FHE, Shopping, Ice Breaker, The Haka, The Kreutzkamps, RAIN, and a Day of Rest

Monday morning started with a wonderful Zoom Temple Prep class with Madison. We love visiting with her each week and discussing the wonderful blessings of the Temple. Our discussions are rich and meaningful. They are filled with the Spirit. We love it. After our call with her, we had one with the rest of her family. It was fun to hear everything Young Men's Camp and their trip to Hawaii from the boys.

We spent the afternoon with Elder Moyes and Elder Dixon as it was there turn to be sick. They weren't nearly as bad as Elder Cockbain had been. We made them lunch, had some nice visiting with them, and they took turns resting in the spare bedroom. Thankfully they were both able to do limited work the rest of the week. 

We kicked them out just before six as we had a Family Home Evening appointment with a family in the ward. We had a wonderful discussion with them and enjoyed our time together. Their son is returning to Church and Mom wanted somebody besides parents talking to him. He's a great kid and seems eager to turn his life around. We will go back each week for a while.

I have just about given up on planning out our days. For the past several weeks, we have yet to do any of our plans. Tuesday was not different. We were just about to leave in the morning to "execute" our plan before we had to be back in time for the Pathway classes for our two Elders, when we got a call from Sister Allen, the Mission President's wife. She asked us if we would be willing to take a sister who is from Fiji and was serving in the Cook Islands to the store to get her a heavy coat. She didn't have any money left on her card and coming from the islands, she was freezing in the New Zealand winter. Her companion was brand new from the States. The two sisters had only been in Whangarei since Thursday. We drove over and picked them up, then took them to The Warehouse store. It is kind of like Fred Meyer. They pretty much have everything. We found her a nice 3/4 length waterproof coat that she LOVES. The sisters picked up a few other supplies they needed before we took them home. She also needed a blanket, but she was going to pick that up from the Mission at Zone Conference on August 2nd. That is way too long, so we let her borrow our spare blanket until then. 

Before we dropped them off, I asked Sister Ali if she might remember a missionary by the name of Elder Hawkins, who served in Fiji before COVID. She said the name sounded familiar. I then dug out a picture of Djeryd and showed that to her. She said he LOOKED very familiar. When I got home, I sent a picture and some information to Djeryd to see if he remembered her. He said she looked familiar and wanted to know where she is from. I sent that back to him and he has failed to respond to me. 🙁

We got home in time to take a quick walk before our Pathway Elders came, when there was a knock at the door. Elder Cockbain and Elder Dixon were there. Elder Cockbain needed the Internet so he could join his "My Plan" call. It is a plan that missionaries who are going home participate in. We will have him for the next couple of weeks at noon, before the other come at one for Pathway. Anyway, we left them in the house and went for our walk. When we got back, we swapped Elders...sort of. Elder Cockbain and Elder Dixon ended up hanging out for another hour or so before they left with Elder Moyes and Elder Tuaina.

Elder Moyes strumming while Elder Dixon does
the fingering and Elder Sanders looks on.

We grabbed a very late lunch and headed to the office to take care of some computer work and a little shopping done. We were supposed to meet our Sisters for Comp Study at 4:00, but they called at the last minute and postponed until tomorrow as they were home sick. We didn't even know they were sick. Our Mission doctor has officially name it the NZAM virous. Those of us in the Zone and named it the curse of 36 King Street. It all started with the Elders in that flat. 

Elder Moyes and Elder Tuaina doing homework.

Wednesday morning, I started on my Scripture Study before DCM, when we got a last-minute chat from Elder Sanders. He is our new District Leader and our old Zone Leader. Lol. Anyway, he asked if we could come up with an Ice Breaker game to get to know all the new missionaries in the District. Luckily, I already had some
Ice Breaker questions that we use for Family Home Evening. I separated a bunch into six categories to go with the colors of Peanut M&Ms. We made a fun game of it and laughed a lot.

After DCM, we went to the Clerk's office to print some flyers I made for a dinner/dance we are having this coming Friday. My mistake. The flyer was created in Publisher. The computer does not have any Microsoft programs on it. I tried to us a free Publisher to PDF converter, but that didn't work. I was able to copy the flyer because I had posted it in Facebook. I put it into a Google Docs document but couldn't figure out how to change the margins so I could fit 4 to a page. I tried several other programs to no avail. I ended up going home and saving it to a PDF and printing it on Saturday at the Chapel. I did print a few smaller versions. The other fight I had with the printer was it wouldn't print in color, even though it is a color printer and all the settings that I could see said color. Oh well. 

Elder Dixon with the Kreutzkamps

After that, we went to visit a friend the Elder are working with. She is a single lady so they Elder can't go into her house without another adult there. We were going with them, but since Elder Dixon was still sick and Elder Cockbain couldn't get another companion, we went alone. We had a very nice visit. She had her grandkids, so it was a little crazy. She invited us back next week for a study session since her grandkids will be back in school.

Missionaries at the Kreutzkamps farewell.

After we got home, the Sisters showed up for our comp study. We had a wonderful discussion with them. We covered chapter 5 in Preach My Gospel, which is all about the power of the Book of Mormon in teaching the Gospel. The Sister asked some questions, and we had a great discussion. Tomorrow we will have comp study with one of the sets of Elders we have. I would love it if we could do a comp study with all our young missionaries. We have 6 companionships. I would be happy to do 1 or 2 a day so we could do them all. Technically we don’t have the Sisters anymore, but I told them they can continue to come. I love our missionaries!

Brother Ah Mu and Brother Hester at the 
Kreutzkamps farewell.

In our mission SPF Zoom Meeting on Thursday morning, President Allen announced that the Area Presidency has said they no longer want the missionaries to do the Haka at Zone Conferences. We were sad to hear that, but of course we will obey. Sister Allen is asking for any other ideas we can come up with that will be a fitting tribute to those missionaries that are going home. 

After SPF, Elder Sanders and Elder Lea'ana came over for comp study. They are the Elders now assigned to us, but I want to keep the Sisters too. Not long after they left, Elder Moyes and Elder Tuaina came over to do Pathway homework. They need the Internet to do that and don't have it at their flat. We took our walk during their study time. After they left, we worked on the Ward Council Agenda and ran some errands.

On Friday we went to a Māori Hāngī. It is a traditional method of cooking food using heated rocks buried in a pit oven, called an umu. It is used for large groups on special occasions, as it allows large quantities of food to be cooked without the need for commercial cooking appliances. They cooked several different meats and vegetables in the pit for several hours. This was all for a Farewell celebration for the Kreutzkamps. They have been serving in a small branch in Pipiwai. The Marae is next to the chapel and that is where the celebration was held. I think the entire town of Pipiwai as well as all the missionaries from the Zone and several members from our ward were there. They had some singing and some speeches and of course lots of food. A good time was had by all.

On Saturday we spent the day doing busy work. We cleaned the house, did the laundry, hosted the Elders so they could do their Pathway homework, worked on the Ward Council Agenda, and prepared a Seminary lesson for next week. We also went to the Chapel to take care of a few things in the office and then to walk in the cultural hall so we could get our walk in today. 

It was rainy and windy all day. Steve took a few pictures of a bunch of birds outside our window. I think some of them got spooked when he moved the curtain because the pictures don’t show all the birds that were there. Friday, we had a ton on the wrought iron fence in front of our house. Before we could even get the phone out to take a picture, they were all gone. 🙁

We had the most gorgeous sunrise Sunday morning on our way to the Chapel. The sky had beautiful blue and red and yellow colors. I don’t think the picture does its justice.  We also decided to take a few pictures of the Chapel before anyone got there. 

Church was GREAT as usual. We are getting very close to opening the Stake Center. It looks very nice. I think they were having a few issues with the carpet. I believe they are supposed to get it signed off this week. 🤞Then I believe they will have an open house and a rededication before the other wards move back. They are saying sometime in August. 🤞🤞🤞

After our regular meetings, we had Ward Council. That turned out very good. We covered everything on the agenda and have several things that need follow-up. 

After we got home, I worked on the weekly recap and helped Steve with the minutes for the Ward Council meeting. He also got a head start on next week’s Sacrament meeting and made the calls for the speakers. 

We have a busy week coming up with Seminary starting back up Monday morning.

I hope you have a FANTASTIC week!

All our Love,

Elder and Sister Wilcox