June 30, 2014

I've been goin' crazy the last few days! One of the news rules that came out was with music. We're pretty much only allowed to listen to hymns, or things off the church website; which isn't too bad. The worst part is that we're no longer able to listen to anything at all in the car. We didn't usually listen to just music very much, but it'd always be playing in the background, and if a good song came on we'd turn it up and have a listen. Now it's either talking or dead silence. It's been rough. Well, not that rough, but still, you get attached to little things like that, and then it's gone and you're left with dead space. Not to mention MoTab starts to drive me nuts when it's all you have to listen to day in and day out.

We had a pretty decent past week. Not the best ever or anything, but certainly better than the week previous. I'm super pumped about the couples that we've been teaching. Usually we don't seem to come by a keen couple; more often than not one of them is interested, and the "partner" isn't, but somehow we managed to find two couples that are both really keen on learning about the gospel. So awesome! One of the couples, Steve and Lia, really brought to mind where we're told be be child-like. For everything that we've taught so far, they're always just blown away. We teach them that they have a loving Heavenly Father (or the one that I really enjoy, Atua Ora Tonu, which means Eternal Father) and that you can talk to him through prayer and they were both so amazed. As we were leaving Lia was talking about how she couldn't wait to pray and be able to get answers back. How awesome is that? Not only that but they always mention how when we come over they can feel the Wairua hard out. Last time they told us they were having a bad day and then we showed up and they just got happy and everything got warmer. So cool!

Had another cool experience this past week where I used a little bit of the Maori that I've sussed out. We went over to see one of our LA(less-active) members (Peter), and he ended being outside chilling with one of his mates. He's always really nice to us and down for a chat, but his mates don't usually hang around for long. We talked for awhile and the korero (conversation) lead in perfectly to the Gospel. I told em about te Atua Ora Tonu, na te Tama o te Atua, na te Wairua Tapu (which is the Eternal Father and the Son of God and Holy Spirit) and how the best way to know if what we're talking about is true is through the Wairua. Then once we receive our answer we must Whakarongo ki te Wairua Tapu, which means "hearken to the Holy Spirit," and they thought it was mean az that I knew some Te Reo (which they refer to it as, even though it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since it just means the language. All good though.) Turns out they really respect pakehas that can or at least try to speak te reo, and they thought it was awesome that I'm trying to learn. Such a cool experience. Now the other guys that live at the house don't disrespect us as much, and they'll even talk to us if we see 'em on the street.
 Well, probably about time to go get something else done.
 Arohanui!

This is before the Luge. Those little black carts are what you ride down. I can't remember what the other guy's name is, but he's a member out of Hamilton.

This is from a few weeks back, right before we hopped on the zip line. The dude in red is Jordi, and the other one is my comp, Elder Moore

This is right after the zip line. You hook onto a deal up in the trees and jump off. It was pretty mean.