, and two elders, two sisters and a couple in Port Hedland.
It’s really an exciting new experience for me.
I’ve served with all of the leaders before: district leader Elder [Mark (Mamo)] Lauaki and senior sister [Belinda Lee] Kennedy, so that’s good.
I’m just going to express to them that we are a team, more than anything else.
I’m their leader … in other words, I’m their servant.
I really do look forward to serving with them up there.
Today was pretty wierd.
[The] president wanted to talk to me before transfers so I went in a bit early.
And he told me the place and that I would be the zone leader up there.
I had been thinking about it before, that I would go to Broom or something.
I’ll definitely dare to get a few photos on the way up.
I’m really the envy of the whole mission.
It’s pretty exciting.
Anyway, we’ll see how it goes.
These roads are terrible!
Saturday, 21 July 1990:
Today is Saturday.
It was a pretty strange day.
Right now I’m undergoing an awful lot of stress.
I’m trying to figure out what my Heavenly Father wants of me.
The last few days we’ve just gotten by.
We went tracting on Friday, but my companion hated it.
I can’t figure it out.
What does Heavenly Father want me to do?
I’m right now struggling between being social and being a hard working missionary and being slack.
I’m trying to figure out if I’m doing the right things.
My companion, Elder Monk, seems to be a nice guy, but being in the country, and myself from the city, we’ve got our little clashes.
I think if I let him, he’ll probably sit at home all day and read.
What really is hard working?
I served in the country before.
I know to a small degree what it’s like.
But I’m really having a hard time figuring things out, you know, what I should do and that sort of thing.
Ever since I got here on the Thursday when we got out in the town, I’ve been grasping for things to do.
All my companion keeps saying is, get in the community, go to the shops, and things like that.
In the city these things seem slack, but up here they are commonplace.
I really don’t know what to do.
I can really tell that I’m either going to love this place up here, or hate it.
It will be either the best three months or hell for three months — no in-the-middle I can see.
I have to give a talk in Sacrament Mtg tomorrow on “Overcoming Obstacles.”
I think that it was given me at just the right time.
Elder Monk and myself are supposed to be a team and already there’s this friction and I better get rid of it really soon, because we are an awful long way from an easy answer.
Part of it might be, I’m having trouble doing things anyway.
Just when I thought I knew all the ins and outs to missionary work;
just when I thought I had the balance, just when I though I had it all together, the Lord sends me to KARRATHA
But for what? … … maybe a blessing would help (?)
Wednesday, 25 July 1990:
Well, Wednesday has rolled around and I’m still in Karratha.
It still seems like we’re not getting anything accomplished and so I think what we need to do is to figure out what we want to do and get some objectives, write them down, and do them.
I think that a little bit of inspired tracting might be good.
Also, more important, some work through the members.
I’m sure that the people are there.
We merely need to approach them in the right way.
Today we made some great headway as far as service goes.
There’s this lady who organizes people who need volunteers for some different things.
Hopefully next week she will have some different work for us to do.
We’ve jsut got to start getting some things accomplished.
I really think that there’re some people here for us to teach and baptize.
We just need to find them, AND I just pray Heavenly Father will help us find them.
What would Ammon do if he lived in our time and was assigned to work in KARRATHA?
How can we meet these people?
How can we help these people want to know the truth?
Right now I’m reading James E. Talmage’s Jesus the Christ.
It’s really good.
I just finished the chapter about His boyhood.
I’m really enjoying it.
Hopefully, it will help me to understand Christ’s mission and personality a bit more.
My eyes are sore from reading so much.
Friday, 22 July 1990:
Thursday we ventured off to Tom Price, a mining town in 300 km from Karratha.
It’s pretty nice down here, only thing is it’s a lot colder than we thought it would be.
We didn’t even bring any jackets.
The trip down was pretty good; I really enjoyed it.
We didn’t even do any talking at all.
My companion just sat in the passenger seat and didn’t say a word.
He just put on his headphones and listened to some tapes he just copied the last few days.
Last night he kept me up late because he thought he needed to do his laundry.
He ran off by himself to put the load in, but I followed after him and asked him if he knew that we weren’t supposed to be alone.
He said, “Yes” and that’s all.
This companionship is starting to turn out to be another Elder McMullan affair.
I can really tell that he just doesn’t like me.
I think it might have something to do with the fact that I’m an American and he thinks he’s so much better than me.
He’s bigger and stronger, but he had a go at me and I stacked him.
So that might have hurt him.
Also he doesn’t like to work out here.
We haven’t gone tracting but once or twice and he just couldn’t get into it.
This guy rarely talks to me.
Sometimes I have no idea what he’s doing.
When he drives the car he thinks that he is the senior companion and does all the things that he wants to do — end of statement.
Now that I’ve said all of these bad things about him, so you don’t think that we’re not getting along, or that he’s a terrible person,
I’ll tell you a few of his good points.
| 1. | He decided to come on a mission. | |
| 2. | He got called to serve in the Australia Perth Mission. |
| 3. | He’s my companion. |
| 4. | He’s managed to stay out on his mission for eight months. |
| 5. | He knows how to drive a car. |
| 6. | He’s well organized and likes to keep himself neat. |
| 7. | He likes to read; especially church books. |
| 8. | He seems to love the members here very much |
| 9. | He seems to want to succeed in his missionary labors. |
| 10. | He’s read the Book of Mormon. |
| 11. | He’s got his First Discussion memorized. |
| 12. | He likes to laugh and have a good time. |
| 13. | He seems to be quite mature for his age. |
| 14. | His birthday is the same day as mine 19 Sep (mine 1969, his 1970). |
| 15. | Right now he’s reading a good book. |
| *16. | I love my companion. |
| 17. | How much? I don’t know, but I want to love him more. |
| 18. | He seems to be quite knowledgeable. |
| 19. | He knows more about Australia than I do (might be because he’s from New South Wales, Australia). |
| 20. | He has a knack at filling in time. <- Is that a good quality? |
| 21. | He likes music — he can play the piano (sort of). |
| 22. | He’s good at fixing things. |
Well, there are some of his good points that I’ve seen.
I suppose it looks like I need to accentuate the positives.
Saturday, 28 July 1990:
Today was really good.
We finally did some tracting and I loved it.
We were able to give away three Books of Mormon and teach this young married lady.
Tomorrow we will be having a Sacrament Mtg, which hopefully will go really well.
We’ve invited a few people around.
There’re the active members, plus an excommunicated that for sure will be coming.
And an inactive and her friend might come; if not we’ll be sad.
Update on my companion:
He’s a good guy.
I think he just lacks some communication skills, like with me, for instance.
He has no manners and he snaps at me and is rude when I say some things.
One time I guess it will fall back in his face.
I hope I can be loving enough to help him through.
He’s always right in all of the decisions; I’m always wrong.
It’s kind of hard, but I’m managing.
I had a feeling today that we might be together for one more month and I told him, but he didn’t seem too sad, so I don’t know what to think.
The thing is [is] he never says anything to me; he’s always quiet.
I know when I get worried I’m not annoying an introverted quiet person; that’s for sure — we’ll see.
Life is going very well.
The Divine family is really helping us out.
They’ve let us use their caravan; it’s great.
I really like it.
Up in Port Hedland they have a caravan, which is the thought of me going there from [the] President.
But we know how [the] president is always changing his mind.
Tuesday, 31 July 1990:
The last day of the month.
I wish I would have written in here on Sunday, because Sunday was good.
In the morning I got up and wrote a talk.
I’ve been really slack in my talks.
I haven’t been preparing as much as I should be, so my talks haven’t been like I know they could be.
Anyway, this last weekend has been good.
We traveled all of Sunday up to Port Hedland.
We spent P-Day with them and everything.
It was really good.
At 6:00 a.m. we had a two-hour testimony meeting.
It went really well.
Then we had some games after that; it was really good.
Then today we had a day of splits; it went really well.
I had a good talk with Elder Lauaki and Elder [Philip] Watson.
Then tonight I took the sisters home to their place and had some really good interviews with them and they really helped me out a lot.
They really expressed a lot of confidence in me as their zone leader.
I really appreciated it.
We’ve got two very righteous sisters over there in Port Hedland.
I really had a good time up here in Hedland.
I enjoyed being with these guys up here.
