February 24, 2013

I hope you all have had a good week!!

This week has been pretty crazy. For the last 3 weeks we have been handing out invitations to a special Sacrament meeting that we had this week. Whenever we did any kind of street contacting or door knocking or anything, that's all we've handed out. We had high hopes that people would come! The members all brought heaps of food for afterwards (delicious island food... mmmm!!). Sister Paongo, a return missionary named Vine (pernounced Vee-nay) and I sang "I Need thee Every Hour" for a musical number. The senior missionaries in the ward, Elder and Sister Little, gave awesome talks! We were surprised and a little sad at the small amount of people that came, but I think that the people there on Sunday benefited from the topics discussed and the Spirit that was there.

We have had some fantastic lessons this week. Our investigators are amazing!! One such lesson was with Michael. We taught Michael the second half of the Restoration lesson. When my companion was quoting Joseph's Smith's experience in the Sacred Grove, I was just overwhelmed with the Spirit. What a privilege to be telling people about this. What is more important than this truth? Nothing! This is the most important message of all time - that God still loves His children and wants us to come back home. And He has provided a way to do it! Anyways, back to Michael. We  and asked him to pray about if this is the restored gospel. He said, "Well I already prayed about it." We were a little surprised, and he continued, "Well you had me read the introduction last time. And it says right there that if you pray you'll get an answer. I just read between the lines - you wanted me to pray about it." We asked him what his answer was, and he said, "It was a yes." WOOOOO!!!!! Michael has a baptismal date, that was set like a week or so ago. I'm so excited for him!!!! 

Life is good!! This ward is fantastic, and I'm blessed to have a fantastic companion. This work is amazing. I am so blessed to be a part of it. I know this gospel is true!! 

Also, the Auckland mission was divided to form a Hamilton mission and an Auckland mission. This won't affect our mission boundaries at all. So exciting, though!!

Have a great week! Love you all!

Sister Rose

February 17, 2013

Greetings!

This week has been crazy. I'm not sure what story I can tell.. We had so many things happened, WOW. 

We have been teaching a woman named Olivia. She has taken the lessons before and the missionaries have been meeting with her on-and-off for a number of years. (Forgive me if i've already introduced her in some other email). Her husband is less-active and she has four kids, all under the age of 5. She's awesome! She's Moari and really strong willed and just the best. We had a lesson with her and her husband Ina this week. They haven't been to church in a very, very long time. But we shared Jeffery R. Holland's talk with them, "The First Great Commandment" from last conference. That talk was a big reason why I came on my mission in the first place, so it's very dear to my heart. But we downloaded the video and tried to play if for them - but neither of the versions we downloaded worked!! We went around and took turns reading the talk. (I guess they just needed to read it themselves, since neither of the files worked...) After we finished reading it, we asked them some questions, and kind of reviewed it. Then we asked Ina what he felt like he should do after reading the talk - and he said, "Go to Church." We were so happy!!! He kept bringing up that they should go to church, go to church, go to church. We also committed them to read a chapter of the Book of Mormon together and Ina said he would. YES!! We know that if the husband is motivated to follow Christ, Olivia will feel more comfortable doing so as well. To top it all off, we asked Ina to bear his testimony. He did, and we could tell that he really, really meant it and he hasn't stopped believing, even if he's less-active right now. It was so powerful!! Their baby is due to be blessed soon, so we are going to try to help Ina prepare to bless his own baby! We are so excited! This is a fantastic work to be involved with, and I am so blessed to be a missionary. 

I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and our Redeemer. I know that Heavenly Father answers our prayers; and sometimes He waits for us to get to the point where we are going to turn back before He answers us. Just like in Alma 26:27, sometimes God lets us get to the very edge before the answer comes. I'm still not sure why He does that, but I know that He is mighty to save, because I've seen Him come to my rescue this week. I know that our Redeemer lives, and that through Him we can be lifted up.

 

Love,

Sister Rose

February 10, 2013

Hello everyone!

This week has been pretty awesome :) I have a fantastic miracle to share with you!! So on Saturday we had dinner scheduled with a member family, and they were going to drop some food off for us. We had scheduled to door-knock for an hour and then go home for dinner. But thirty minutes in, Sister Paongo said we should go visit some people in the area. I didn't think twice about it, because it was crazy hot and she wasn't feeling so awesome. She named two people, one an old woman and another couple that were former investigators. I told her she could pick which one we saw, and she picked the couple. We showed up at their home and they invited us in immediately. They were very happy to see us, and wanted to talk with us. About thirty minutes in, my companion told me we were leaving, but we were coming back. I thought, "That's not what we normally do," but just went along with it. When we got into the car, she told me what the woman had said when i was talking to the husband - that thirty minutes before we showed up, she had prayed to God for someone to show up at their door with food because they didn't have any food or money for food. So we went home, got the food that the ward members delivered, and brought it back to the couple. When we came in, the husband (who was the less-receptive one the last time they took the lessons) kept talking about how they should join the Mormon church and that he would be willing to give up tea and coffee for it. WOO!! So exciting! I feel so blessed to be a part of this work! What a blessing that the Lord allowed us to be a part of that experience!! The church is true, the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and we have the restored gospel on the earth again today. I know that God answers prayers and i know he loves us!! 

love,

Sister Rose

February 3, 2013, Ashburton, New Zealand

Hello everyone!!

I'm finally in New Zealand! :D It looks just like Oregon here, honestly - I love it! It's so green! And so sunny! It's raining today, but that's okay :)

The flight to NZ was super long, but that's okay. When our group arrived at Wellington we were greeted by the President Kezerian's wife, who is the sweetest woman alive!! A bit later we got to meet President Kezerian. We all had a testimony meeting together (5 new missionaries, 2 senior missionaries, 3 departing missionaries, President and Sister Kezerian, and a couple other missionaries), which was just what I needed. I was feeling really nervous about being there; I didn't know any of the missionaries, and I didn't really know what was going on. But once we had that testimony meeting - man! The Spirit gave me a nice pat on the back. :)

I flew down to Christchurch to meet my trainer. We are currently serving in Ashburton, but we had to stay in Christchurch for a few days until the new month because we have a certain amount of kilometers per month we can use, and we didn't have enough to get home until February. OH MY GOSH MY TRAINER IS AWESOME! Her name is Sister Paongo, and she's from Auckland and is part Fijian and part Tongan. I was nervous about getting a companion that didn't know how to work - I only have a year and a half, and i want to use every second I'm here. But when we left the airport, we went to the other sisters' flat in Christchurch and I changed my clothes, and we went street contacting. YES! That is just what I wanted! Because my group of missionaries that entered the field came a day later than expected, we didn't get to spend a day at the mission home like normal. But honestly, I really just wanted to start working as soon as possible. Blessings!! Anyways, I knew that my trainer was awesome when we walked out of the flat and saw a boy across the street. She yelled, "Let's go chase that boy!!" and ran across the street. I remember thinking, "Okay, this is gonna be awesome." She said that she talks to everyone because if we don't, we're taking away their agency. I completely agree. Sister Paongo seriously loves to work hard, loves to exceed the goals we set, and really has a deep testimony. Life is so good!!

We sing to people a lot. If people seem sort of interested when we talk to them, but still hestitant to let us come back, we'll sing for them. We were door-knocking in Ashburton and had about 10 minutes left to meet our goal for how many people we talked to that day. We just needed a few more people, but we aren't allowed to knock on people's doors in Ashburton after 7:30pm, so we could only talk to people on the street or whose doors were open/lights were on. We saw a woman inside her home and knocked on the door. She said she had her own church, but was very friendly to us. We asked if we could sing her a song, and she invited us into her home. She turned off the TV when we walked in, because she said she wanted to hear us better. We sang her "I am a Child of God" and we could see in her eyes she was feeling the Spirit. When we finished, she thanked us for singing to her. She started to cry, and so did my companion and I. She just kept thanking us for singing to her. And she agreed to let us come back later and sing to her again. AHHHH! It was so awesome!!! I loved that I got to be a part of her feeling the Spirit that way for (most likely) the first time.

My area is pretty great :) Ashburton is a farming town of about 6,000 and there are 140 people in our ward. The ward recently became big enough to change from a branch to a ward and they are building a new chapel to house everyone. So awesome!! There are mostly islanders here, so it's awesome to get to know the Tongan, Samoan, and Cook Island people that live here. They live the island life and it's really awesome :)

Yay missionary work!

Your favorite greeny,

Sister Rose

January 26, 2013 at the MTC

Salutations!

Yaaaay, it's finally p-day! This week has been so long! All the sisters in the district are excited to have a p-day finally. Yesterday we had in-field orientation all day. Here at the MTC we've been learning about planning and teaching mostly, but in the orientation we talked about different aspects of missionary work that will come in handy later - finding people, working with members and ward leaders, goal setting, street contacting, and things like that. It got me soooo excited to be in New Zealand!

My companion, Sister Alcock, has had some visa issues and she still doesn't have a visa to New Zealand. She's a little bummed about having to stay at the MTC for the next week or two, so anyone who wants to write her a letter through dearelder.com (my same address at the MTC) i know she would love it. And also, she doesn't know I'm asking anyone to do this, so it would be a fun, uplifting surprise for her :)

This week we have been focusing more on teaching skills. I love it!! I seriously love teaching. So we teach investigators, and have like 3-4 appointments with them a week. But these investigators are just role plays with our teachers (One named Josh, one named Jay). It may sound silly, but I have learned a lot from teaching the same person for three weeks. Sister Alcock and I taught Jay a rockin lesson earlier this week, and it was so cool to see the Doctrine of Christ meet his immediate concerns of getting dumped. So awesome!!! After the lesson, when Jay turned back into our teacher, he asked us to teach in front of the class. Whaaaah?? So the next day we taught jay again, but in an observation room, where there was a two-way mirror so the rest of the district could watch. Sister Alcock and I kind of freaked out that everyone was watching us and it was a super awkward lesson. BUT Jay finally comitted to a date for baptism, so that was pretty awesome.  (Does this story make any sense? We do a ton of role-plays here at the MTC since we can't teach legit investigators - i can't wait to get into the field!!)

I love you all!! Thanks for all your support :)

Sister Rose