Te Awamutu - Week 1 A Birthday and a Transfer

Kia ora whanau!

We had a fun p-day today. But yes I am now in Te Awamutu. It is a small town but not near as small as I was thinking when I got here. Its about as big as Show Low maybe a tad less. So far its a pretty good area! But guess who I am with for the time being! Technically I am in a trio until he goes home but I am with Elder Olcott and Elder Powell. Really good to be with Elder Olcott again and see him off. He goes home later this week. But Elder Powell is a good guy too. I have served around him in the past a couple different times. We live in a flash as flat though. Its got 2 bathrooms, a master, and 2 smaller bedrooms. Its even in a gated community. But things are good here. My birthday was decent enough. Nothing spectacular but it was good and everyone was quite nice with what they did for me. Really nice what Brandon did.  He came and surprised me.  Or at least tried to.  I guess I am a bit smarter than the average bear or something and figured out the whole plot days before it happened.  But it was good either way! And my companions each shouted me something so that was kind (to shout something means to buy for you.  Kind of like can you shout me a feed means can you buy me a meal.)

I am a zone leader now but there's really not much we have to do. We are in charge of quite a few missionaries but its nothing glorious or anything to become a zone leader. We take numbers and different information about the areas that missionaries serve in and relay them to the assistants. We also just travel the zone and take supplies around the zone and attend different district meetings. Our mission is only divided into 4 zones. We cover southwest Hamilton and all the way down to Taranaki. Our zone is the second largest. But I really feel like my biggest job is just to be a good example to the missionaries we serve with, especially the trainees. Everyone just seems to look to zone leaders as the big examples (even though we are no different, just extra responsibility). But yeah that's about it as far as I understand. But things are good! 

--Elder Green

Manurewa Week 24

Kia ora everyone! 

Hope everyone's week was good. My week was decent enough. Elder Vanva and I have set up a little more trust with the members of the ward and hopefully will be able to get more effective work done in the area. I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of people and work with a lot of missionaries over the last 6 months. I am pretty sure I am leaving this transfer. Quite a bit more sure than I was last time. Its sad to say a lot of goodbyes but I will get the opportunity to serve around new people and get another new beginning. Either way, Weymouth is a good ward. The work is hard here but I have learned a lot about myself and a lot about becoming a better person. This last week I have thought a lot about who I am as a district leader and who I am as a companion. I hope to live up to people's expectations of me and I hope to be the best I can be. I had a lot of self reflection while I was sitting around trying to overcome sickness and while my companion was trying to overcome sickness as well. The whole district got sick this week and it was pretty bad. It hit me the worst which makes me think my immune system probably isn't as strong as it should be. But I am doing much better now. 

My story for this week is simple and not super spiritual. It's just about the last few p-days. One of my zone leaders, Elder Rollins, is from Arizona, more specifically Gilbert. He lives just down the road and him and I get along really well. the last few p-days him and I have gone on random adventures that include getting from point A to point B without getting too wet. As missionaries, we cannot swim but we went to a beach a couple weeks ago and a waterfall this week. So we decided that for fun, we would take on mission impossible tasks and make it out to small islands without breaking rules. It was hard not to just jump in the water and swim to it but we managed to take probably the hardest road possible and barefoot. We probably took about an hour for the tasks we undertook and it probably could've taken 5 minutes if we just jumped in the water. The point of the story is that sometimes in missionary work, we have to take the hard path for some reason. Whether its for the sake of obedience or because sometimes we just have to make hard decisions, we still just have to take the hard path. The easy way would seem better and quite a bit more simple, but nothing is learned and no progress is made. SO I guess through these silly and arguably useless pursuits, I learned a lesson that I know can be applied to many situations.

Anyway, I hope everyone's week is good! 

Arohanui,

Elder Green

Manurewa Week 23

Elder Green forgot to send a weekly email for everyone, so I will put a couple things in that he said in our personal email . . .

Kia ora whanau!

I have not met Elder Hippolite yet, I have been stuck in South Auckland for too long! Maybe next transfers, which is on the 20th, I'll meet him or bump into him. I will most likely be leaving Weymouth but I could go just down the road to Papakura or back to Hamilton or out to Tauranga. Don't really know yet. 

Sounds like you guys had a fun week! Dad must've vicariously sent me his sickness because I got really sick this last week and have pretty much been stuck trying to sleep it off. I'm filled with Advil right now so I'm okay for the moment but it changes a lot. I am definitely not missing the heat. I quite enjoy the amount of rain we get and the rather cold weather. Right now the cold doesn't agree with the cold I've got but when I am well I love it!

What is the [Elder's] name? We might run into each other when I do MTC exchanges. I go on exchanges with the greenies from the MTC every once in a while and I could possibly get him as a companion for a day!

Weymouth is a difficult area and the progress is very slow but I do hope that I made some sort of an impact with the members and maybe the missionaries in my district. There was definitely a reason I got sent here and stayed here so long and whether or not I know what that reason is, it does not matter.

Arohanui,

Elder Green

	Sun, Sep 9, 4:59 PM (23 hours ago)

Manurewa Week 22

Kia ora everyone!

I have had a pretty good week this week. Nothing spectacular happened but we were able to speak with a lot of people and possibly get a few new people to start teaching. I was able to go on an exchange with my zone leaders and I was able to learn a lot from them! I went with Elder Hart and he is dying on the mission pretty soon. He has a lot of mission experience and he works very hard. He has helped my outlook on the mission and in staying in areas for what seems like an eternity. He is a really good elder. Other than that, Elder Vanva and I have been working on finding new people to teach and bring into the gospel. It is a bit hard because our area is tiny and we have talked to so many different people but we continue on. We are starting to get a bit more referrals from the members so hopefully that will get us somewhere. 

Lately Brandon has been talking to me about a few concerns of his. I was able to share a few concerns of my own and it has been really good for the both of us. Unfortunately, the missionaries currently serving in Ngaruawahia don't go to see him very often and the members kind of stopped when it comes to missionary work so Brandon is a bit worried. His testimony is truly a powerful thing though because he is just worried that he isn't learning as much as he could about the gospel. As I tried to offer consolation of some kind and help where I could he also was trying to help me wit ha few concerns I had about life and post mission circumstances. He has quite a bit more experience in that category than me so I learned a lot from him and realized that I value his friendship very much. He still isn't married and it doesn't look like it will happen in the immediate future but I know its coming and that he will soon thereafter be baptized. 

Other than that, it has just been a standard week. I hope everyone has a blessed week! 

Arohanui,

Elder Green

Manurewa Week 21

Kia ora everyone! 

This has been a pretty good week. We had zone conference and got some powerful messages from both President and Sister Cummings. I always learn a lot from their counsel and teachings. I was able to see Brandon again on the way back from Hamilton for zone conference and it was good to catch up with him. I also got to see Elder Borders again! That guy is honestly a really close friend of mine and I appreciate him a lot. He is now training! So I more or less have a mission grandson now. Technically he is my step-grandson but Elder Borders considers me his mission father. Either way, it was really good to catch up with him. Lately in New Zealand things have been a little chilly but it's been starting to warm up lately. I'm not looking forward to the heat because it's a humid heat which is pretty hard to avoid. It goes through your clothes and just ruins everything. In my last area, there were a few days where we had to go back to the flat to shower twice in one day! 

I do have a story to share this week, we had a younger gentleman show up in sacrament meeting yesterday. His name is Spencer. Elder Vanva and I had to give talks in Sacrament and I saw him wander in halfway through sacrament and sit in the back but I didn't think much of it. After sacrament had ended, some YSA approached us with him and introduced him to us as Spencer. He told us that he knew we were meant to teach people about our faith and said "Teach me." I was a bit shocked because I have never really experienced something like this. I asked him if he would accompany us to gospel doctrine and he said that he would actually be busy but he has a few minutes. In the back of my mind I got really excited because one of the things the MTC really drilled into our minds was to teach one of the full lessons in under 5 minutes. So I taught him lesson 1 in a few minutes and he then asked if he could come with us to class. After talking with him a bit more he said he just doesn't believe in a God or in religion but that lately he has been thinking a lot about religion and decided to try out a bunch of different churches and see which one catches his eye. After Sunday school he said that he was more or less testing our faith and it's beliefs and that it passed. He said he might come back next week to see again what it was like. This was all a powerful testimony to me of how Heavenly Father sends people to the missionaries. I know that Spencer felt the spirit at church and although he might not know it, the spirit was working with him to feel the truth of the many things being taught that day. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Arohanui,

Elder Green

Manurewa Week 20

Kia ora everyone! 

This week was quite uneventful. Elder Vanva and I just kept pushing on with our same old routine for Weymouth. Not a whole lot has changed. But we are hoping to get a few good things done this week. The ward council has asked us to visit quite a few less active families. They believe that the missionary work in the ward is a bit rough when it comes to investigators and so they'd like us to start focusing on the less active members in the ward. We have got a lot of contacting ahead of us this week and hopefully something good comes out of it! This last week we had our first District Council of the transfer and it was pretty interesting. We have two brand new missionaries being trained in the district and it was good to have them participate and get some fresh out of the MTC thinking. Our district is still very young in the mission, the oldest missionaries hit their year mark just this last Wednesday. I will hit my year mark in a month and a bit and its a little scary. Once I get to that point, I'll be able to say "I've been out a bit over a year." Rather than "a bit under a year" which is what the mission president asks us to say, especially when it comes to missionaries who have been out for a week or so. This week we were also able to have interviews with our mission president and I got a lot from his counsel. I have been able to learn a lot from him over the last couple years.

Well other than that, there isn't much to report on. I hope everyone's week is going well! 

Arohanui,

Elder Green

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