HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!! (slightly belated obviously..) but also HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my favorite little brother! <3 Love you kid!

This week has been fantastic.. I attached a picture of my entire mission at our Christmas Conference! So much fun(: and I would like you all to meet my new and final companion on my mission: Sister Niu! She’s from Laie, Hawaii (is that anywhere near you Ash??) and is absolutely amazing in everyway. She’s been out on her mission for 5 months and is already a rock star. I love her! I’ve already learned so much from her it’s crazy… We’ve had several adventures with Bathurst’s best this week.. Our dear friend Barbara (who any of y’all who’ve served here knows is a major hoarder..) fell and broke her wrist and is in hospital for the week. So she’s instructed us to help her partner Barry to clean the house out. Whoowee.. is this gonna be a task to be reckoned with… but we’re excited to see her in better shape! 🙂 Also, this seems to be the season for dehoarding, because we caught up with a potential investigator named Cheryl and she also has been “collecting” for YEARS….. and we have to help her move out of her home.. yet this task is even more daunting as Cheryl has a little bit harder time letting go if you know what I mean.. so we’ve been spending the last few days packing away empty boxes and broken toys.. yikes. So it’s been a great inaugural week for Sister Niu haha

Also, miracle of the week… 🙂 We rescued a dog on sunday haha well we hope so anyway. we were tracting and we saw this dog running around and so we called him over and he had a collar on, luckily the address was not far at all so we grabbed one of Barbara’s broken bag straps and walked him home 🙂 the people unfortunately didn’t answer to us so we left a note and tied “Fang” to the railing. He’ll be right.. haha we’re gonna swing by and check on him today. Anywho.. on the way back to the car one of our Former investigators pulled over and called us over. She was SOO nice and wished us a happy New Year, AND she told us that she found my red USB with everything on it that I’d been missing for about 2 months!!! Woohoo!!! Soo happy! Miracles happen y’all!! 😉 (#quoteme)

Sister Niu also got to meet the (in)famous Debbie!! <3 Haha we love her so much.. so we took a selfie of course haha and to tie off the week of weird as miracles! We were driving home one day and I was talking about all the weird wildlife you see in Bathurst (cuz Sister Niu has only been in the city so far..) and especially how cute possums are here. And then we get home and take the rubbish out and this little guy is just sitting there on the fence posing for us! how adorable right?!? I love this country! Oh haha and about the peacock… we were just driving up to the chapel minding our own business when all of the sudden Sister Niu goes: “IS THAT A PEACOCK?!?!” I was like “nah girl it’s bathurst lol…” then I looked and yep there it was just casually walking down the streets of Bathurst… so bizarre haha it was great! <3

Second miracle of the week: We witnessed the “gift of tongues” (aka communication) in action. When we visited Barbara in hospital, for some reason her hearing was heaps worse than usual.. we usually have to speak up louder for her but this time we were yelling and she still was asking for clarification.. it was hard.. and then we called up Elder Boogaard (one of the Senior missionaries here) to come and give her a blessing, and when he got there before we warned him about her hearing he began speaking to her normally without any crescendos and she understood him PERFECTLY. Sister Niu, the nurse (who’d been yelling at her ALL day haha) and I were just shocked.. they had a full out conversation at a fairly soft volume and we could barely get her to understand a single sentence! It was so cool! Later on we discussed it, and Elder Boogaard explained (as he is hard of hearing too) that she probably could just hear the frequency of his voice better than ours, as his voice is lower. But call it what you will: the gift of tongues, or divine frequency.. she understood her blessing and the spirit was felt. It was amazing. It made me think too.. how in tune are we to the frequency of our Heavenly Father’s voice?? To the voice of the Holy Ghost?? They speak in a frequency to touch all hearts, but is ours tuned in to receive it?? When they speak, can we hear it? Or is it falling on deaf ears? The difference in these situations is that the Spirit can’t yell at us when we don’t listen.. so we MUST tune our hearts to the frequency of His voice. That is my invitation to you all this week! Assess your spiritual ears, are you in need of a re-tuning??

I love you all HEAPS!! Take care this week and be strong!! <3

Love always,
Sister Swan
Australia Sydney South Mission
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​PS people are asking how long I have left on my mission… and my family informed me that I only have 5 more weeks here in Australia. But as far as I’m concerned, my mission for Jesus Christ never ends. Love y’all! ​