May 26, 2014

This past week was pretty good, though not particularly extraordinary. We ended up being able to teach some 16 lessons to less active members, and each one was more awesome than the last. I ended up spending a lot of time studying the Plan of Salvation, and that was pretty much all we seemed to teach this week. I never thought about how powerful that could be. It seems as though a lot of the time we get hung up on telling them how good the Book of Mormon is, and how the Gospel has been restored, when really I reckon we ought to be focusing on the Plan just a wee bit more. I've found that I really enjoy the question "If you knew, for a fact, that you have a Father in Heaven who loves you, and wants you to come back, would you do everything that you could to get back to him?" Who's going to answer no to that? If they do, I reckon that's a situation in which we no longer need be involved. I love that. Helping people come to the realization that we have a Father, who is powerful above all, that could be doing so many other things, but instead is concerned about our salvation. It's proved to be quite a powerful way of teaching, and it's always such a sweet experience to see the realization and comprehension in their eyes. So incredible.

The other thing that I've been contemplating this week comes from my studies in Jesus the Christ. I left a commitment a couple weeks back to the zone to read Jesus the Christ, and after doing so realized that I hadn't read it in about a year. When I first came out, I read it three times through in about as many months, and then seemed to just set it aside, assuming that it had nothing left to teach me. Or maybe I was just too lazy to crack it open, either way, it hasn't been read in just under a year. So, I started reading again, and I started to remember some of the things that I discovered early on last year. One of which was the fact that we all have the capability of becoming as God, and the only thing that stops us is sin. Early on, it talks about the few sentences that we have pertaining to Christ's childhood and teenage years. It mentions that he grew from grace to grace, but that he still had to grow. He didn't just start out as the person that he was once he started ministering in the New Testament, he had to become that person. I thought of Nephi (one of the later ones) and a scripture that says he was ministered unto by angels daily. How awesome would that be. It all comes down to how clean we are willing to be, really. How much we are willing to do and how much we are willing to resist. If we could but work out the dark from our lives, then all there would be is light. Obviously none of us are perfect, and so we'll never be able to be as Christ was in this life, but we can sure try, and really the only thing stopping us is ourselves.

Aside from that, I don't have a whole lot else interesting to say. I hope everything is going sweet back home.
 Love Ya!

May 19, 2014

We've actually had some pretty crazy things happen this past week.

Elder Hopoate, who was one of the missionaries serving here in New Plymouth, is now up in Hamilton. He and his companion were riding down a hill last week and he wrecked on their way home. He ended up having an AC separation. I think that's what it's called. He basically tore the tendons that hold your collar bone to your shoulder. I think. So he got moved up to work in the Visitors Center at the temple in Hamilton, and we now have a new missionary in New Plymouth; with a pretty cool back story. He's originally from Australia, but served the last 8 months in the Ukraine. Apparently he showed up in the Ukraine at about the same time that all of the civil unrest started, so he spent most of his mission having to be really careful of where he was going and who he was talking to. They had a couple of lock downs, and some old empty missionary flats got broken into where the people were trying to kill the missionaries because they're westerners. Sounds pretty crazy. The guy even has an old gas mask from one of their investigators that took it off a special forces guy they beat up. How nuts is that? He got shifted into the mission about a week ago, and President was having a really hard time figuring out where to put him. They kept running through ideas but nothing seemed right. Then Elder Hopoate crashed and it all came together quite nicely. Not to mention the fact that President Rudd was already planning on coming down this past weekend for District Conference, so the ride worked out perfectly to get the two switched.

Needless to say, with the  stuff that happened, we ended up doing a lot of running around, and it seemed like, yet again, we weren't abel to spend enough time in our area. All good though. So long as nobody wrecks and hurts themselves this week, we should be set to just go out and get stuff done. I reckon I'm pretty satisfied though with how everything has been going. Even though we haven't been able to spend a hundred percent of our time working in our area, it seems as though when we do have a bit to get going, everything works out. People are home and we're able to teach some awesome lessons. Doors are opening and people are progressing, and that's what we're looking for.

Hopefully everything is going alright back home. It was awesome to be able to skype again. Now we just gotta wait another 8 months. And by then who cares, I'll be almost home! haha.
 Love ya!

May 5, 2014

I'm not actually sure that I have a whole lot to talk about this week.,,,

Last week we only spent a moment or two working in our area. We were in Hamilton from Sunday night to Wednesday evening. Then on Thursday one of the other missionaries in our flat got sick, so I went with his companion to do some work in their area. Then on Friday my companion got sick, and we ended up sitting at the flat almost the entire day, except for when we went and helped one of the members paint the front of his house. After which my companion was pretty much done, so we went back to the flat and he conked out. He was pretty happy that I had some NyQuil still, so that was good. Turns out this country doesn't have much stuff like that. They do, but it's not nearly as affective, so I've been treating the stuff like gold, hence, the reason I still have about half a box left. So, long story short, we got to do work in our area together Saturday and Sunday. Needless to say, we're hoping to have a choice week coming up here, if only the weather will decide to cooperate. Though, that's not too important since we have a car. I'm pretty happy I ended up with a vehicle right as we're coming into winter.

It feels weird to know that it's getting sunny and awesome over there and it's getting cold and rainy over here. Mt. Taranaki actually has a bunch of snow on it, so that looks pretty awesome. I keep having memories come back of last winter. Crazy to think that I've already been out here for over a year; the past year pretty much flew by, and apparently the second goes even faster. So I guess we'll see what happens.

I'm pretty stoked to be able to skype for Mother's Day next week! Should be awesome.

Love Ya!

April 29, 2014

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

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!

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!

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.

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!