Mar. 27

Kia Ora Everyone!

Well what a week it was it went by really fast but was really crazy at the same time!

So this week we went on heaps of exchanges with Zone Leaders, On tuesday after district meeting i went and was in east side of Hamilton with one of the missionaries that came out into the mission with me, we had a really good exchange taught some good lessons and worked really hard.

Then on wednesday we drove down to a place called Rotorua its about an hour and a half from hamilton we got there had some dinner and then were waiting for the elders and they were not showing up so we decided to get out of our van and we just started walking around and ended up meeting two people on the street who were interested to learn a little more haha, so finally when the Zone leaders showed up we were like hey got two new investigators for you haha.

Then on Thursday we had to take a sister missionary to the airport because she had completed her mission and then I spent thursday night and friday morning up in my old area up in Manurewa that was really fun went around and saw some of my old investigators who are all still working towards baptism and even met a few new people and taught them the restoration and the spirit was super strong and it was a really cool lesson.  then we hurry and drove back down to Hamilton to make a lesson that we had set up with Taylor and Nina and we were able to have a really good lesson we them, we taught them the plan of salvation mixed in with the gospel of Jesus Christ and it was just really awesome they had some questions and they would go right along with the lesson so we were able to answer them.  They didnt come to church yesterday sadly but that is ok we will keep working with them!

Well that was pretty much the summary of the week, this week we have some really great things planned one of which is the temple! I'm am looking forward to the temple very much!  it is going to be a great four days!

Well that is all for me this week I love you all! especially those who have been such wonderful examples to me like my Grandma and Grandpa Anderson and my Grandma Holmes thanks for all of the love and support best grandparents in the whole world!

Remember the church is true and it always will be!  Love you all

Kia Kaha, Kia Ngawari

Mar. 20

Kia Ora Everyone!!!!


Well another week has come and gone and this week was a good one!
First off on Monday we went and had a visit with one of our investigators we taught him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it was a really great lesson and really awesome, then at the end of the lesson we asked him if he would be baptized and he said yes!!!! and then we also invited him to say the closing prayer and he did and it was probably the first time he has ever prayed in his whole life! and it was awesome it was incredible he did such a good job! He is a really cool kid he is 18 and he just moved down from Auckland, i think i have already talked about him before. But he was super keen to work towards baptism I believe the words he said was he would put in the "Hard yards" so that he can now the truth of what we have shared. We also had a ward Party on saturday and we invited him to that and he came and we got to introduce him to a few members of the ward which was good, he even ended up meeting a member of the ward who is a relative haha it is a small world down here in New Zealand everyone is related haha.


We also had a few exchanges this week which were really good! it is so good to go around and learn from the other missionaries! there is so much to learn from others and that is what I love about getting to go on all these exchanges is learning from all the incredible missionaries we have serving here in the mission.


last night we had a really incredible lesson with one of the members of on of the wards we cover who is preparing to leave for his mission, he had a few of his cousins over from Japan and he asked us to come and visit with them they are less active and so they know a little bit about the church and the gospel and so we sat down with them and began to talk about the restoration the spirit was so strong during the lesson but it was incredibly strong when this member their cousin bore his testimony at the end and then one of the other members of the ward who actually is also a cousin of these two less actives and they were two incredibly powerful testimonies!


It is so awesome to see how much of an influence members have on the teaching I hope everyone will look for those missionary opportunities each day and help the missionaries to teach because when a member bears testimony it is incredibly powerful!


I love you all and hope everyone has a wonderful week thank you for all of the prayers i for sure can feel them! Remember the gospel is true!

Mar. 13

Kia Ora Everyone!




Well i'm pretty sure i was just writing an email like yesterday these weeks go by way fast!!! Anyway hope everyone's week was wonderful my week was full of excitment and craziness!



We had a lot of interviews this week and we started off the interiews up in south Auckland so while president Rudd is interviewing the missionaries of the zone we are giving a training to the rest of the zone, we started off in my last zone Manurewa! and then went over to Redoubt! after the interviews we went on exchange with the Redoubt Zone leaders and that was really awesome especially since one of the Zone leaders Elder Ith came out to the mission with me i met him in the Salt Lake Airport so we have literally known each other our whole mission! anyways we went into a lesson tuesday night with a less active member she was super nice and we had an awesome visit with her and at the end of the lesson we invited her to say the prayer and she was like ah i will next time and then Elder Ith was like you said that last time and the time before that and she was like i really mean it this time haha and i'm thinking to myself there is no way we are leaving here without this lady praying so i say to her if i sing a solo will you say the prayer and she was like yup and i was like al all right someone give me a hymn book haha i sang the solo then she said the prayer only she cheated she said the prayer in Maori! haha but it was all goods Elder Ith said they had been trying to get her to pray for ages so we were satisfied with that.


Then the next day on wednesday we were just walking around the area and it came to lunch time and we got back to their flat and my comp and his comp werent back yet and they had the key so we just decided to keep walking we walked around the corner and walked through the gate of the first house and just started talking to the two guys one was in his 20's and the other was like 19 and we had an awesome talk with them, they said to us that they always were so unsure about missionaries but after talking to us they think we are the coolest people ever haha so that was a pretty cool miracle and so elder ith and his companion are going to keep trying and visiting with them.


The rest of the week we were doing more interviews and that was literally the rest of the week but it has been great to go around to all the different zones and visit with them all and give our training it is pretty cool cause the training is like second nature now we can just go up and do it, i guess that is what happens when you have done it six times haha.


On sunday we also had the opportunity to go with president and sister rudd to the Tauranga stake conference which that was the first zone i was in so i got to see all of the members from my first are which was really cool and it was really cool to see that they all remembered me also so that was nice. and the sunday meeting was awesome too the authority who was speaking did awesome and it really good for me at that point in time!


But that was pretty much the week I have been sick the whole week so part of thursday and all of friday we were in the flat so i could try to feel better but i still felt pretty gross throughout the weekend and am finally starting to feel better!


Well I hope everyone has a wonderful week and please be safe! Love you all and remember the church is true!!!!! and it always will be! that is a fact of life!!!! 

Exchange with Elder Ith

Dax calls this one "I got ya Cindy Lou!"

Mar. 6

Kia Ora Everyone!

Well hope everyone's week was sublime!

We had a really good week down here in Aotearoa, now the challenge will be me trying to remember everything!

First we started off last week with a really good preparation day, because of some craziness that we had to deal with President and Sister Rudd decided to take us to lunch  and then we went to this old car museum which was really cool!

Then on Tuesday we had our Mission Leadership Council that is when all the Zone Leaders come up and we have a council haha but that was really good.

Then this week we had a really good Lesson with Mason and his kids we had them set for baptism on the 19th of this month we might be pushing it back but that is all good we are working really hard with Mason to help him be prepared to baptize the kids and so we went over and just had a really good visit with them and when we left we gave them  all the commitment that before they walk out the door in the morning to go to school and work that as a family they each need to read one verse from The Book of Mormon they said they would and then when we went back the next day we asked them how it was and they said it was incredible that it made such a difference in their day! 

Our next good visit we had this week was with another investigator who we haven't been able to see in ages and we were a bit worried because he was progressing so well and then all of the sudden nothing, but finally we got to visit with him and turns out a member of his family kinda led him to some anti-mormon material and so we sat down with him and answered the questions he asked us it wasn't anything really intense but we did tell him we will answer any question he has and we will prove it all using the bible, and then we will prove the answer from the bible using The Book of Mormon.  I told him also I said we can give you all this physical evidence that The Book of Mormon is true, we can tell you about all the evidence in america they have found and all the evidence in the middle east they have found but you will not gain a true knowledge of The Book of Mormon that way, a true sure knowledge of the truthfulness of The Book of Mormon will only come from reading and praying and sincerely asking God if it is true, that is the only way that we will be able to be 100% sure that The Book of Mormon is true.  So we committed him to read and pray and we will keep visiting with him and we will see how it goes but we feel confident about it all so we are not worried.

We also had stake conference this week and that was really great the theme was becoming self reliant both in the world and spiritually.  There were lots of wonderful talks given and some wonderful life experiences were shared.  I got a lot of personal revelation in those meetings so I have some things to do for the next little while to keep myself busy in studies so i am super excited to have some good studies!

Well that is all the time I have this week I hope everyone has a great week and that everyone will read from The Book of Mormon this week and "feast on the words of Christ" The Book of Mormon is true that is a fact of life read it and see how wonderfully it blesses your life! have a good week everyone!

Arohanui!

Always a Lesson to be Learned

Kia Ora Everyone!

Well sorry that I didn't get a group message sent last week it was easily the craziest week of my entire life and you all can ask me about it when I get home and I might tell.

I hope everyone is doing well though! and hope you all had a great week!  Heard the CV basketball team did really good in state! so Shout Out to my bro's who play on the team Abe and Job Hux!!!

Well last week we had to take all the missionaries that were finishing to the airport and then pick up the new missionaries it seemed like just a few days ago we were doing the first pick up but amazingly it has already been six week!  Now we have this transfer which is a bit different because it is going to be eight weeks long! But it is going to go by way fast because we have a lot of things planned for this transfer so I am super excited for this transfer.  

Besides all the craziness that happened last week we had a really good lesson last night with the LA dad and his kids that we have been teaching and last night we set them for baptism!!!! and they will all be preparing to be baptised on the 19th and then the dad is preparing to baptise them that day! so we are super excited the spirit was so strong in the lesson and the kids were so excited they both have been wanting to get baptised for a long time so they are really excited!

Also we were able to see last night a few of our investigators that we haven't been able to see in a while and they hadn't been answering our texts and we finally saw them last night and it turns out he put his phone on top of his car and now he cant find it so that was a relief also!

But that is really all for this week and some of you might be thinking really? but i'm being totally honest when I say we didn't get to do any missionary work the whole week until Sunday,  but it is okay because we had great visits with those who we did get to see and Heavenly Father was for sure guiding us throughout the whole day yesterday!

The thing I learned the most this week is to just always remember to never ever let your circumstances get you down their is always a lesson to be learned in everything and we will always learn and grow more when times are tough or we feel weighed down, my challenge to everyone is to always remember how good life is and remember that our Heavenly Father has given us all these things for our benefit and for our good, I have learned the best way to handle all situations is to ask myself what does Heavenly Father want me to learn here and instead of having a bad attitude have a learning attitude and everything works out!

I love you all hope you everyone has a wonderful week!

Arohanui 

Make Miracles

Kia Ora Everyone!

Well hope everyone has had a wonderful week!

My week was pretty full on.  We had nothing but exchanges this week and that was crazy it was a whole lot of driving and whole lot of sleeping on floors.

We went from one coast to the other this week we started the week on Tuesday in New Plymouth down in Taranaki and then drove to my favourite area Wairoa had an exchange with the elders there and then up to Gisborne to have an exchange with the Zone Leaders and then to Rotorua to have exchange with the Zone Leaders there also.

The great thing about all of this is it is all such a wonderful learning experience getting to be with other missionaries and also getting to know all the missionaries in the mission.

This is really really short dont have any time left but hope everyone has a wonderful week.  One thing i learned this week from exchanges was so many times in life we think that we just need to constatnly be seeing these amazing miracles in our lives, but what i learned this week is we dont learn anything from miracles that just come to us, we need to learn to go out and make miracles that is something Heavenly Father has been teaching me that if we want miracles to occur in our life go out and work for them and make them.  Love you all hope you all go out and make miracles in your lives this week!

Best Mission in the World

Kia Ora Everyone!

Well what a really good week we had down here in New Zealand and more specifically in the New Zealand Hamilton Mission the best Mission in the World!

Hope everyone had a good week also and that everyone is doing well!

First off for this week was we had our three days of Zone Conference and those ended up going great I felt pretty good about my training and after doing it nine time i had it pretty much down and knew it like the back of my hand, and yet I kept changing it a little bit each time, it was interesting to see the way the spirit guided the conversations and each one was really really good I thought so hopefully everyone else thought they were good also.

We did a total of three days and each of the days we broke up all the missionaries in to three groups so we all gave our training three times which was really fun and all the missionaries were really good and everyone participated really well and it felt like everyone walked away with something they had learned!  Me and Elder Tibbitts got to rid to all the conferences with President and Sister Rudd which made it even more fun they told us heaps of stories and we told them some stories also and we all just kinda got to know each other a little bit better which was really cool!

On tuesday after the Zone Conference we got to Hamilton at about 5 o'clock and texted one of our investigators to see if we could come over and usually when we text they are like yeah sure come over at seven thirty, but this time they were like yes please!!!!! so we went over and we had been talking about what we wanted to share with them as we were driving over and when we got their on of the partners came out and she started telling us what a stressful week it has been since she just started school and all this stuff and so we went inside she was telling us a little more and then she said when she was driving home she had this thought come into her mind and it was "the missionaries" she said when she thought that she just felt this relief come over her and she felt like a weight was lifted off her, so we asked her what she thought that was and she said well I assume it is the spirit cause that is what you guys always talk about, and we were like yeah that is the spirit haha.  But then the other partner started telling us he had a really stressful week and so we started sharing some scriptures with them and helped them to see how they can find Comfort in The Book of Mormon and other scriptures and then before we left we gave them both blessings and they were both just blown away by that they thought it was amazing!  it was just a really cool visit though because they learned to recognize the spirit for themselves it wasnt us explaining everything to them but we were just guiding them and they were answering their own questions it was really really awesome!

We have also been having some great visits with a part member family it a dad and his two kids that are 9 and 7 we are helping the dad come back to church and he is making leaps and bounds it is awesome he has stopped smoking and is starting to come back to church! He should be able to baptize his son here soon and then his daughter also.  We went over Monday night and gave both of the kids blessings for the start of the school year and after he said he hopes that he can do that next year and we said we will make sure you do it next year!  he is such a great guy and his kids are awesome too!  

One thing that I focused on in my training for Zone Conference was having charity when we teach, we can ask all the right questions and teach really really well but if we do not have charity it doesnt matter(1 corinthians 13:1) And so that is something that I have tried to start applying in my missionary work and i'm starting to see it slowly work its way into my teaching and it is really cool to see and to feel the love that Heavenly Father has for everyone.

Charity is important in so many aspects of our life.  I feel it is the sum of all the Christ-Like Attributes and with it we can accomplish many wonderful things, when we have charity it will cast out the fear to share the gospel and we will be driven by a love for the people more than anything else.  I hope everyone will study more about charity this week and apply it into your individual lives and use it for the purpose of sharing the Gospel, the Gospel is to precious of a message for us to keep to ourselves so I encourage everyone to "Pray unto the Father with all energy of heart that ye may receive this Love"(Moroni7:48).  I love you all have a good week everyone! 

Kia Kaha!