Elder Gardner: 10/28/24

 

A week of ups and downs!

Kia ora! I hope yous are all doing good! This week was great and i cant wait to get into it!

Photos 📸 https://photos.app.goo.gl/TQ33C4d8unDGQ4xA6

Tuesday: this day was pretty normal. Most of our lessons fell thru, so we ended helping the social media sisters out with their video so that was fun! We also found out that our returning member, Brownie, was out of town this week for a funeral service which was very sudden, so keep her family in your prayers!We also played some chess with the ZL's that night, so that was good. 

Wednesday: this day was pretty crazy! In the morning we found out the elder Feps (an elder in our district who is currently training a new missionary) was getting an emergency tranfer! So this was our last day with him 😮. It was super sudden and sad to see him go. But we got a new elder come in to take his place and continue the training. And guess who the new elder is...

Its elder Cooper! If you dont know, me and elder cooper have been friends for a long time and he left on his mission a year before me, but now we are reunited in the same district!

We also had a lesson with Jaydn on Wednesday, we were able to get a member there too, so that was super good! We put him on date to be baptized, and we hope that he can keep growing in faith so he can be prepared for it. We will see how it goes, the Word of Wisdom is definitely a hurdle that we will have to work hard to get over, but we are hopeful that he will make it!

That night, we were able to make it to the library so that I could vote 🗳 🇺🇲🦅🗣, so that was clutch. We also had english class. And after class one of the people who attends, Juan, took us to KFC amd we smashed a 20 chicken tender box. I was stuffed lol

Thursday: we got tp do some yard work service, and elder cooper + perry helped us out with that, so it was pretty fun. We also finally got in contact with this guy we met door knocking, and it went really well! So we got to count Andre as new friend! Super exciting becuase we dont get many new friends in this area. 

We also found out that a lady had been stabbed on a bus in our area and after she was hospitalized, she passed away. It was super sad and the whole town was talking about it. The crazy thing is that they released the name of the victim who died and it was someone who we had reffered to us and had talked to! It was devastating news to find out that Bernice had passed away. She was so lovely and was really keen on coming back to church with her family and growing her relationship with jesus. We had even helped get some food donated to her when she had a hard week, so to hear this happen and to happen to someome we knew was such a suprise. Please keep Bernice's family in your guys prayers!

Friday: on friday we got to go to lunch with christine and antony again. This time, we all went to Wendy's and all i can say is that the baconator in america is way better. We also helped them run some errands and we got to talk to some people in the mall about the gospel. When we were door knocking, we met a hispanic guy, so we were able to practice our spanish and invite him to english class lol. We also got dinner at a really good burger place that night and it hada sweet outdoor seating area!

Saturday: on saturday, we helped Nicholas (this old fellow) around the house and we also did a lot of door knocking, we got a few return appointments from that. So hopefully it will go well! There was also a huge rainstorm this day, but luckily we were able to get out of the rain by talking to a less active member for a bit. We also had another lessom with Jaydn and it went really well! I feel like i was really able to practice teaching simply, which is something ive been working on!

Sunday: we had ward council on sunday which was good and then we stayed at the chapel and greeted before sacrament meeting. We saw 3 of our friends at church today, which was such a blessing! Jaydn, Nicholas, and our friend Ali all made it and they loved talked during elders quorum lol. It was super cool to see them at church!

After church we were able to go to a less actives house. His name is Etu and he loves the gospel, but is just indecisive about coming. But we had a great discussion with him and hoepfully he will start coming to church! We also met his sister, she is super nice and she made a snack for us which was super kind!

Sunday night we went and had dinner at Bishops house and it was super good! We also played secret hitler, which is a social deduction game like mafia. My family played it all the time, so it playing it with bishop and his family felt like home! It was awesome!

Overall, this week was great! We finally got to see some of our hard work pay off and it was such a blessing! Its crazy that we are already more then halfway done with this transfer, and im almost done with training! I hope yous all are doing good, and i love your emails and messages! Im sorry if i dont get back to you guys, but i try and respond to everyone who messages me. Sometimes i just get busy lol but i appreciate all of yous!

Ofa atu (tongan for "goodbye")

-Elder Gardner