September 13, 2015 Melton

Hey everybody! 

So yep, I'm in Australia. I'm sending this at about 11 A.M. on Monday here. Who knows what time it is on Sunday back home?

I flew here with about 10 other missionaries including Elder Bennion who I knew from the MTC.  A
random girl slept on my shoulder the whole flight... I was so scared but I couldn't do anything! AAAAAAAH!! That’s a funny story for later. We walk or ride the bus or train, no driving for us.  The food here is islander food, meaning tons of meat... mmmmmmmmmmm... tons of rice... mmmmmmmmm... heaps and heaps of food.

So I am serving in Melton! It's a suburb of Melbourne. I'm serving in the Melton south area. My companion is Elder Sifuentes from the Philippines. He is super awesome. I get to do language study with him in the mornings cause he is learning English! He speaks it really well, we are just working on some grammar and he wants to get rid of the accent. He wants to sound like an American instead of an Aussie
for some reason... We live with two other Elders. One of them is also Philippino, (the other is American) so that's pretty cool. We get along really well.

So you wanna hear about Australia?? It's sooooo different. Everything is different. Kilometers per hour, 30 degrees Celsius, etc. They have different ways of spelling some words, (colour, flavour, tyres), they
talk totally differently, and they even have different names for some things! I was so confused when I went to KFC and it said, Chicken and Chips. I was like, nah I don't want chips. Then I saw the picture and
realized that here is Australia, fries are called chips! And get this. What we call chips, they are still called chips... whaaaaa...aaaat? How do you know which one people are talking about??  Anyway, here's
some Aussie words for you;

jumper: sweater
chips: fries
Mackers: McDonalds
Heaps: lots
ages: a long time
cheers mate
I reckon
stuff this! stuff you!
that's crack-up!: that's funny!
mucking around: messing around
chin waggin': talking a lot
far out!
eh?
keen
Good as! sweet as! cool as! keen as! mean as! dirty as! small as! (that one sounds like they are swearing    to us Americans, but it's not swearing. "that's good as!" just means, "that's really good!"
How ya goin?

People don't pronounce their R's here so it would be like, "I'll go pahk the cah". So you can say those words, but don't use R's.

MIRACLE TIME!!!
We met this guy on the bus a few days back. We talked to him for a while, got his number, but he didn't seem too interested. We sent him a text on Saturday inviting him to church. He responded and said no
thanks, I'm catholic. We were disappointed, but then on Sunday he texted again and said I changed my mind, when and where is church? It was so awesome!! He came and stayed for the whole three hours! He's super cool.

This place is so diverse. There are people from everywhere. I reckon it's about 40% Aussie, 20% new Zealand, 20% Samoan/ other islander, 20% everything else. We have met people from India, Africa, Germany, China, Micronesia, Canada, Panama, Chile, Whales, England, America, Indonesia, etc. It's awesome. Our ward is about 80% Islander. They feed us until our stomachs burst, then the bring out the next course and make us eat it. I'm gonna get so fat! But I love them.

Anyway, I reckon we've been muckin around chin waggin quite enough.  There's heaps more I wanna tell you but that'll have to wait till next week! Elder Sifuentes is keen to go get some Mackers so we gotta  go!

Cheers mates.

Elder Chappell

Pictures:  Me and Elder Sifuentes, the view from a cool bridge--  they drive on the left side of the road!, Melbourne at night...it is so huge.