Haven't spent much time in my area over the past week.
Since my companion finished last Monday, and one of the elders broke his arm, I was outside of my area from pretty much Monday to Wednesday, at which point we went to Hamilton for transfers on Thursday. We got in late Thursday night, with not a whole lot of time to proselyte, but we were able to have a pretty good weekend. Then we had to drive back up to Hamilton Sunday night so that we could be here for a zone conference that happened all day yesterday. That's why I'm emailing today and not yesterday as per the usual.
Elder Pearson from the area presidency is doing a mission tour and his first training was with us and a few other zones yesterday. It was really awesome, but I was struggling just a bit since it went from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. We started off with an hour long meeting for the zone leaders, then went into the conference with the rest of the missionaries. It was a bit of a confusing day for a couple of reasons. Elder Pearson is fiery. He reminded me of the talk by Elder Holland where he said "with just enough fire to singe your eyebrows a little." He'd rip us to shreds and then turn into the most loving guy you've ever had talk to you. He kept taking me through a roller coaster ride of feeling totally torn apart to him building me back up. Very interesting. His wife as well, man can she really strike a dagger straight into your heart. After a very long day of instruction that effectively exploded my mind by the end, I was pretty ready to get moving and get back to work. But alas, I was not going to be allowed to remain motivated and content for the day. I wasn't sure if it was really necessary to share the next experience but I might as well.
Right after it all finished I was asked to go into an interview with President Rudd. Once we got into the interview he got into a story about how apparently I had watched some MotoX with one of the missionaries in the zone. Which, quick disclaimer, I absolutely had not. Here's the story: I went on exchange with one of the missionaries in our zone who's only been out about six weeks. He's really been struggling at wanting to stay out, so I took the approach of having the most fun that we possibly could have as we went about doing the work. We talked a lot about Moto and dirt bikes, since we share that same passion, and he's the first missionary that I've met who does. We went and worked the whole day through of course, had some awesome things happen, and then exchanged back the next morning. This missionary, we'll call him missionary #1, told his companion, we'll call him missionary #2, how much fun we'd had and how he was so happy to talk dirt bikes with someone again, etc.. Obviously the only conclusion that one can pull from that is that I took missionary #1 to the library and watched MotoX. All day long. Not only was there no evidence to support it, but there was no evidence because it never happened. So, with that conclusion in mind, the next step should, of course, be to contact the mission president and say that you know and are certain this is what happened.
So, I went into the interview, and had absolutely no idea what President was talking about. As is my nature in instances such as this, I sat quietly, trying to figure out what was going on, and didn't argue with President. He then interviewed missionary #1 while I was outside trying to suss what in the world was going on. Shortly after his interview, missionary #1 pulled me aside and asked me what was going on. President had pulled him in for a moment or two to apologize for the way in which his zone leader had acted (that's me), and missionary #1 had sat there quietly perplexed at what in the world was going on. Needless to say, we requested another sit down with President and told him we had never done what we were being accused of. It all seemed to get resolved, but you never can know. How sad that after such an awesome day, that had to happen, and I've spent the subsequent time slightly stressed but mostly exasperated at this most unfortunate turn of events.
I love President Rudd, and I'd never want to do anything to ruin his trust in me, so I'm hoping that everything is resolved. You just never know though. So I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it all turns out.
Other than that, not a whole lot to report. Looking forward to an awesome week though.
Love ya! Kurt
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
April 21, 2014
Oi, what an interesting week. Or rather, what an interesting end to a rather regular kind of week. It went all about the same as usual, until last night.
We had to go out to grab the Elders from Waitara last night and bring them to a place called Inglewood to have a dinner with Elder and Sister Taylor, who are the senior missionaries for this zone. We were waiting in the car out front of their flat when my companion looked into the rear view mirror just in time to see Elder Dayley wreck really hard on his bike coming around the corner. Apparently some white SUV tried to hit him, so he corrected, but with the loose gravel on the inside of the corner the tire slipped out. He wrecked pretty good and his wrist started to swell up. We ended up going to dinner, then afterwards brought him to the hospital in New Plymouth. They got him in pretty quickly and found that he had a broken wrist. The way it worked, the bone that supports the wrist was broken, so his wrist had moved over a substantial amount. They had to go through a process of setting it, taking x-rays, then setting it again since it wasn't all of the way in place. We left my companion there for the night to stay with him. About five in the morning, my comp got home without Elder Dayley and finished packing all of his stuff since he's finishing his mission and heading home tomorrow. We dropped him off at the bus stop this morning at seven, and now I'm just waiting to hear about who my new companion is. Elder Dayley has to stay in the hospital until tomorrow, since they have to keep an eye on blood flow, and possibly take him in to surgery tomorrow. Crazy stuff. Turns out that wasn't the end of it.
For some odd reason New Zealand goes hard on holidays, and everything is closed today, so there wasn't any place to do emails, and I also couldn't get my hair cut as well. Stinkin long az hair is drivin me nuts. We came to the chapel so that we could just use the computers here for emails, and it turns out that the internet at the chapel has been on the fritz for the last few days. SO, we ended up calling Elder and Sister Taylor, and we're now all trying to email on Sister Taylor's iPad.
With that in mind, this'll have to suffice.
Love ya!
We had to go out to grab the Elders from Waitara last night and bring them to a place called Inglewood to have a dinner with Elder and Sister Taylor, who are the senior missionaries for this zone. We were waiting in the car out front of their flat when my companion looked into the rear view mirror just in time to see Elder Dayley wreck really hard on his bike coming around the corner. Apparently some white SUV tried to hit him, so he corrected, but with the loose gravel on the inside of the corner the tire slipped out. He wrecked pretty good and his wrist started to swell up. We ended up going to dinner, then afterwards brought him to the hospital in New Plymouth. They got him in pretty quickly and found that he had a broken wrist. The way it worked, the bone that supports the wrist was broken, so his wrist had moved over a substantial amount. They had to go through a process of setting it, taking x-rays, then setting it again since it wasn't all of the way in place. We left my companion there for the night to stay with him. About five in the morning, my comp got home without Elder Dayley and finished packing all of his stuff since he's finishing his mission and heading home tomorrow. We dropped him off at the bus stop this morning at seven, and now I'm just waiting to hear about who my new companion is. Elder Dayley has to stay in the hospital until tomorrow, since they have to keep an eye on blood flow, and possibly take him in to surgery tomorrow. Crazy stuff. Turns out that wasn't the end of it.
For some odd reason New Zealand goes hard on holidays, and everything is closed today, so there wasn't any place to do emails, and I also couldn't get my hair cut as well. Stinkin long az hair is drivin me nuts. We came to the chapel so that we could just use the computers here for emails, and it turns out that the internet at the chapel has been on the fritz for the last few days. SO, we ended up calling Elder and Sister Taylor, and we're now all trying to email on Sister Taylor's iPad.
With that in mind, this'll have to suffice.
Love ya!
Sunday, April 13, 2014
April 14, 2014
This past week was pretty crazy for us. We ended up being all over the place, and seemed to never have the time to do anything.
For P-Day last week our entire zone got together and went down to the beach. Four of us got down there about an hour earlier than the rest and set up a volleyball net. We had to dig down until we couldn't reach any deeper, then put in these massive drift logs that were sitting on the beach. Pretty sure the stupid things weighed half a ton. The result was pretty awesome though.
We had our temple trip on Wednesday, and that was sweet, as per the usual. We left on Tuesday, since it's about a four hour trip, and stayed the night in Hamilton with one of the other zones. Instead of driving up a bunch of cars, the mission rented a twelve seater van for us, and that turned out pretty awesome. The only problem being that I only ended up getting the crumbs of all the snacks, since everybody went nuts on 'em early in the trip. All good though. We ended up getting back down into New Plymouth late az Wednesday night and pretty much just went straight to sleep. So there went two days pretty much.
Watching General Conference was sweet! The problem being that it made it so we didn't get anything done Saturday, and a good chunk of Sunday got taken as well. No worries though. I try not to get too caught up in the numbers or whatever. My companion has been freaking out a little bit recently, since this is his last week, so we've been going hundy and a half. Way I see it, there's no need to get stressed out from not proselyting when the time was taken up with such worthwhile events. Been hard to convince him though.
This week should be good. Coming from conference, I'll be focusing on serving those around me more often, so we'll see what happens. Who knows. Maybe I'll come back and be a good guy or something. haha. Right.
Love ya!
For P-Day last week our entire zone got together and went down to the beach. Four of us got down there about an hour earlier than the rest and set up a volleyball net. We had to dig down until we couldn't reach any deeper, then put in these massive drift logs that were sitting on the beach. Pretty sure the stupid things weighed half a ton. The result was pretty awesome though.
We had our temple trip on Wednesday, and that was sweet, as per the usual. We left on Tuesday, since it's about a four hour trip, and stayed the night in Hamilton with one of the other zones. Instead of driving up a bunch of cars, the mission rented a twelve seater van for us, and that turned out pretty awesome. The only problem being that I only ended up getting the crumbs of all the snacks, since everybody went nuts on 'em early in the trip. All good though. We ended up getting back down into New Plymouth late az Wednesday night and pretty much just went straight to sleep. So there went two days pretty much.
Watching General Conference was sweet! The problem being that it made it so we didn't get anything done Saturday, and a good chunk of Sunday got taken as well. No worries though. I try not to get too caught up in the numbers or whatever. My companion has been freaking out a little bit recently, since this is his last week, so we've been going hundy and a half. Way I see it, there's no need to get stressed out from not proselyting when the time was taken up with such worthwhile events. Been hard to convince him though.
This week should be good. Coming from conference, I'll be focusing on serving those around me more often, so we'll see what happens. Who knows. Maybe I'll come back and be a good guy or something. haha. Right.
Love ya!
 |
| This is one of the foods that I've really grown to love. It's a Samoan thing called Pankeke. It's basically a bread ball with something in it like Banana or Pineapple, etc. They're so stinkin good. One of the Samoan members made this huge batch for us to eat for lunch yesterday. I'm hoping he'll show me how to make them so that I can bring it back home. |
Monday, April 7, 2014
April 7, 2014
Its lucky they don't have much dirt biking here. Otherwise, once the mish is over, I'd just come back and live in a little place called Oakura, just outside of New Plymouth. I can't get enough of the beaches here. Been contemplating whether or not surfing would be a viable replacement for dirt bikes. Of course it wouldn't be, but the thought has crossed my mind a time or two.
The other thing that stinks here, aside from the lack of desert riding available, is that we get conference a week late! I don't get to enjoy the awesomeness until next weekend. But it'll be alright, since nobody sent me any spoilers in email today. Counting my blessings.
This past week was pretty slow. We had to go up to Hamilton for mission leadership council Tuesday and Wednesday. It's a meeting that we do the first week of each month, where all the zone leaders go to the mission home and discuss whatever may be on President's mind. I haven't much enjoyed the last few, since it was spent listening to the Zone Leaders say that we need more rules and regulations, but this past one was pretty awesome. I'm all about obedience and following existing rules, but as soon as people start saying that we need more more more, I start getting a little agitated. So, the meeting started out, and we started talking about the numbers; amounts of lessons and baptism, etc.. I started clicking off a little, since it seemed like it was going the direction of "lets make more regulations." Then it didn't. It turns out that the way I think about things and the way President Rudd thinks about things are pretty similar. It was quite refreshing. Other than that though, I reckon it was a pretty boring week.
This coming week though, should be el spectacularrrrr. We have a temple trip! We'll be going up to Hamilton tomorrow, and going in to the Temple on Wednesday. It'll limit the amount of time we have in our area again, but I'm alright with that, since we only get two opportunities a year. We're also having a zone P-Day today, so that should be pretty awesome. We're hoping to set up a volleyball net on the beach and play a little. Not to mention the usual touch rugby or football. Last week was pretty cool. We were climbing around in the rocks, since the tide was heaps out, and we found a squid. The thing's body was probably about the size of my thigh, not to mention it's tentacles. Then we found this cool little pool with so many hermit crabs in it that it resembled an ant hill. Pretty cool indeed.
Well, gotta go!
Love Ya!
The other thing that stinks here, aside from the lack of desert riding available, is that we get conference a week late! I don't get to enjoy the awesomeness until next weekend. But it'll be alright, since nobody sent me any spoilers in email today. Counting my blessings.
This past week was pretty slow. We had to go up to Hamilton for mission leadership council Tuesday and Wednesday. It's a meeting that we do the first week of each month, where all the zone leaders go to the mission home and discuss whatever may be on President's mind. I haven't much enjoyed the last few, since it was spent listening to the Zone Leaders say that we need more rules and regulations, but this past one was pretty awesome. I'm all about obedience and following existing rules, but as soon as people start saying that we need more more more, I start getting a little agitated. So, the meeting started out, and we started talking about the numbers; amounts of lessons and baptism, etc.. I started clicking off a little, since it seemed like it was going the direction of "lets make more regulations." Then it didn't. It turns out that the way I think about things and the way President Rudd thinks about things are pretty similar. It was quite refreshing. Other than that though, I reckon it was a pretty boring week.
This coming week though, should be el spectacularrrrr. We have a temple trip! We'll be going up to Hamilton tomorrow, and going in to the Temple on Wednesday. It'll limit the amount of time we have in our area again, but I'm alright with that, since we only get two opportunities a year. We're also having a zone P-Day today, so that should be pretty awesome. We're hoping to set up a volleyball net on the beach and play a little. Not to mention the usual touch rugby or football. Last week was pretty cool. We were climbing around in the rocks, since the tide was heaps out, and we found a squid. The thing's body was probably about the size of my thigh, not to mention it's tentacles. Then we found this cool little pool with so many hermit crabs in it that it resembled an ant hill. Pretty cool indeed.
Well, gotta go!
Love Ya!
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