Weekly Update December 31, 2013

Hello again everyone!

Happy New Year! (Almost.) Today was our transfers and I now find myself in the Capalaba ward in the Cleveland stake. My new companion is Elder Iongi, from Auckland, New Zealand. He is my first Tongan companion. He has been out 3 months longer than I have. I am looking forward to the new area, but I am very sad to have left Toowoomba so early.  I am going to miss that town.

Nothing too much to report on since I last wrote. All that has happened since then and now is heaps of tracting by me and Elder McIntyre.

I hope that everyone has had an enjoyable New Year's Eve!

Love you all!

Elder Rosier

Ross indicated during our Christmas day conversation that he suspected that he and his companion, Elder McIntyre, would both be transferred, and they were. There are a lot of Chinese students attending the University of South Queensland and there had been talk about sending Chinese speaking missionaries to the area.

Here are pictures I downloaded from the Australia Brisbane Mission website from their Christmas Eve party. Ross is in all of them--I'll just let you find him!

Kathy

Weekly Update December 26, 2013

Merry Christmas! 

I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas. This has been my second Christmas away from home, and it was a rather eventful one. As many of you may recall, I spent last Christmas in Mount Isa, where my companion and I were the only missionaries for hundreds of miles and the temperature was up in the 100s. I am grateful to be in Toowoomba for this Christmas where I am surrounded by 7 other missionaries and the weather is heaps more mild than it was up there. 

Our Christmas festivities in Toowoomba began last Wednesday with our district's "Christmas party" after our district meeting. We had previously assigned names for secret Santa, and at our little party we gave out our gifts. I received a hot wheels car from one of the sister missionaries. After handing out our gifts, we went carolling at a few of the retirement homes here in town. 

On Christmas Eve, all the missionaries in the mission, from Bundaberg south were able to attend the mission's Christmas party. President and Sister Henderson made sure it was a good time for all of the missionaries that were able to attend. We were able to do a  service activity for some foster children, we had a devotional, we watched "It's a Wonderful Life," and we were able to just enjoy the company of all the missionaries in attendance. We had a massive lunch, provided by members in the wards down around the Karawatha chapel in Logan. I was able to catch up with a couple of the members of the Springwood ward who volunteered their time to serve us. We were all very grateful for everything provided for us there. After the party was over, they handed out all of our packages and mail that the mission had been collecting for us over the last month or so. It was really nice to finally receive some mail from home.

Christmas was a lot of fun for us as well. We started the day having breakfast with the Edwards family in Toowoomba ward. They had all the missionaries in town over. Next we had lunch at the Allen's home. Brother Allen is a member of the bishopric in the ward. After lunch with them, we had a massive feed at the Ngahe's. The Ngahe's are a Tongan family, and they had quite a massive meal for us. After our time there we went to the Dixon family for "dinner." After our meal with the Ngahe's, it was difficult to eat much of anything else. Thankfully, the meal at the Dixon's was very light. 

I was grateful to be able to talk to my family over Skype today. While I do miss everybody, I am grateful to be where I am right now. Thank you all for your love and support. I love you all!

Elder Rosier

Ross wanted to share the following message with family & friends. Merry Christmas!

O Come, Emmanuel

Weekly Update December 16, 2013

Hello again everybody!

Pretty generic week this week. Elder McIntyre and I spent a lot of our time out tracting and doing service for people. This week we made up our minds that we would make it a point to go on splits with the young men, or YSA men about to serve missions at least once a week. We started this week with 2 YSA boys, Sam and Jon Poole. We took them tracting with us for 2 hours on Wednesday. It was fun working with them because they are both about to serve. Jon just received his call to serve in the Australia Perth mission. For those of you not familiar with Australia, Perth is a city on the south-western tip of Australia. Yesterday we attended the young men's class in the Toowoomba ward to invite the young men to come out with us during the school holiday. We are looking forward to working with them, since our ward doesn't have any priest-age young men. 

We weren't able to have a discussion with Candice this week. The family that is fellowshipping her is doing a fantastic job though. They seem to have made good friends.

Tuesday night, the all 8 of us missionaries here in Toowoomba started a scripture study class. We had 3 members from Toowoomba ward show up for the first class. Hopefully we will start to see more people show up. We're hoping to attract less-active and non-members to the class. I think it will be a great opportunity to teach and also show how the Bible and Book of Mormon correspond with one another. I will be teaching it this week. Wish me luck!

On Thursday night, the sisters, McIntyre, and I attended the lights display in Queen's park--the main park in town--to do some contacting. It was a lot of fun to look at the lights, and a good opportunity to share the gospel. However, one of the sisters made a comment about how it reminded her of Temple Square, and since then I've felt a little homesick. I am grateful this is my last Christmas away from home! It is hard to be so far away for this time of year.

Saturday was the ward Christmas party. It was fun, and there was a lot of good food there. The 4 of us--Elders McIntyre, Palemene, Low, and I--sang "O Come, All Ye Faithful" for everyone. 

Thank you all again for your love and support!

Love,

Elder Rosier

Weekly Update December 8, 2013

G'day everyone!

Busy week for us here in Darling Heights! I am grateful to continue to see miracles each day as we go out to work. 

We had our first discussion with Candice on Thursday. We invited Brother and Sister Rota--two of our ward members who are very anxious to do some missionary work--to come with us. I have to admit that they are probably the best members I have used to fellowship investigators on my entire mission! We had a  very good discussion with Candice about how the gospel blesses our families. We invited her to start reading from the Book of Mormon, and invited her to attend church with us on Sunday. She wasn't sure if she could make it to church. However, she and her children were able to attend the Toowoomba ward on Sunday afternoon. They had a good experience there. We are looking forward to meeting with her again this week.

On Friday, the four of us missionaries went and tracted a neighborhood together. (we called it j-dubbing since you always see them out door-knocking in packs of 4 or more). We did a trade-off, and I went with Elder Palemene while McIntyre and Pickett went together. They were let into the first house they knocked on to teach about the gospel. Elder McIntyre told me that the couple they met were very receptive, and invited us back. We will seeing them this week as well.

I am grateful for the blessings that we are receiving each week. Thank you again for all your support. 

Love,

Elder Rosier

Weekly Update December 2, 2013

Hello once again everybody,

I hope that everyone was able to have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I must admit that I really missed it this year. Fortunately for us Elders in the Darling Heights ward, we were able to have a Thanksgiving dinner with a family here who has lived in the States before and knew what it was all about. The feed was fantastic: they pulled out all the stops for us. Along with the usual Thansgiving spread we had a couple of Australian additions. It was a good time.

Elder McIntyre and I had a good week this week. We had some pretty big miracles this week. On Wednesday night, we received a call from a man named Shaun. Shaun is a less-active member from the Gold Coast, but his wife (I think they're separated) and children live here in Toowoomba. He was working for a couple of days up here when his baby daughter got really sick, so he called the missionaries in the Gold Coast for a number to contact missionaries here. He asked if we could come give his daughter a blessing. We came to where he was staying right away, and gave her a blessing. After we gave the blessing, we were able to talk to the family he was staying with. They were Sudanese. They asked us if we would bless their house for them, since we were servants of God. We did, and they were very grateful. We asked if we can return to visit them another time, and they said yes. We left them our number, and a flier for our ward Christmas party. We will hopefully be seeing them this week, if not next. We also left Shaun with our number, in case he or his wife needed a hand with anything. The next morning, Shaun's wife, Candace, called us and asked if we could help her get ready for a housing inspection she had coming up. We went over and spent the morning helping her. While I was mowing the lawn, she chatted with Elder McIntyre. Candace isn't a member of the church, but has been exposed to if for a long time. She said she would like us to come back around and teach her more about the church. The, before we left, she said she knew people who needed the gospel in their lives as well.

On Friday, the sister missionaries in Toowoomba ward referred us to a group of Sudanese refugees who said they would like to hear about the church. We saw them Saturday, and we are going to acquire some materials in Arabic for them, and then visit them in the next week or so.

Sunday night, the town had a big carol sing-along in the park. It was a blast! We went and attended with some of our ward members, and it was a fantastic opportunity to talk with people about the gospel. It was fun to hear everybody singing along to the Christmas carols. It is fortunate that religion plays such a major role here in Toowoomba. The concert last night, while it had some commercial Christmas songs, had a big focus on Christmas being a celebration of Christ's birth.

After Santa made his appearance, the program became very focused on the nativity. I honestly dont believe that would have been a big part of a program like that if it had happened in any other part of the mission. It was really awesome.

Well, that was our week this week. Love you all!

Elder Rosier