July 7, 2014

God got a new volleyball.

We've been running a sports night every Friday night and it's been awesome. We usually have volleyball and table tennis set up inside, then there'll be a few folks outside playing basketball. We usually have a turnout of around 50 or 60 people, and it's proved really useful in getting the members to fellowship our investigators. The only problem we've been running into is that the member that usually brings the volleyball net and ball hasn't been coming, so we've been using a tennis net that was in the flat, and a really hard volleyball. I'm not sure how nice the ball is; supposedly it's a pretty nice ball, but it's so hard that it hurts to play with. So Friday we get a genius idea to go buy a new Volleyball. So the ten missionaries that're here in Rotorua chipped in five bucks apiece and we were able to go get a pretty nice $50 ball. Sports night ended up being pretty empty, but we still had enough people to play a good game, and two guys came in that live in our area, so we ended up with two new investigators (which I'm not about to complain about). Of course, nothing ever goes perfectly. The ceiling in the cultural hall where we play is probably about 30ft tall. Not too bad. It's not a regular ceiling though. Instead of the tiles like what we have back home, it has big rectangular foam tiles. Probably about 2x4 ft. Every now and again a ball will get smacked up into the ceiling and a tile will get popped out. So right now there's three rather large gaps in the ceiling where said tiles got knocked from. About an hour into our sports night, one of the more uncoordinated members served the ball a little too hard, and it went straight through one of those gaps never to return. We were so gutted! We buy a brand new ball and bam-goes up there never to return. The only way to get it back would be to get one of those lift machines or a REALLY tall ladder (which isn't about to happen). Can't even climb up into the rafters or anything because for some odd reason they put in the ceiling without using any. All I can come up with is that missionaries in the spirit world were having a sports night too, and unfortunately there's no Rebel Sports up there.

We really struggled being able to get teaching appointments over the past few days, but we've still been able to make progress. We got a new bishop in a few weeks back, and it seems to me like it's pushed the ward to do a little bit more. So we were able to have members come out with us four times over the past week. That was a step up from zero, so I was pretty stoked. The only problem is that it's all the same group of members that's stepping up to the plate. Seems as though there's always the ones that respond, and the rest just get worse. Not usually much middle ground with it, just both ends of the extreme.

My Maori has been getting better! We went to one of the flats in the zone, and they had a te reo Maori book in there from one of the past missionaries. Brand new too! It doesn't look like anyone ever even touched it. So I've been studying that in my off time, and been reading heaps more of Ki Te Pukapuka A Moromona. It's awesome! Nothing beats the feeling of having the Spirit working to help you learn. I'm pretty happy that I didn't have to learn a mission language though. I can only imagine how rough the first few months must be of not knowing what in the world is going on around you.

Still loving it here! Just a bit cold. Pretty sad I'm the one missing from the family photo, but all good.
 Love Ya!