♫ 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