December 19, 2016 Werribee

Merry Christmas everybody!

    I only have a really short time to write this email, so I thought that's basically all I wanted
to say! I hope you all enjoy your time with friends and family, and I hope you remember
the reason for the season. Sing the Christmas Hymns, and really think about the words.
I will be thinking of all of you this week! 

I love you, 

Elder Chappell

December 11, 2016 Werribee

Good morning starshine! The Earth says Hello! 

I will start by wishing my Mother a happy birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!!!  I love you! I was thinking about you on your birthday. I miss you! I hope you had a great birthday.

This week was quite eventful. Tuesday was MLC. I love MLC. I love President and Sister Vidmar. They are so amazing. So that meeting was good. I love to see all of the other Zone Leaders and the Sister Training Leaders. They are all like my best friends in the mission. They are so great. So we learned a lot of great stuff from that meeting, but I don't have the time or the motivation to write it all up. Basically, work hard. When you are doing the Lord's work, it is not about you, so do everything you can. Even when it is hard. Especially when it is hard. That is when you grow the most. 

Wednesday was normal, but I did an exchange with the Samoan elders. (we have a Samoan ward and a Tongan ward in our zone, so I get to learn a lot) I am at the point where I can have a very basic introduction conversation with Samoan people and throw in a few jokes at good times to impress them with my Samoan knowledge, then just pretend like I understand them the rest of the time. It is pretty fun. I got three dinners that night. This is why I have gained weight on the mission. The Samoan ward is Melton 2nd ward. If you remember, I started my mission in the Melton Ward and was there for 6-7 months. Back then it was just one ward. So it was full of Samoans. Now there's an english ward and a Samoan ward. So that was why I got chubby. Everyday, 2 dinners. KFC 5 times a week. This exchange brought back some good memories.

Thursday was our mission Christmas party. It was awesome. I got my Christmas package!  I open it because I expected it would be individually wrapped items inside... I am sorry. Don't worry, I pulled out the stockings for my companions, found the Christmas decorations, and then closed it back up and wrapped it. The surprise is gone now but I will still have it to open for Christmas. Thank you so much! My companions also thanked you a lot. They really appreciated it. 

 We had a mini Olympics, and our zone totally lost. But that is ok. I am not really that competitive anyway ;) There was a talent show, and an awesome devotional with heaps of musical numbers. We also had time to just play sports so I was back and forth between rugby and ultimate frisbee! That was awesome. 

Over the last two weeks I think I have received maybe 20 letters from friends and the family. Thank you! They are awesome! I got Riley's wedding invitation too. It looks awesome!

Friday was Temple day! I love going to the temple. It had been a long time, and it was much needed. I really loved being in there. That helped my week. 

After that it was normal. Kiana and Jeremy are so solid. They come to church every week, they love the Book of Mormon and they are planning out the baptism. Kiana and Anisa's son Sebastian have asked me to baptize them. And Jeremy asked Elder Togia to baptize him. So that is going to be awesome. I can't wait!

Love you all! 

Elder Calvin Chappell

December 4, 2016 Werribee

Good Morning Everybody! This week was cool.

Miracle time!!!

So we will be having 3 people baptized on Christmas Eve! Sebastian, Kiana, and Jeremy. So Sebastian isn't a convert baptism because he is 8, but his Mom just joined the church so he is basically a convert. But Anyway, Yeah Jeremy is a family friend of Anisa and has been coming to church for a few weeks. He is 16, and he is a baker. He probably makes the best cheesecake in the world. Just sayin'.

We had a split Sunday today. We are covering the Werribee ward and the Geelong ward during this weird transition time so we went to one Sacrament meeting, then rushed over to the other one which was a little less than half an hour away. So that was fun.  (Did you catch the movie quote?)

This week is gonna be crazy. We have a zone P-day today (laser tag), then MLC (mission leadership council) tomorrow, then nothing wednesday, then a mission wide Christmas Party thursday, then zone temple day friday, then back to normal. Woot fun!

So normally I would have a lot of Christmas stuff up, but my too companions are named Elder Grinch and Elder Scrooge, so we don't even have a tree😞 That's ok I will get one this week.

Everybody go to Mormon.org and do the 25 days of Christmas! It is not too late! Yes that means you. 

See ya! 

Elder Calvin Chappell

November 27, 2016 Werribee

Good morfternoon everybody! Even after all this time in Australia, it is still weird for me to think that the people I am emailing are receiving it a day before I send it. I always wanted to have time control super powers, and in a way I kind of do right now. Well, my words do anyway. 

This week was crazy! So one of the missionaries in our zone had to go home for a surgery, and so President Vidmar had to move some people around. Long story short, we now are in a trio (again), and we are covering 2.5 areas. So the new addition to the companionship is Elder Tawha! (the 'wh' is pronounced like and 'f', so it is like Tafa) He is from New Zealand, and he is the man. He is going to be finishing his mission on the 14th of December, so this won't be for too long. 

With all these transfers, nobody was left in the Geelong area in our zone, which was Elder Tawha's area, so now the three of us are covering both areas. A few of the days, we couldn't leave one area unattended, so we did some exchanges and they went to Geelong while I stayed in Werribee and went with a few different Elders. It was a bit crazy. 

Thanksgiving was just any other day, I actually didn't realize it was thanksgiving until the evening. So I drew a turkey in my planner, and that was my celebration! Woot! 

Happy Birthday Tyler!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe you are 10 years old. You were 8 when I left! How dare you get older without me there. I hope you had a great day, and I hope Superguy smashed everybody else.

MIRACLE TIME!!!!!!  Remember Anisa? She got baptized a few weeks ago. Well she has a family friend named Jeremy, who was at the baptism. Since then, he has been to church three times and was present at one lesson with Anisa, and he approached me in church yesterday and said he wants to be baptized! Woooooot!🎶🎹🎸🎷🎵📢📣🔔🎻🎼🎤🎛🎙🎆🎉🎊  There is no date yet. Kiana will be baptized on Christmas Eve though! I forgot to mention that. She is Laura’s daughter, and she wants to be baptized with Anisa's son Sebastian, who is 8 years old. So that will be the 24^th.

So that was my week!

I love you all and will see you in the future!

Be excellent to eachother.

Elder Chappell

November 20, 2016 Werribee

Good morning America! This week has been different!

We had a mini mission! So if you don't know what that means, that is when youth from the wards in our stake choose to come with the missionaries and basically be missionaries for a couple of days. So we did that! It was organized by some other missionaries in our zone and we didn't know about it until the day before. So that was fun because we were on exchanges during the day of the mini mission! I was with Elder Meyer. And not only did we get one mini missionary, but we got 2! One of them was an RM who just really wanted to join for the experience, so we were a nice barber shop quartet for a day or two. We got so much work done and found heaps of new people to teach! So that was awesome! 

So we had two lessons with Kiana this week, and she is awesome! Her baptism will be on Christmas Eve! So she will receive the gift of the Holy Ghost on Christmas day. Best Christmas gift ever!🎅

It has been SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO hot the last two days. Man. I can't stand it! It's like, the temperature is pretty hot, but somehow it feels like 10000 times hotter. It is like that feeling when your car has been cooking in the sun for hours and you climb in and immediately start sweating. It is like that all day long. ALL DAY LONG. They say it's a hole in the ozone that causes it, but I don't know if that is scientifically supported or not. Either way, It is really hot. And we don't have air conditioner in our flat, and the one in our car fails. 😓🤒😲😵👿👺💣💥🌡☀🌞🔥🔆🔅

Other than that, pretty good week, some ups some downs, but all in all, Pretty great!

Have a great week!

Elder Calvin Chappell

November 15, 2016 Werribee

Hello people,

A lot happened this week.  Anisa got baptized!  Yay, wohoo.  It was one of the more interesting baptisms I’ve been to because we were combining with a baptism from the sisters in our zone.  And it turned out that the husband/father of their two baptisms decided he wasn’t going to allow them to be baptized.  They were going to have faith and move forward anyway until the bishop reminded them that she needed her spouse’s consent before she could be baptized.  So instead of three baptisms that day it was just Anisa.

Anisa is just a great missionary.  She invited a bunch of friends and her family to the baptism.  She has this friend Justin who came.   He is so excited about the church.  He has been looking for a church and knows that this is the one for him!  But he isn’t in our area, but we referred him to those missionaries and that should go really well.  I’ve never heard someone say things like that before.  I’ve read about them in the Ensign, but never in real life.  I am so excited! 

The other great thing that came from the baptism is Anisa’s best friend- Laura, who is a member, was less active for a long time, but has been coming back and has been really strong.  Laura has three children who haven’t been baptized and a husband who is not a member and they have been coming to church every week!  Now, after the baptism, two of the kids have been coming to church and the baptism, and one of them has decided that she wants to be baptized.  She is slightly Autistic, but really high functioning.  She is really shy, but likes to talk with us.  Things are really looking up for that family.

Transfer news came!  Elder Fetuli left, and now it is just Elder Togia and me. Yesterday was transfer day.  It was crazy, lots of driving!  Our flat will be a lot quieter now, and we will have a lot more food around- Elder Fetuli ate everything!

That’s all I got for today.  Oh, when I was getting my hair cut at a member’s house they told me that the Jazz are 5^th in the west right now!!  Yeah!  Ok, I think that’s all.  Have a great week.  See ya!

Elder Calvin Chappell

Pictures: Anisa’s baptism.  And our P-day trip to the Twelve Apostles national park.  It is beautiful.  There used to be twelve rock stacks, but now there are only 6 I think.

November 6, 2016 Werribee

Well hello there world! 

I apologize in advance for this email because it will probably be really boring. Know why? Cause this week was really boring! 

So Monday we had a zone P-day with two zones, and it was pretty fun. We went to a massive park and played every sport ever. They have a basketball hoop that is about 8 feet tall and super reinforced. So basically it is made for dunking. And I have still got it! I won the dunk competition with my signature bounce off the ground and backboard 360 one handed self alley-oop tomahawk dunk.

Tuesday was MLC! I love MLC so much. So that was great. That took all day, then on Wednesday we had the meeting with trainers and trainees which took all day. Then Thursday we had ZOne conference with three zones which took all day. Then Friday was mostly normal, with an exchange and Baptismal interview. Then Saturday our zone had two baptisms that we prepared everything for, then Sunday we had church and then SMCM with the Stake President and Mission President. 

So that was our week! Pretty dang exciting eh? 

See you all later! 

Elder Chappell

Here's the view of the city from somewhere in our zone.