Elder Gardner: 12/2/24

 

¿Misionero español?

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

Kia ora hoas and whanaus. No im not a spanish missionary, but I got to speak it a little this week. Hope yous are all doing well and excited for the christmas season. Right now I am still waiting for the summer sun to come out, its been pretty rainy the past few days here in NZ. Anyways, heres the week.

- tuesday morning we played some uno at craigs while we talked about politics and the one world order or something like that. One of craigs favorite phrases is "watch and pray". Craig does a lot of watching of whats going on in the world, but we tried to help him realize that the "pray"ing part of that phrase is more important. We invited him to pray about church and he said ya, so we will see how that goes.

- Tuesday we also had dinner with stanleys fam. They are super nice and we had a mean feed. I just wish stanley was more into the gospel lol.

- Wednesday we had our first dcm as a new transfer. Elder sanders is the DL and hes super nice. We focused a lot on Mighty prayer (kind of like in Enos 1:4), and praying to expect miracles. Thats something that our whole mission is focusing on. So do some mighty prayers at home you guys.

- we also had interviews with pres and sister allen. That went super good and its always nice to tell them whats going on in your life.

- thursday morning we went to english connect class to help elder yapi improve on his english. The class was super fun and all the elders there are funny as. We are going to start making sure that elder yapi has 1hr of language study each day, so that will be good.

- we had a lesson with Lora, we think it went good and she def felt the spirit. Its just hard to get her to seek that spirit on her own by reading the BoM and praying.

- we had dinner at this place called "everybody eats". Its a restaurant thats open from 6-8pm every weekday and it gives out a free 3 course meal to the community. It was actually super good food and a cool as place.

- friday we had a nice brunch with christine and antony and we had our weekly planning.

- we stopped by jessicas and invited her to church (spoiler: she didnt come because of the rain)

- we had a return appt with this columbian guy named Johnathan, we were following up on the BoM. We told him about the book and also about prophets and he said we could come back next week, so hopefully he will be interested in becoming a regular friend that we teach. We also invited him to english class and he seemed excited.

- saturday was rainy all day but we still got out there and got to work 💯🔥💪

- we went to old man Nicholas to do some cleaning and then we got to sit down and we had a nice chat about what makes scripture and how no one is perfect (besides jesus obv). Hes a smart guy and definitely and critical thinker, hes just really old so its hard to understand him sometimes lol. I think he likes the social aspect of church though.

- we did some door knocking at the richer part of town, we met someone who seemed really interested, but she was house sitting and actually lives in the city. We gave her a BoM and our card and I shed a tear when we left.

- sunday was good, still rainy in the morning so no one came to church, not even the members lol, the ward looked exta small today

- church was still good tho and after church we got in contact with this guy victor. He had been interested in church and now we finally got in contact and gave him a BoM and invited him. He should hopefully be coming in 2 sundays 

- we met 2 new ppl door knocking and we got return appointments so that was good. one of them was a Portuguese lady so that was nice.

We should be going to a museum today so that should be fun. Being with elder yapi is definitely different then my last companion, but i love elder yapi and he is so humble and such a hard worker. We are really focusing on his ability to find and talk to new people, english isnt his first language so im sure its hard, but hes making good progress. 

Its crazy how many cultures and different types of people there are here. I definitely feel blessed to know a tiny bit of spanish so that i could connect with the 2 spanish speaking people we talked to this week. Hopefully we will continue to work with them and see them progress. 

Thats it from me. Let me know how yous are all doing. Sorry im bad at responding sometimes. Stay blessed, ka kite ano.

Elder Gardner