Lots of Area Work, Family Home Evening, The Sisters, and Catering Research
Monday we were able to talk with Season's family. Karsten told us all about FSY. We do so enjoy our calls with family each week. A little later, we had a 1 ½ hour video conference with the Area for more instruction and brainstorming. Since it is a pilot program, we are kind of making it up as we go. That is the group is making it up as we go. I'm sure it will change several more times before we have the kinks worked out and it will be ready to roll out to the rest of the areas.
Later that evening we had a nice Family Home Evening with the Wihongi family. I told them they were my guinea pigs for my Seminary Lesson the next morning. It was a good thing I did that, because I realized I hadn't finished my lesson prep on the previous Saturday. I was in a hurry and finished the bulk of it, but I still needed some fine tuning before it was ready for Seminary. I had forgotten that, so it was a good thing I tested it out before the actual time. The lesson still turned out good and I was able to tweak the PowerPoint lesson when I got home that night. After our lesson, we played a fun game where Sister Wihongi dumped a packed paper cup of flour on a plate and put a chocolate on top. The object of the game was to "cut away" the flour without making the chocolate fall down. If it did fall down, then you had to eat the chocolate without using your hands to pick it up. It made for some funny pictures with flour on the faces of those who had to eat the chocolate. By the time it was my turn to cut the flour away, there wasn't much left, and my chocolate came tumbling down.
Tuesday was all about the Sisters. We had planned to go to the library to finish looking for our lost members. We called the Sisters first to see if we could come by and pick up our key so we could get a new one made that we cut off a small piece that made the key tricky to unlock the door. We had sent our key to the Sisters because they locked their key in the flat, along with their car keys the day before. Well, the other set of sisters in our District were staying with them because of a scary incident they experienced the night before with a unsavory neighbor. They are going to stay with the Sister until transfer day this coming week. Anyway, while we were picking up the key, they came out and said the laundry was flooding. So, Elder Wilcox when in to see what he could do to fix the problem.
He needed to buy some stuff to fix it, so we told the Sisters not to use the sink until we got back. We got a new key cut, picked up some plumbing stuff and headed back to their flat. The Sisters were home for lunch. Elder fixed the clogged drain and replaced some piping that really needed to be replaced. We tried the new key, but it wasn't any better than the old key. While we were there the Sisters mentioned they had ants marching two by two in their living room and one of the bedrooms. So, we were off again, to buy a new lock and get some ant bait.
We bought what we needed and stopped for some lunch. While in the parking lot, we got a call from Alena. She had finally picked up her birthday call from us about two weeks prior. We had a wonderful talk where her about how she is doing and about her job. She told us she had her first helicopter ride while being the "guardian" for a camper that kept passing out. After that call, we called Kylee again for her birthday. She still didn't pick up so we called Douhet. Kylee was there, so he passed his phone to her. We sang her Happy Birthday, and then had a wonderful talk with her. They are thinking of coming to New Zealand next year!!!!
The Sisters were gone when we got back to the flat. Elder Wilcox replaced the lock and set out the ant traps. Then we headed home. Elder Wilcox worked on some Sacrament Program stuff, and I helped him and worked on the New Convert Initiative stuff. We had sent the Sisters a message to swing by and pick up their new keys so they could get into the flat. The keys work GREAT. The Ngãhere Ward Sisters came to pick up their key. They came back several hours later for comp study and said the keys work great, but the ants were still there. 😂We told them it would take a little longer to get rid of the ants. Since it was nearly 6, we fed them dinner while we did our comp study. We swapped out keys with the other Sisters on Wednesday at DCM.
Wednesday was DCM. As usual it was great. Once again, I love our Book of Mormon Highlights. Everyone always shares such great insight as well as things they have learned from their studies. For example, today Elder Moyes shared a scripture about the Brother of Jarod found in Ether 3:20 which reads, “20 Wherefore, having this perfect knowledge of God, he could not be kept from within the veil; therefore, he saw Jesus; and he did minister unto him.” He then ta
lked about what he thought and felt about the word perfect, and what it meant to have a “perfect knowledge of God.” He looked up the word perfect and found the usual definitions meaning finish or complete. But then he found one that said, “not damaged.” He pondered that and applied it to himself to see what it meant for him. He came to the conclusion that If his faith and testimony in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ is UNDAMAGED then he may have a “perfect knowledge of God”. I like that. If we can have undamaged faith, we can be perfect in that thing.
After DCM, we headed over to a sweet sister in our Ward who is getting ready to go to the Temple to receive her Endowment. We helped her with laying out a plan of what she needs to do. She has picked a date but needs to make sure she has childcare available. Once she is secure in that, she will call for her appointment. Hopefully she will be able to get all that done this week. We are so excited for her. It looks like it will be the first week in September, as the Temple is closed for the next two weeks.
Once home, I finished Seminary Lesson preparation, as well as trouble shooting lots of different things. I wrote out the email to mass send to all the Stakes in the Mission for the New Convert Initiative and the into email to the Bishops for their New Convert spreadsheet. I prepared a PowerPoint presentation for doing the training to the leaders that I presented to our Ward Council on Sunday as a guinea pig. The Bishop wants some further one-on-one training on his role.
Thursday, we did our Zoom Seminary Lesson. I had a couple of games to help them memorize their Doctrinal Mastery scripture. After that, we had our SPF. Later President Allen asked if we could do the New Convert Initiative presentation for an SPF in September. I guess there was a reason I felt I needed to get that prepared. I finished preparing all the google sheets for each Bishop that has new converts in the last two months. I sent those out on Saturday. We had Elders over for comp study around 1:00. Later than evening, we went to a family we are working with for a visit with the Dad. He is separated from his wife and has the kids every other weekend. We talked about some ways he can keep his little ones engaged when he comes to Church. We are making him some little activity bags for the 4 little kids. The older kids won't need them. He has 7 kids still at home and 2 more away at school.
On Friday, we had a WONDERFUL birthday call with Laila. It was so fun to catch up with her. She is due to have her baby near the end of the month. We are so very excited. We finally made it to the library to finish looking up our lost members. We finished all the electoral rolls and found a few more addresses. On the way home we did some scouting for things we could get that will work for Zone Conference lunches. We are gathering a bunch of information so we can make the best decision moving forward. I put everything I have so far into a spreadsheet that will help us calculate quickly what it will cost depending on how many missionaries and leadership we have at each Zone Conference. We were able to check off several outstanding issues we had with a few flats, as the missionaries reported that they have all be fixed. We only have one last issue to take care of. Elder Wilcox needs to replace the rollers at the bottom of a shower door in the Zone Leaders' flat.
Saturday was spent finishing up with all I could do for the New Convert Initiative thus far. The Bishops google sheets were sent out, the catering information was gathered and entered into the spreadsheet, next Tuesday's Seminary lesson was prepared, and I even put in a couple of hours with HawkSoft. We also found out the remodeled Stake Center is ready to be re-dedicated this coming Friday. All three extra wards in our building will go back to the Stake Center and we will be back at 10:00am meeting time.
We had a very nice Sabbath day. It was also a little bittersweet. We are glad the other wards will be back in their own building; we are also sad that we won’t get to see them each week. It has been nice combining classes with the Ngãhere Ward. Friendships have been made and will be missed. We will have a re-dedication this coming Friday and the three wards will be back in their building next Sunday. We will start Church at 10:00 am!!!
Sunday School was very good. Our teacher started her lesson with poem written by a member of our ward. She called it Roberta’s Poem. It goes like this:
Twas a sheep not a lambThat strayed away in the parable Jesus told,A grown-up sheep that strayed away from the ninety and nine in the fold,And why for the sheep should we seek and as earnestly hope and pray?Because there is danger when sheep go wrong:They lead the labs astray,Lambs will follow the sheep you know,Wherever the sheep may stray.When sheep go wrong,It won’t take long till the lambs are as wrong as they.And so with the sheep we earnestly pleadFor the sake of the lambs today,For when sheep are lostWhat a terrible costThe lambs will have to pay.
The poem went perfectly with the direction she took with our lesson as we talked about Amalickiah and Moroni and how they each chose to lead their people.
After Church, we took a drive to the north end of our ward to return the HDMI cord I borrowed from our Sunday School teacher since I forgot to bring mine and she shared a video on the big screen in class. It was a nice little Sunday drive.
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