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.

October 30, 2016 Werribee

Hello again! I feel like I was emailing you yesterday. This week was pretty dang fast. Like Muhammad Ali turning off the light in his bedroom and hitting the pillow before the room got dark fast. 

We had two exchanges this week, so I was all over the zone. I spent a day in Point Cook, and a day in Melton. With those plus meetings, there wasn't too much time for me working in my area. The time we had in our area was good. We are focusing on getting to know all of the members. So we are just going the the ward list by area and visiting everyone! There is bound to be a golden less active or part member family. We haven't found 'em yet, but we will. 

Anisa is awesome. She is doing really well. Also she has 3 kids, and the oldest is 8. His name is Sebastian, and he loves to learn about God! We are going to invite him to be baptized along with Anisa. We would have done so earlier, but the problem was the ex-husband, Sebastian's father. He didn't want his kids being "brainwashed to believe in God". So we were respectful of that and didn't try anything that could offend. But then Anisa told us that she talked with her ex-husband and somehow his heart has been softened and he thinks it would be good for his kids to have faith. MIRACLE!!!!!!!!!!!!! So we will see if he can be baptized on the 12th. 

So this coming week is gonna be crazy. Today is a zone P-day with our zone and one other. Tomorrow is MLC (the monthly meeting with all the Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders and President), Wednesday is a meeting for all the New missionaries and trainers to see how they are doing after a month, thursday will be a Zone Conference, Friday should be normal, Saturday will be 5 baptisms in our zone (wooooo!), and then Sunday will be Normal. Oh btw, this last weekend was our stake conference and we got a new Stake Presidency, so that was cool. President Vidmar was there, and Elder O. Vincent Halleck from the Seventy-Pacific Area President. Plus an Area seventy who we see all the time named Elder Dudfield. That was an awesome meeting. 

Love you all!

Elder Chappell

October 23, 2016 Werribee

Hi World! 

This week was pretty awesome. The best thing was our golden investigator!!

So last week I mentioned an investigator named Anisa right? Well in the last week we have discovered that she is about as golden as they come. She has been led to the church by miracle after miracle. Now she is set to be baptized on November 12. 

So I'll tell you a short version of one of her many miracles. She is a very faithful person and has always believed in God. A few years ago she had a strange experience where a random old woman spoke to her and asked her if she believed in miracles. She said yes, and the woman told her she needed to look for something, but she couldn't pronounce the word, so she wrote it down. 

Melchizidek. 

Anisa thought that was really strange, but she searched a bit for it, and found nothing, then kind of forgot about it after a while. Then fast forward a few years, and her good friend invited her to attend her church (our church). So she went, and while she was there, she felt the Spirit really strongly and began to cry a lot. After the meeting, her friend suggested that she get a  blessing. Anisa accepted and they ran to the Elders. (this is the Elders right before I came). They gave her a blessing, and the Elder doing it felt that he should explain to her about the Melchizidek Priesthood, and he did. Of course, she made the connection and she knew this was what she was looking for.

Moral of the story, God is leading all of His children to come back to him. God works in mysterious ways. Sometimes, even through random old ladies. 

I love miracles!!

See you all!

Elder Chappell

October 16, 2016 Werribee

Hey everybody! This week was good. Elder Togia, Fetuli, and I get along really well. We are like brothers. We always mess with each other but it's all in good fun. Things are going well!

The Werribee ward is awesome. They love to do missionary work! They always bring friends to church. In fact, all of our investigators have come from Members inviting them! We don't have too many investigators right now, just a few, but we will get more. So who we have now...

Anisa: She is a good friend of a member who is returning to activity. She is a single Mum, and she loves the church. She wanted to get baptized before, then changed her mind just cause she wasn't sure, but she didn't really know anything about it then, just that she liked the people and the feeling there. So now we are teaching her and she will decide to be baptized again :) 

Ebony and Meegan: 12 year olds who are friends with the girls in the ward. They want to be baptized as well, just need parental permission!

There are some other assorted investigators, but those are the solid ones.

Other than that, we are just working like crazy to find new ones! So far there haven't been too many visible fruits of our efforts, but they always come. Get ready for miracles this week! 

So the Book Of Mormon musical is coming to Melbourne in a few months and apparantly it's a huge deal. So we are going to have a meeting this week with some seventies and people from the church headquarters about how to use this as a finding opportunity. I think that is awesome. I am excited!

That's all from this week, See ya!

Elder Chappell