Exercise, Visits, Internet, and Zone Conference

Monday morning started with finally getting back to an exercise routine. We took a very nice walk around our new neighborhood. The morning was beautiful and fresh. The homes we passed have lots of greenery and are beautiful. There were plenty of little, rolling hills to challenge us. Shortly after we got home, it started to rain so we timed it perfectly. 

Since it was P-Day, we busied ourselves with lots of things that needed to get done. For example, Steve took care of collapsing the cardboard from our move and getting it out for the rubbish collection. I spent time on the phone to get our internet ordered. They told me on the phone it could take up to 10 days to get started. They turned it on the very next morning. 😊

We had a nice Zoom call with MyLiege's family. They told us all about their trip to California for Disneyland and the HUG meeting in Carlsbad. Djeryd, Eva, and Ruthie got on the call too. It had been way to long since we saw baby Ruth. 

We went to the doctor, finally, so we could get our prescriptions renewed. We are all set now and don't anticipate any issues. We have to see him again in three months for the next renewal. He wants us to send him our medical history before that. After that I don't know if we can just have them automatically renewed.

We walked again on Tuesday morning. Two days in a row!!! I spent way too much time trying to finish setting up the modem/router. I finally called the Office Elders for help. Since the router came from the Mission, I couldn't get help from our service provider. The Elders said they would come by sometime on Thursday when they got here for Zone Conference. So, we stayed on our Hotspot for two more days. Next, we worked on planning our visits. Since there is a school holiday for two weeks, we decided to focus on Seminary students that aren't attending. We found out that two had moved and one had a SOLD sign in front of their house. We were able to leave a couple of messages with some parents, but we didn't see any kids. We took the opportunity to invite them to our ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Touch Rugby game on April 25th.

Wednesday was our DCM (District Council Meeting) and more Seminary visits. We also got our walk in before our DCM meeting. We were on a roll. We had a great District Council. We had some fun, shared some great Book of Mormon insights, reported on our activities from the previous week as well as a miracle that happened, and received some great training. Sister Allen showed up for the last 10 minutes to share a message with us. Basically, she said we are where we are supposed to be by “divine design.” We talked a lot about trusting in the Lord, even when we didn’t understand why. Several of us shared experiences when we thought we knew best, only to realize that what the Lord had in store for us was far better than what we had in mind. We finished up visiting the rest of our list of potential Seminary students. Out of the four we were hoping to see, we scheduled an appointment with one for Monday morning next week. We should be able to visit with her aunt too, as she is bringing her to our house. We were able to visit with two others and extended the invitations to Seminary and the ANZAC activity. The third one moved over a year ago. As we were leaving our last visit, we were met by our Sister Missionaries. They told us we got back too soon. They were trying to "heart attack" our car. It was so sweet. We love our missionaries.

After our walk on Thursday morning, we had our SPF Zoom call. Several missionaries shared their favorite General Conference talk and why. I found myself thinking with everyone that shared, "that's one of my favorite talks too." Not long after the SPF meeting, our Elders from our Ward came over for a companionship study. We haven't done that before, but we are asked to meet with them once a week. I decided to make some cookies so they will like us. 😉They already love us. LOL. They came as a threesome. We had a great study session. As they were getting ready to leave, Elder Cockbain asked what I thought was wrong with the router. He is a techie and wanted to take a look. I had plugged in the ethernet cable that came out of the wall, but it didn't connect to the Internet for some reason. It turned out that cable was not connected to the Fiber Optic box that was hiding in a hall closet. We moved the router to the closet and connected it directly to the Fiber Optic box (since I didn't have another ethernet cable to connect the Fiber Optic box to the ethernet connection in the wall) and voila, we have Internet!!!

Friday was Zone Conference. We managed to walk again before Conference. It is so wonderful to see everyone. In our two short months we have made so many wonderful connections with members, missionaries, and people. They both leave on May 20th but will spend the weekend in Auckland so they can go to the Temple one last time before they head home. We heard some beautiful musical numbers from "our Sister Missionaries." I call them ours because we have really developed a great bond with them. Sister Kinikini is leaving on May 20th. 😢Sister Lilloux played the piano in the first number and the violin in the second one. Sister Allen sang for the second number. They were both so beautiful. Brother Ah Mu from our Ward presented some Māori Culture. He gave us several handouts with awesome information. He shared one Māori prophecy that talked about the coming of a church that would be for the Māori people. You can find it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%81ora_Te_Potangaroa.  He said, "You will recognize it when it comes. Its missionaries will travel in pairs. They will come from the rising sun. They will visit with us in our homes. They will learn our language and teach us the gospel in our own tongue. When they pray, they will raise their right hands.” It was all very interesting.

After a delicious lunch, the Elders and even some of the Sisters danced the Haka for those missionaries that are leaving before the next Zone Conference. I can't believe how much that got to me this time. After they do the dance, they all sing, "God Be With You ‘Till We Meet Again.” I cried. After that, the young missionaries went back for more training, and several Seniors went to a Flat Inspection meeting. We will be inspecting two flats between transfers. Elder Garner is also going to rely on the Seniors in the northern areas more to help care for the young missionaries. We will take care of things like when they lock themselves out of their apartment, or get a flat tire, or some furniture breaks, or whatever. We have been asked to watch over the storage unit and move furniture in and out when needed. We won't be doing full moves; Elder Garner will come up for that. But if something needs to be replaced, we can take care of that. We ended the day by getting a flu shot that President Allen said everyone needed to get for a particular strain in New Zealand that is particularly nasty.

It rained on Saturday morning and put a damper on our morning walk. So, I decided to do a walking exercise on YouTube. 😅6 days in a row. We attended a baptism of a cute 10-year-old girl that our Sister Missionaries in Denby were working with. Nearly all the missionaries turned out in support. Her family was also there. None of them are members of the Church, but I think they enjoyed the baptism. We talked to Season after that to wish him a Happy Birthday. It is tricky to get the day right since we are 1 day ahead and 5 hours behind. We wanted to call on our Friday, which was his Thursday and his birthday, but by the time we sat down to call it was after 7 PM our time and so it was after midnight his time. So, we waited until Saturday and sang him "Happy Belated Birthday to You!" It was nice to visit with him. Finally, we headed up the very long and twisty road that we have been on several times before. We have about 8 members on the road. It is several miles long. No one has been home before. We didn't know if they were working or moved away. We decided to try Saturday since we KNEW one brother lived there. We found him home and he was a wealth of knowledge for us. Most everyone on the list still lives there. There was one that moved to Australia and two had passed away, although their families are still there. We had three that didn't have house numbers and he was able to tell us where they live and an educated guess as to what their address is. We picked the furthest one away and found him at home. We had a nice visit and invited them to our ANZAC activity. He suggested we drive a little further down the road to get to the actual ocean. We had seen several inlets, but this time we saw the actual beach. It was also the end of the road. It was quite beautiful.

Sunday was another rainy day. We woke up VERY early so we could watch the funeral of a very dear friend, Jim Bean. It was a beautiful service. His wife, Helen, passed away in 2020. We considered them some of our best friends. 

We had to get ready for Church while we watch the funeral on Zoom. It finished just as we were ready to leave for Church. We got to speak in Sacrament meeting today. I think the talks turned out pretty good. I spoke on the General Conference talk by Elder Jose Alonso entitled, "Jesus Christ at the Center of our Lives." Steve spoke on President Eyring's talk entitled, "All Will Be Well Because of Temple Covenants." After Church we had our Temple Prep Class. It went well too. One of our students is going to miss two weeks, so we will be making those classes up with her after she gets home. 

All our Love,

Elder and Sister Wilcox