New Companion

This week I got a new homie. His name is Elder Beck and he is from Lehi Utah. He is one of those missionaries who came out when they get right out of high school so he is a baby - haha.  He is really good with talking to people and he doesn't even know it, so its not really hard to train him. They introduced us to the new "Goldens" by having us walk out when they called our names like a game show.  It was super scary because I was afraid I was going to get one of the Missionaries who doesn't speak any English. 

I took him out tracting and he is ready to do the work, so he is not one of those Missionaries were its like pulling teeth to get them to do something. I pulled the lucky card on the him. I saw "Trevor's friend" Elder Allen. He is really funny and his trainer is OK, but he likes hanging out with me and my golden. 

We already found someone when we went tracting and Elder Beck just laughs whenever someone rejects us because he thinks its funny haha, so we are having a good time. 

That's all 

Cam

Lunch at KFC

Heath Ledger's Memorial

Fishin'

We actually went fishing last P-day and it was a blast! None of us caught anything like always... never caught a fish in my life but maybe one day. Perth's beaches are beautiful I got pictures so your welcome.

We also went back in the night time and hung out at the dock and found a pelican trying to eat everyone's food. It reminded me of the time Mack was scared of the giant pelican lamp inside the hotel, but this time it was actually real. haha 

I started a new meme in the Zone to take pictures of cats we find while tracting. Me and Kleven are having a competition with the Zone Leaders on how many cats we can get a picture with. So you'll be getting even more of those. 

I also found dads company. GE Skill development center. I took a picture with it. We walked out of Spud Shed which is a new store we went to because its kind of like Costco. and I saw the GE across the street and was really excited to see it. 

We are teaching with this girl who is super interested in learning more about God. Her name is Sarah and we got her a ride to church and everything and then she was sick the morning of church :(   ,but me and Kleven are going to go rebuke her and make sure she is healthy enough for next Sunday. We haven't gotten one investigator to church yet so that's are goal right now. She is super nice though and loves talking with us, so its all going good and we are keeping busy. 

A Little bit of home! 

We can eat meals with members now, so we have a meal tonight with the Solemon's. They are New Zealanders and they are pretty cool. The rules are that you have to go through the Ward Mission Leader to set up meals and we can only be at the house for an hour, including a small message. They are still encouraged to bring investigators and less actives.

Last week we ran into a guy named Ashley who was born into the church, but has been inactive since he was a kid. His dad is really active in the church and lives in New South Wales. We went by yesterday and they invited us in and fed us. He lives with his girlfriend and drinks beer so we got alot of work to do on him, but for that visit we just got to know them and we might be able to get him back to church if he is interested. He also told us he told his dad he ran into us when he was washing his car and we offered to help him. His dad was excited to hear that we found him.

love cam

Chicken Tacos

The most amazing thing happened this week, I got to eat tacos. Australia does not have good mexican food and it is a real shame! The Australian missionaries were making fun of me and Elder Kleven (my companion) that Americans always talk about how good Mexican food is.

We heard all about the Elder who died in Sydney a couple of weeks ago. They made us watch a bunch of safety videos so that we can stay safe and return back home to our families. Its really sad what happened and we are all staying safe out here its all good.

This week we helped a less active find a job. His excuse for not coming to church is that he doesn't have a job so we are going to change that. I applied to like 200 jobs for him and he was getting calls from all over Australia because I accidentally applied everywhere. But good news is he is getting calls ;) 

We are also getting phones tomorrow. We have gone over so much training on staying on task and paying attention to our missionary purpose. It's going to be a really good tool because we will be able to send videos and have short lessons with people who don't have time to sit down with us. 

I have been getting really good at tracting and keeping people at the door. You just have to make sure you don't sound like a salesman and act like a normal human being. My trainer has also told me if you look at their face and their expressions you can really know what to say and make them feel more comfortable at the door. We have been having more success everyday and missionary work is really helping me build my testimony. I know it is a the way of happiness and it's the only way to really be happy forever. 

Love Cam

Missionary Exchanges

I was kind of late to get to the library today because one of the other missionaries was cutting my hair. He kind of made me look like a gangster. He gave me a line on my head and a fade, I'm not actually going to send you a pic because I'm too embarrassed (haha).  I hope the Mission President doesn't get disappointed.

The Mission President hasn't changed any rules yet, but the members keep asking if he changed the meals with the members. We cant eat with them unless they bring a less active or investigator to dinner.

This week we had lots of exchanges.  I exchanged with a guy named Elder Brown and we were in the Kelmscott area.  

We saw Linton again (the guy we cleaned his house for) and he is moving away towards Perth. The kids say they are going to miss us and Linton is doing way better. You can definitely feel the spirit more in his house now that he doesn't struggle with drugs. 

Then the next day we exchanged with the Zone Leaders because Elder Kleven (my companion) is a District Leader, so I went around with one of the Zone Leaders and I learned a lot.  We talked to alot of his investigators and we had to be blunt about the Word of Wisdom and changing churches.  It was an awkward conversation, but in the end they know it will be best for them.

Im doing well and we eat plenty of food Love you

Cam

Service

This week has been pretty tough. We haven't had much success in the area of Success. (the town I live in is named Success, Western Australia), but we had a couple conversations with some people. I was giving my companion some tips I learned in psychology. If you want to hand someone a card, you need too have it out already and in the motion of handing it to them then they will take it. As a result, we have handed out many more cards that just have questions on them like. "Whats the purpose of life? go to mormon.org." Haha, maybe it will help. 

This week we cleaned out an inactive guys house. His name is Linton and he has 3 little kids who are really cute, but really need some discipline haha. They don't live in the best environment because Linton is struggling with word of wisdom problems. He has a really hard life because his wife left him and he is trying to make ends meet. The house is really dirty because the kids throw trash everywhere because nobody has taught them anything, but we went over there and cleaned the whole place and got the kids to help too. He really appreciated us and he came to church yesterday. The other Elders taught him a lesson about how we go to church not for the Missionaries or the Bishop, but it's to show our appreciation to Jesus Christ and when we show the faith he will help us through our addictions. 

We ran into a Chinese lady who didn't speak English and offered her free English class and she barely understood. We gave her our number and she actually called us. we haven't had anyone call us unless it was other missionaries so far.  She said she was going to come so that is cool!

Love Cameron

Knocking on Doors

We did a lot of knocking on doors and a lot of "not interested" responses.  But, we had a crazy experience!  I was telling my companion about the "Butterfly Effect", which is when you make one choice it effects a ton of other things. And so, he made me choose which direction we should go tracting.  I chose some random streets and we started knocking on doors and we were getting lots of rejections.  We would knock and introduce ourselves and people would slam the door without even talking to us.  I told him we should have gone a different direction and we might have had better luck, but the next door there were two guys smoking in their back yard.   I was expecting them to tell us to get lost or something, but they told us to sit down and chat.  We sat their for an hour talking about him mostly and then he invited us inside!  This is the first time I have made it inside someones house so it was a crazy experience.  His name is Nole and he is part of the Australian military and he was super talkative.  We stayed for another hour talking to his family and they want us to come back and chat again. Before we left, we gave him a pamphlet on the restoration and he said he will read it.

The same night we headed out to the library to return something and we found out it was closed.  We started to walk away and a kid came up to us and asked us if we worked at the library and said that his car was stuck in the garage because they closed the whole thing down.  We tried to help him, but couldn't find anyone.  We gave him a ride home even though its against the rules and we gave him a book of Mormon and he said it was interesting and he will give it a read.  He also said he has been researching religion and it was weird how he found us.

Yeah its cool to actually have people interested in what you are teaching and we are finding people to teach thanks to the spirit leading us to the people that want to hear our message.

Cameron 

♫ Everything is awesome ... when your part of a team ♫

We barely made the Sydney flight because our plane from Salt Lake landed in L.A. late. Us and thirty passengers were out on the tarmac waiting for a bus to take us to our plane to Sydney.  So they delayed our plane for all of us and we took off right as we got aboard. 

The plane ride wasn't that bad. Elder Santa Maria passed around sleeping pills and we took them at 1:00 in the morning (Utah time) because we couldn't sleep. We all were talking to each other and fell asleep. I woke up about every two hours but in total got eight hours of sleep in. They then passed around breakfast which was amazing. Airline food is awesome!,  I don't know why so many people complain.  It's funny when everyone needed to wake up they turned on bird noises so they could pass around breakfast. We landed in Sydney, Australia and we needed to go through customs.  I showed them my passport and my declaration papers and they sent me down a different hallway from everyone else because I had medicine.  I got to the end and they asked what medicine I had and if it was my prescription.  I said it was Humaria and it was in my name and they said okay without even looking and sent me on my way.  So the Netflix show (Australian Border Security) makes it seem a whole lot worse than it really is.  I could have had crack in there and they wouldn't have known. Then we went to Perth and some guy there said our accents are really fun to listen to and I told him he was the guy with the accent and we all laughed.

The first night we stayed with the assistants in their house and then we got our training from President Fife.  

We all ate dinner at the Mission President's house and it was a weird experience. We all sat around a table eating dinner and he was telling us a bunch of stuff we can and can't do.  I felt like I was in a foster home with a bunch of other kids about to get whipped if I did something wrong.  So that's my first impression of the Mission President, but I guess he has to be really strict because he said the Perth Australia Mission used to be known as the party mission before he came here, so I understand him. 

I got my first companion and his name is Elder Klevin and he is from Las Vegas. He is really nice and he is telling me all the stuff I need to know. He told me that I came pre-trained because of how much stuff I already know.  Elder Klevin is trying to copy all the Aussies accent and does all their slang.  He honestly just sounds Canadian and he gets all sad whenever I tell him that.  But I'm keeping my American accent because listening to all these missionaries try to copy it is kind of annoying because they aren't good at it at all.  

I'm serving in the Southern River Zone in a town called Success which is south of Perth. We have an investigator named Ben and he wants to get baptized, but can't because he lives with his girlfriend still ( this has been going for a year now).  My second day we went over and taught him about the commandments and my companion was surprised at how much I contributed and told him how much the commandments have blessed me in my life.  I told him all about BK and Associated foods and how alot of people around me never followed them and I could see how unhappy they were.  

We have a car and it's pretty weird how everyone drives on the other side of the road. The weirdest thing is there are roundabouts on every street. The car we have is a Toyota Corolla.

Our apartment is a little house and their are three rooms and we only use one. One room has all my stuff in it and I change in there whenever I get out of the shower. The other room has a bunch of junk in it. and we sleep in the other one. So all your tithing is going to two spare rooms in Perth Australia.  I adjusted to the time change really well because I slept on the plane and it hasn't really effected me at all.  I got a used bike and it's only going to cost 250 instead of 600. we have only used the bike once so far. 

the toilets go straight down so I cant see if they twirl the other way.... Sad I know. 

Remember those adapting plugs you gave me? Yeah I plugged my alarm clock into the wall and it lasted for 5 seconds and made a little chirp and smoke started to come from the wire 😂 haha, it was pretty funny everyone heard the alarm give a little yelp in pain.  It's okay though because we use the phone they gave us for an alarm. 

We didn't start tracting until the third day I was here, which was a little weird. We finally got out there and did it. Dad, you are going to have to tell me how you did it. We usually run into alot of atheists, but people usually talk to us.  All we usually say is our testimony and how much God loves them.  We did get a few potential investigators that said we can come back! it's probably nothing, but its nice that they didn't say they weren't interested. 

Love you all
Elder Hampel