Ngaruawahia 4

Kia ora everyone! It has been quite a busy week this last week. We hardly had any time for proselyting! We had more and more service to do (which is my favorite thing to do out here so I love it!) and we have even more service set for the next week. I kept quite busy with working with the other elders in my district trying to better the work in our areas. 

On Tuesday, we were all invited to a Tangi. A Tangi is essentially a Maori funeral but if you have more questions, Google it! Us missionaries were regarded as high ranking officials. Most of the people present were inactive members so they knew who we were and they treated us with so much respect! A lot of the speaking and different aspects of the Tangi were all in fluent Maori. It was a real good connection to my roots as my heritage through my father is Maori. 

Elder Suriben and I were able to progress many of our investigators this week. We have a baptism this Saturday and we hope to get our investigator Brandon to the waters of baptism soon as well. We had one investigator, Germaine, surprise us yesterday because he actually came to church! He hates big crowds and seemed very reluctant toward church attendance but he came and stayed for all of sacrament meeting which was really long due to the Primary Presentation. 

All in all, it was an awesome week! I hope to be able to share more next week and if anyone has specific questions, you are welcome to email me! 

Arohanui, 

Elder Green

Here's a little more that he said about the tangi in a personal email:

I also had the opportunity to attend a Tangi this week in Huntly. It was awesome! Most of the services and speaking was done full in Maori and it was amazing. The missionaries were loved and regarded as high ranking officials! They showed us heaps of respect and we were able to share testimony and teach them all about the Plan of Salvation. Most of the people there were just inactive members so they kind of knew. But we ate our meals with the whanau and we were given seats with the different men in charge. The marae was really cool there too. The whole experience was awesome. 

And one more little snippet in answer to a specific question I had about what he did on P-days:

We get picked up and then we go do a little shopping then we go to the stake center and just play basketball (mostly just basketball at the stake center! I'm actually getting pretty decent at ball. I still am bad in comparison to the others but I am getting better. I also go and play the grand piano in the chapel a lot and practice my piano) and email until about 5 or 6. Then back to work.