Hello family and friends near and far!

This week has been amazing and has gone by SO fast! It was all capped off by a wonderful General Conference weekend! 🙂 So good, I’m incredibly grateful for the words of modern-day Prophets and Apostles that lead us and guide us nearer to God. What inspiring messages too! So many thoughts on topics such as Repentance, the Plan of Salvation, and how the Gospel brings us joy 🙂 which it definitely does. If you haven’t watched or listened to the October 2016 General Conference I would urge you to do so 🙂 it is awesome!
Here’s the link:

https://www.lds.org/general-conference?cid=HP_SU_2-10-2016_dPFD_fGC_xLIDyL1-C_&lang=eng

Also, shoutout to my brother, Elder Cowan (pictured below) who had a whole conference talk based on him and his strength and ambition! 😀 Go and watch the talk by Elder Kazuhiko Yamashita’s (Of the Seventy) talk entitled “Be Ambitious For Christ” and hear Elder Cowan’s story, but what he didn’t mention is that that he was reassigned to the Australia Sydney South Mission 🙂 where he and I got to serve in the same Ward twice. It’s so neat to see someone I served with for 9 months or half of my mission, be honored in General Conference. You’ve earned it mate! Heaps of love out to you from the ASSM, your example and heart was not overlooked here and the mission misses you mate! (He finished his mission a couple months ago..)

Other than conference… I HAVE AN AMAZING NEW COMPANION!! 😀 Her name is Sister Cramer and she is from The Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. But she has an American accent like me, because her mum is from America and she was actually born in Grand Prairie, Texas (what are the odds right?!?! Grand Prairie is right next to my home town haha so cool!) and then she moved to Brisbane until she was 10ish and then lived 7 years in Utah during high school, and then moved back to Australia for Uni a couple years ago. She’s 19, full of energy and is so much fun(: And the coolest part is that she is waiting for her Brazilian Visa to go to the Brazil Belo Horizonte Mission 🙂 and so she hasn’t been to the MTC yet, just like me when I started my mission!! 😀 We have so much in common haha 😉  it’s great.. she’s great and this transfer is just going to be.. incredible (thought I was gonna say “great”, didn’t ya? lol ;)) Keep those prayers a coming though, I’ve felt them. Thank you (:

In other news, this past weekend was not just General Conference but also Bathurst’s Race Weekend! When they held their famous races(: It was pretty neat, we woke up Thursday morning to this weird humming floating on the air… It took us like 1/2 through our morning studies to realize that it was actually the sound of all the cars practicing the race around Mount Panorama racetrack ALL the way across town!! It was crazy! And we heard that sound the whole rest of the week, and traffic has been insane compared to the quiet lull of Bathurst haha still not nearly as bad as Sydney or Dallas though thank goodness(: What I thought was really cool though was yesterday, during General Conference actually, a huge jet plane flew overhead as part of the Race kick-off celebration and it totally made me smile and reminded me of home in good ‘ol Havelock, North Carolina where “the sound of freedom” was a common occurrence. I loved it 🙂

That about sums it up here in the beautiful Bathurst area! Take note of the great pictures below of Sister Cramer and I and the Manyathi family and Mack from Cars (so cool huh Xan!) and

​Love always,
Sister Swan
Australia Sydney South Mission