"Put the Pressure on Ourselves to Make Every Lesson Great."

Kia Ora Everyone!

               

Well we are one week closer to Christmas!

What a wonderful time of year this!  and what a wonderful time of year it is to be a missionary and be on the Lords errand!  It is such a blessing to be able to serve him at this time of year! I have always loved Christmas time as many of you know and so I love it even more that I can be serving the Savior full time this season! Because after all he is the reason for the season!

Well we had a very eventful week here and like I promised last week i will try to make this email a little bit longer! I do have a few wonderful experiences that i would like to share this week!  so since it was the first week of the Transfer all of the Zone Leaders in the mission traveled to Hamilton and we had a meeting at President Rudds house, and we pretty much just talk about how we as leaders can help the mission and what do we need to do to be better missionaries.  President Rudd gave a wonderful training and then the Assistants gave some wonderful trainings also ans everyone was inspired, we realized that sometimes we as missionaries invite people to be baptized and then we just kinda leave them in the dark and hope they figure out how to gain a testimony of the Gospel so we all practiced inviting people to be baptized and then telling them what they need to do to get to that point that they will want to be baptized and it is so simple what we need to do to help our investigators become converted and gain a testimony because its those Sunday school answers it is Praying(morning and night, and having a prayer in your heart throughout the day) Going to Church(and actively participating) and Reading the Scriptures(really reading not just reading) it is so simple sometimes we all try to look beyond the mark, but it is those simple things that bring about true and lasting conversion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

One other thing President Rudd said that really hit me was he said that we need to make every single lesson we have Monumental in that persons life every single lesson needs to be life changing or else they will lose interest and that is not what we want!  So President Rudd told us to "Put the pressure on ourselves to make every lesson great." And that is what Elder Gutke and I did this week and we had two incredible lessons right after MLC!

The first lesson was with one of our investigators who is really new to the whole believing in God thing, we were able to answer her questions that she had and we were able to tell her those simple principals of the Gospel that families can be together forever and you could tell she really started to feel it, then our ward mission leader bore his testimony of how he came into the gospel and it was perfect! the spirit was so strong and it was just what she needed to hear!

the Second lesson which was literally right after the fist lesson(interesting how that works haha)

was with two of our baptismal sets and the lesson was going good but it just seemed like they were not very interested or weren't really paying attention, but we got into one part of the Plan of Salvation and i cant really remember which part I think we may have been talking about agency and we asked our ward mission leader to bare testimony again and the spirit came and it was awesome because our investigators dad who is Less active was sitting in on the lesson and he started crying during the testimony and after he told us that it really hit home to him!  it was incredible to see the Lord just take over in the lessons and bring the spirit in!  It truly doesn't matter how smart we are how much we now or how well we speak the true teacher is the spirit and without the spirit we will fail in missionary work!

Last thing i want to share this week is on Saturday our neighbor(not a member of the church) invited us over to her place for a Christmas party so we thought why not so we went over and it turned out be like her church Christmas party but that was all good we had a wonderful time listened to their Pastor give a nice Christmas message and we got to talk to a lot of people and make new friends! They also invited us to their Bible study group on Thursday so we will be going to that, I think it will really help and they will be able to see that we pretty much believe in the same things they believe in so we will let you know how that goes next week!

I just want to finish once again by sharing my testimony.  I  know that this Church is true I know that Joseph Smith really was a prophet of God, and I know that Thomas S. Monson is the current prophet on the earth.  I know that Jesus lives and that he is our Savior! I love you all thank you for all the prayers! I hope everyone has a wonderful week and continues to remember the Savior during this wonderful time of the year!

 He finally sent some pictures!

Transfers

Kia Ora Everyone!

I hope everyone is doing well and hope everyone had a wonderful week

our week down here was a really good one and it was also just a little crazy with transfers, but that is how it always is on transfers week.

We have a lot of new missionaries in our zone and we can already tell that it is going to be a really good transfer.

We had a lot of good lessons this week which is good that we still managed to do really well with lessons because its is pretty hard to do that on transfers week but we worked really hard the last two days to make sure that we were keeping our focus on what we are here to do.

But this week is the first week of the new transfer and so we are super excited!  the best part of this transfer will of course be Christmas it is such an awesome time of the year to be able to get to remember the savior and his birth I hope everyone watched the videos on the links that i included in the email last week.  It is really nice because the church has given us as missionaries some cards that we get to pass around and we have been handing out heaps of them so hopefully everyone is watching the videos because they are really really good!  

But really there wasn't too much in our week last week we loaded everyone up for transfers and boy is that a mission up here when you only have two cars but we got it all sorted out and everyone got down safely and then we got back up safely and got all the luggage dropped off to the missionaries then friday saturday and sunday were just really me showing my new comp around the area so he can get a feel for the place.   we had some fun talking to people on the street though it is a little tougher now because elder noa could speak Samoan to all the Samoans but now that hes not here when we talk to the Samoans in english they just start talking in Samoan so then we usually just try to say something funny so they laugh and we can break the tension then hand them a pass along card.

Sorry not really to much to write about this week but there will be a lot more next week because tomorrow we will have our Mission leadership council and that is always a blast and we always learn great things from that and it will be a full week of proselyting so we will have some great experiences to tell i'm sure of it!

I think the best experience this week was getting my new comp Elder Gutke he is from Mapleton and the coolest part is he knows my cousins Kenna, Sandra, and Mitch what a small world!

Well I am super sorry that this letter is so short i promise next weeks will be a lot longer and we will have some cool stories!  Love you all thanks for all of the love and prayers I can feel them all the way down here in New Zealand! Love you all and hope you all have a good week!

#ASaviorIsBorn

Kia Ora Everyone!

I hope everyone has had a good week! and a good Thanksgiving, to be honest I totally forgot about Thanksgiving... I guess that is what happens when they don't celebrate it.

Anyways this week was just another normal week in the mission filled with lots of lessons and talking to lots of people.  We had a lot of really good lessons this week and a few of the members were able to come out with us right when we needed them too which was great!

One night we went to visit a family we teach and when we got there the Dad wasn't home so we couldnt go inside but luckily right when we got their one of the members who lives just down the street texted and said that he was available to come out for a visit with us! so we ran over to his house and then ran back to our investigators house started having a lesson and then the Dad walked in and so he was able to sit in on the lesson which was good, and the lesson was really great the spirit was super strong and at the end we invited the mom and the dad to baptized in January!

We now have 10 of our investigators set for baptism for the coming months which is super exciting since i should be here for most of them, we are going to work super hard with all of them and i know that when we do all we can that Heavenly Father will take care of all the rest!

Probably the highlight of the week was yesterday and Saturday our 9 year old Investigator Wiha got baptized and that was so awesome to see! She is such an awesome kid and was so happy after both her baptism and her confirmation, and now she is officially a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints!  It was a really great day both of her parents are members but not active it was good to see her mom at the baptism it was a little sad though because her dad didn't come, that just shows how awesome she is she comes to church every week with one of the members and comes for all three hours! that strengthens my testimony!

There were also 7 other baptisms in the Zone this last weekend which was awesome!  I love watching people get baptized.  It is so incredible it literally saves lives.

Well sorry this is really really short it was a busy week and its going to be a busy week this week with transfers, nearly half of our Zone will be leaving so it will be a fresh start for a lot of areas i'm super excited for the transfer ahead.  I am especially excited for Christmas what a wonderful time of the year this is!  While we should always remember the savior every single day of our lives Christmas gives us that time to refocus on him.  I hope everyone will really make an effort to focus even more so on the savior this Christmas after all he is the reason for the season!  I love you all and hope you all have a good week!

Hope everyone visits this website and shares the video and all the other material there is to share  #ASaviorIsBorn

https://www.mormon.org/christmas

Count Your Blessings

Kia Ora Everyone!!!!!

Wow this week went by really quick once again it seems like i was just here emailing!

This week started out really good we had a family night at one of our members house and we were able to get a few of our investigators to that and they said they had a lot of fun which is good!  Also at family night we played charades and of course I was the Champion haha it was great my group won and it really came down to the wire it was really intense but I pulled through and my team was able to win!

Another awesome part about this week is we were able to have a lot of members come out with us and we were able to go on splits and double cover out area which was awesome that really helps to boost things up when you can split off and visit more people!  It is so wonderful to be able to have members who come out and go on visits it really does make a huge difference it helps people get a better feel for the church a lot of time their perception of the church is missionaries so thats how they think everyone is, and then it gives them a friend also and then they have someone to go to church with!  I want to encourage everyone this week to do all they can to help the missionaries serving in their ward especially those young men who are getting close to going on a mission make sure that you are going on splits with the missionaries a lot! it helps so much!

We had some really good visits with our investigators who should be getting baptized this saturday sadly we have had to push some back and some wont be getting baptized but we will continue to work with them and re-set them.  Those investigators who will be getting baptized on saturday are progressing really well and it is really good to see and the crazy thing is like all of them are like ten years old it is just so incredible to see such young kids wanting to learn about the gospel and also retaining it!  One of our sets said a prayer for us the other day and it was one of the best prayers I have ever heard it was so sincere and the spirit was super strong as this little girl asked her Heavenly Father to help her get baptized and to help her family get through hard times.  Except you become as a little child you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven, once again the lesson was taught to me this week.

Also we had the opportunity this week to go and pick up a new missionary from the MTC he is straight from Tonga and is going to be a great missionary! He was pretty nervous but after seeing him throughout the week he just had the biggest smile on his face! it kinda reminded me of when i first came out into the field and how fun it was!

I know this email is really really short this week really has just blended together and i cant really remember anything that has happened because it went by so fast but the weeks are always full of miracles most of the time they are really small, and i don't think it is just because i'm on a mission that its that way but i really think my ability to see has changed, it reminds of  the song count your blessings, and it talks about how when you count your blessings it will surprise you what the Lord has done so i would like to invite everyone to throughout the week just look for those miracles that are around us every single day! I know as we do this it will surprise us what the Lord has done and is continuing to do for us.

That is all for this week I hope everyone has a great week this week! be safe I love you all!  I just want to thank you all for all that you do in my life and I would especially like to thank My Grandma Holmes for all the things she does for me! keep those letters and newspaper clippings coming grandma! and also my Grandma and Grandpa Anderson thank you for all that you both do for me! and for all of your love and kindness and all the prayers you say for me! I have the best grandparents in the whole world! thanks for your wonderful examples to me!!!!!!

Arohanui!

You Must be as a Child

Kia Ora Everyone!!!!

Well i hope everyone has had a wonderful week it feels like just yesterday i was in this email shop! the week has just flown by!

We had so many wonderful experiences this week and we were working really really hard this week!  This week we went on exchanges with all of the District Leaders in the Zone and also on Thursday we went on a short exchange with the Assistants and that was awesome we had a really good exchange.

One of the big lessons that i have really learned this week and also that i have been learning throughout my mission and that i'm sure i will continue to learn for the rest of my life is how the Lord prompts us to do certain things and then we act on the prompting and the outcome is not what we expect.  For example this week when on an exchange with one of the Assistants we were walking down a street and we felt like we should go knock on a door, so we knocked the door and no one came to the door so then we felt like we should knock the next door so we did and same thing no one answered so we walked down the drive and looked to the right and there was a man standing on the sidewalk with his dog and he wasn't there before so we went and talked to him had a good talk and got a return appointment for some other missionaries because he doesnt live in our area.  After we talked to the man the promptings made sense the Lord needed us at that spot when that man was going to be there so he "sidetracked" us a bit and then we were at the right place at the right time.  Not the outcome we were expecting from the promptings but it is the outcome the Lord wanted.  

I think a really cool story that i would also like to share this week is about one of the missionaries who i was on an exchange with this week he is from Tonga and when he came out on his mission he didn't know how to speak any English and he also couldn't really understand it, so he said instead of using the material given to him in the MTC he decided to just read The Book of Mormon in English and then pray and fast and tried his best to speak the language and he has been out five months now and man he has probably the best English i have heard from and elder straight from Tonga.  It is incredible the power that The Book of Mormon and also praying and fasting has those simple gospel principals truly bring about wonderful and incredible miracles!

My testimony has really been strengthened this week of those simple gospel principals of attending church reading the scriptures and praying, by doing those three things a true testimony is planted and also made stronger, and faith is grown.

Well i think i will end this email by talking about our day yesterday!  we had a really good day yesterday, we had stake conference and it was really awesome there were a lot of really good speakers but the best part again was we had 4 of our investigators their and the best part two of them are 9 years old and they came again even though their parents didnt want to and they had a wonderful time!  I have so much respect for these kids when i was their age i probably would not have gone to church if my parents weren't going!  I for sure see why The Savior says that you must be as a child to enter into the kingdom of heaven because man these kids have some great faith!  

Well I hope everyone has a good week this week! I want to thank everyone for all of the prayers and love! I can for sure feel it all the way down here in NZ!

Remember the church is true! and I love you all!

No Such Things as Coincidences in this Work!

Kia Ora Everyone!

hope everyone has had a really good week! our week was pretty busy!

We started off the week on Tuesday with a trip down to Hamilton, we had a meeting with President Rudd and it was a really great meeting President Rudd is awesome and is such an incredible teacher! that was an incredible experience and really helped us to plan for our Zone Meeting on Thursday.

Then Zone Meeting on Thursday was really great we had an incredible discussion as a zone and everyone in the zone gave great input and the spirit was very strong in the meeting we all left the meeting feeling very uplifted and we all had that renewed desire to go out and serve with all of our heart might mind and strength and we are now expecting great things from the zone.  The zone has a lot of people set for baptism on the 28th of November and we are really excited about that so some extra prayers that those sets will stay solid would be much appreciated!

The highlight of this week had to be yesterday though we were going around and doing the rounds inviting all of our investigators to church and we went to one families house to invite them and the parents were not very keen on coming to church but the two boys who are 9 and 6 really really wanted to come and they were begging their mom to let them come and it was a pretty intense few seconds as she thought about it but she finally said yes and said that the boys could come! and we ended up having 9 investigators at church yesterday and that was awesome and we also have 9 investigators set for baptism and they are all doing really really well and it is looking really promising!  So we are going to keep on working hard with them and keep visiting them so they can continue to have their testimony grow and be strengthened!

Also yesterday when we were leaving one of our investigators home after inviting them to church we were walking down the drive when we stopped to talk to this guy and he told us that he had gone to a "Mormon" church last week and so we asked him if he would like to come again and if he liked the service and he said yes that he really liked the service and wants to come again! So we set up a return appointment with him and he said he wants to come to church next week! so we will visit him this week and hopefully it will pan out into something!  it was a really cool experience though, once again what are the odds of that happening us running into a guy right before church and he had just been to one of our services the week before! No such things as coincidences in this work!

I hope everyone will look for those opportunities throughout the week to share the gospel the news that we have to share is far to important for us to just keep it to ourselves! 

I hope that everyone will have a good week this week and that you all will be safe i would like to thank you all for all the prayers and for all the love and kindness that you all give me! I have the best group of family and friends in the whole world i am so very lucky!  I love you all have a great week everyone and we will talk to you all next week!

Exercise Your Faith by Serving

Kia Ora Everyone!

Well I hope everyone has had a good week! My week here in NZ was just wonderful!

we will just start off right into the week!  So one funny experience I forgot to tell you all last week, while we were tracting one day we knocked on this door and we wait a little while no one comes so we knock again and then just a little bit after the second knock we here a knock from the other side of the door and me and elder noa just look at each other and elder noa goes "well that's a first" then he goes "Come in" haha it was so funny if you don't find it funny I guess its just one of those things that you had to be there for haha.

Next experience that i want to share happened just yesterday since our church doesn't start until 12:30 we go around in the morning and invite our investigators to church and yesterday we were at some of our investigators house and they invited us in,(and that is like the first time that has happened with them) so we go in and are talking to them both and there step dad is also sitting in the room with us and he tell us that he is actually a member and he just hasn't been to church in a little while but that he does go on fast Sundays sometimes and then all of the sudden his brother knocks on the door and comes in and i start talking to him also then a little later on in the conversation he says I will never forget the elder that baptized me Elder Porter now for those of you who don't know one of the members of my home ward Brother Porter served here in NZ on his mission, but i still wasn't sure if it was brother porter from my ward until they said they still have his missionary card his name is Clint Porter and then i knew it had to be brother porter because well his name is Clint, what made this experience even crazier is that the brother hadn't come to visit his brother in nearly 7 months and then that morning he said he decided to come visit and right when he came there just so happened to be a missionary there who new the man who baptized him! coincidence? I don't think so!

Those are the experiences that i want to share for this week there were a lot more believe me and i just do not have the time to share them all!  But the work is moving a long great in this area we have a few of our investigators set for baptism on the 28th of November so pray for them that they may all be able to reach that day!

I guess what i want to leave with everyone today is always remember to exercise your faith by serving, when we do what the Lord wants us to do he blesses us because we are showing faith in him we knocked on so many doors this week and we were even knocking in the rain and that was well not very enjoyable at the time but after when we hit our goals it was incredible the feeling we got!  It is like the things we all experience in life though hard and and maybe not very fun at the time when you look back it is so much better to look back and see that you endured and kept the faith than look back and regret that you didn't do all you could have.  I know this church is true! Joseph smith was a prophet of god! he did restore the church to the earth! and the savior lives today! I know that! I love you all hope you all have a wonderful week!

Manurewa

Kia Ora Everyone!!!!!

Well i am now in my new area and things are going great!  it is really weird having to learn a new area again and having to learn everything, it is a nice break from leading the area though because now i just get to kinda relax... but not really because i'm the driver haha.

So we had a few mean experiences this week:

First one was a lesson we had with one of our investigators, this was only the second lesson that we have had with her and it went really well we taught her a bit about faith and what not and the spirit was super strong, and every time we would say something she would get this smile on her face, and when we gave her a Book of Mormon she just lit up it was so cool!

next one me and elder noa were just walking around and we saw this guy in his garage so we walked up and started talking to him, and elder noa just went right into a lesson it was mean and we ended up teaching him a bit and then we invited him to be baptized and he said yes! it was crazy i forgot that things like that could happen after being in Wairoa for so long haha.

but going back in time a little bit the last few days in Wairoa were so awesome! I love that place so much and it was really hard to leave, it is so amazing how much love you have for the people you meet, the members of the ward and investigators all have a special place in my heart now! they have all blessed my life so much!

I am super excited for this new transfer I cant wait to see what great experiences are in store here in this wonderful area.

One thing we have been leaving with everyone we have been visiting with these last few days is the commitment to pray, i would encourage everyone to evaluate your prayers and see where you can improve, my testimony of prayer has for sure grown these last few weeks it is so incredible how all our father in heaven asks us to do is be sincere and he answers our prayers and sometimes it is not in the way we expect but he does answer and the way he answers is so much better than the way we want him to answer!  sorry this is a pretty short email but i would just like to end by saying happy late birthday to my best bud Zac Millet hope you had a good day bud!  and also welcome to the family Cache Killpack congrats cass and aust he looks like a real cutie he must get that from his uncle dax haha!  Love you all have a good week everyone!!!

Service Opportunities

Kia Ora Family and Friends!

Well i hope everyone has had a wonderful week this week!

Our week down here in New Zealand was pretty good!  The best part of the whole week was our service opportunity that we had

So it was Friday morning and we were planning for our week and I really wanted to do service this week because we hadn't had a service in a while, then the phone rang and it was one of the members of the ward and she told us the her neighbour needed us to came help him in his garden.  We got to his house and saw his pretty good size garden and he asked us if we would turn all the dirt over for him, this was a job that you would normally use a tiller for but instead we had the pitch fork things it was a really hot day but we did it! it took a few hours but we did it, then we started talking to this guy when he was 15 years old he joined the merchant navy and on his first trip his ship was sunk there were a total of 27 men on board 13 made it off the boat and 9 survived he was one of the 9, he told us a few other things that i dont really have time to share but it was such a wonderful thing to help him he told us he has been in and out of the hospital 15 times since 2011 it felt so good to be able to help him out with his Garden!

So this week is transfers and I am getting transferred up to South Auckland and President Rudd has called me to be a Zone Leader,  I was a little shocked when i got the phone call but i do know that President Rudd is a very inspired man so I know this call comes from our Heavenly Father, but still might need you all to send a few extra prayers my way haha.

Sorry this is so short this week not really to much happened besides our wonderful service opportunity! this was a great week and i'm glad that this was my last week in Wairoa it was a good week to end on!

I hope everyone is constantly looking for service opportunities, after all the first thing Ammon did when he went before king Lamoni was told him he would be his servant and he served him! then he was able to do miracles and convert him and his whole household! miracles happen from service even if we cannot see the immediate effect!  I love you all have a wonderful week! Remember to Serve others and you will be blessed! 

The Way the Lord Wants

Kia Ora Everyone

Well not really to much time this week and not really any interesting experiences to share.  

We tracted into a less active family and so we have another less active family to visit,  We also had a visit on saturday with two of our new investigators, they go to the rock church but they don't really have a religious background at all so we really really have to simplify our teaching.

Other than that we had a few up and down days, one day even knocking on doors was not productive well to be honest in my opinion that is never productive haha but still it gives you something to do and there was no one home no one was interested and that made it a lot tougher.

General Conference was wonderful that was easily the greatest part of the whole week! we are so lucky to be able to listen to living prophets and apostles!  I left General Conference with a stronger testimony that ever before!  I loved every single talk and i felt like every talk was meant just for me!

Also I had the opportunity to do an exchange this week with elder landis which was pretty fun it was really weird being back with him for a day and it reminded us both of old times.  We had a really good exchange though and had some really good visits with people.

So last story for today on saturday we had an appointment with one of our new investigators we showed up at his house a little earlier than our appointment and we were sitting in the car then all of the sudden a car pulls up in the driveway and then pulls out and drives away, and in the car was the guy we were supposed to have the appointment with and me and elder brunson just looked at each other kinda like did that seriously just happen he looked right at us!  then we went to a less actives home and he had been having a rough day and we were able to help him out so that was good.

Sometimes in the moment it seems like everything is going wrong for us when in actuality everything is going the way the Lord wants it so that in the future absolutely everything will be going right and working for our benefit.  I love you all and hope you all have a good week! 

Oct. 4

Kia Ora Everyone!

Well i just want to start off by saying this week was absolutely wonderful!

As you all know we had a few exchanges this week all of which were really really good, by far the best was when we had the Assistants down here on thursday and friday we set a goal with them to double our teaching pool and we did it! we found 7 new people to teach this week! it was nothing less than a miracle!

On tuesday I gave my first training in District Meeting and I feel like it went pretty well so hopefully everyone who was there took something away from it.

Our exchange with the assistants was very good, I learned so much from them both and it was good that we were able to hit our goal of doubling our teaching pool!

One downfall of the week was we had a funeral for our Bishops son, but there were so many people there all three days the chapel was totally full on the last day there were over 700 people there! literally the  whole town of Wairoa was there!  It was a really wonderful service.  Scary part Wednesday night they asked me to speak at the service that was held at the house... there were a few hundred there that night also and I had no idea what to say!  But I said a quick prayer and Lord filled my mouth with words don't ask me to tell you what i said because i cant remember because it was not me speaking!

There has been some amazing miracles seen from the funeral though when we are talking to people on the street now they say "oh we saw you at the funeral" and then they ask us a question or we ask them what they thought of the service and we end up having a really great conversation with them!  Our Bishop also bore a powerful testimony yesterday of how he knows that they will see their son again and that everything will work out.

We also had 3 people at church yesterday which was wonderful we had a few people who we really thought were going to come not show up so that was a little disappointing, but we will keep working hard and we will see more miracles come our way!

Well that is about it for this week, we also set one of our Investigators for Baptism his name is Bon we haven't really taught him to much because he was taught previously by missionaries.  So he will be baptized on November 14th i probably wont be here because that is after transfers but its all good! i will just be happy that he has taken that step to come closer to Christ.

I hope you all have a good week thank you all so much for the prayers that you say for me I really feel them!  The Church is true and I love you all!!