Welcome to Mt. Gambier

**Elder Jenkins has been assigned to Mt Gambier a town of about 28k people. It is on the Eastern edge of his mission and is a nearly 5 hour drive from Adelaide and about 20 minutes from the Southern Australia Coast.**

It has been quite cold here. In the teens to 20s c*. It is very beautiful, lots of birds too. 

The building is very small, in fact, the ward only typically sees about 15 to 30 on Sunday. It should be a  branch.


I did sleep well on the plane, I got about 7 hrs. I haven't had any problems sleeping, actually. Unfortunately, we didn't stay in Auckland long-- the flight was delayed so we literally ran through security and across the airport to make it to the flight to Adelaide. 

My companion, Elder Hymas is great, he is from Utah on his last transfer here. He has helped me be a bit more patient.

We feed our selves mostly, we have had crepes and lots of nice things. 

They abbreviate a ton, especially when greeting each other. So that is hard, but most of the time I understand what they are saying. People here are just very casual and laid back. It kind of reminds me a bit of Kooskia (the small town Amme and Scott met). 

Strange food of the week is a hard one. Either rice and eggs (because it's an interesting but cheap meal) or KFC. We had KFC for some conference and it is was way better than back home, they have chips!

We visited a Tongan man in the next town over who lost his 9 moth old son. He was hurting but shared his testimony of how he knows he will see him again. We gave him a blessing and when we walked in the room the spirit was palpable.  

I have been working on my patience with the work and I have seen it bless me. On Saturday as we were going back to the flat we talked to a man who had been taught previously and even remembered the missionaries names but had to stop because he was working too much. Hopefully, he will feel he has time for us. Yesterday after some conference we went on splits with the Portland missionaries.  The last door we knocked on we found a man who was covered in tattoos but shared how God has just come into his life and changed it so dramatically. I was able to share my testimony with him, and we will return when he gets a "room sweep" or couch. The other pair of elders also found a new person and we also got an appointment! People often are very casual about time here. So it is hard to get appointments sometimes.