The first 3 days

I’m sure you’ve all been wondering what I’ve been up to since I got here. The honest answer is not a lot. I arrived at 6:30 or so (local time) and my friends weren’t at the airport. I immediately panicked and called my dad and got everyone of Sam’s (I’m staying with Sam) contact numbers and called of them repeatedly until finally he showed up (I never got a hold of him).

Sam, Chelsea, and I went out for pancakes and visited some of the city of Perth. It was pretty nice, even though I hate being in cities and Perth is a much bigger city than I’m used to. We got to visit a few shops and an outdoor mall. It was a very different experience. All the shops just leave their doors wide open, which I guess make a lot more sense normally when it’s not the middle of winter (it was about 60 or so degrees the first day). I left my camera in Chelsea’s car at this point, so this part of my adventures will not have any pictures, sadly.

After that, I got to meet some of Sam’s family at their home, applied for a few jobs, and then came to his grandparents’ house where we will be living. Then, I crashed on my bed at 5 pm and slept until 5 am. But at least I did better than anyone would’ve thought.

The next morning I woke up at 5, got a couple of things done, and ate some breakfast. Sam and I hung out with Sam’s friend Calvin. After that, we got to take the train back to his parent’s home where we watched Bride Wars (I mostly slept during that), and then played Settlers of Catan.

Today (Sunday), I got up right on time, well actually 9:30, which means we missed morning church. I got ready by 10:15, and then studied some Preach My Gospel with a bowl of Milo (which is some weird grainy chocolate-flake cereal). After doing that for about an hour, I woke up Sam and he got ready to go, so by 12:30 we were out the door.

Church wasn’t quite what I was used to. First of all, the ward was about 1/3 the size of my home ward, as was the chapel. It also took us about 15 minutes to get to the chapel, which would be unheard of in Tri-Cities. Also, this ward was apparently the largest in the stake. On top of that, almost everyone had an accent (there were quite a few Americans, actually). But at the same time, it was what I’ve always been used to. There was a really great spirit there as I observed the faithfulness of the Latter-day Saints here. And, it’s really nice to know that wherever I go, the church will always be full of welcoming people and will always teach the same doctrine, so there weren’t any surprises there.

After church, we had an opportunity to go to a Young Single Adult fireside. The speaker was Lorin Nicholson, who is a famous Australian motivational speaker. He is a blind guitarist, and listening to him play was absolutely amazing. Here’s a video of him:

He was an awesome speaker and his testimony was very strong. He has an “I’m a Mormon” video too:

The speaker after him was the mission president for the area. I expected him to have a hard time following Brother Nicholson, but he was also very entertaining and awesome to listen to. It was a really great fireside and afterwards I got to talk to a lot of cool people. Hopefully I run into them more because I can’t remember any of them.