Seminary, Dinner Party, Walks, Baptism, and Linger Longer

We went on several walks this week. It was nice to do it first thing in the morning. I did lots of lesson prep this week between Sunday School and Seminary. 

Monday involved starting on my Sunday School lesson. In addition to that, I created a flyer for a Garage Sale the youth are doing to raise money for Youth Camp. We had a monthly call with Sierra and Shonee. It is always nice to hear news from home. 

I had some fun working on a Birthday List Spreadsheet project I wanted to do. I'm not only trying to remember everyone's birthdays, but also to remember them the day AFTER their birthday. Since New Zealand is a day ahead, I have to remember to wish Happy Birthday the day AFTER their birthday so it will be ON their birthday in the States. It sometimes gets confusing. 

Since it is the new year, I decided to enter all the birthdays in my ToDo list on the day AFTER their birthday so I will remember to call and text them on their actual birthday. After I made my list, that automatically calculates their age, I decided to fancy it up a bit. With the help from AI, I automatically generate a table that shows all the birthdays and anniversaries in a given month in date order. It puts the Date, Icon (birthday cake or heart) and the Name(s) underneath. If it is a wedding anniversary, it turns the block pink. It will make it very easy to add new events to the list and regenerate the table. I think it turned out pretty cute. I got the idea from a present Sierra gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago that I can hang up and have all the family's birthdays on it. My problem was I wasn't adding the new dates. I was still missing the spouses of three of my grandchildren as well as two new great grandbabies. I finally got around to adding them to the plaque, and it prompted me to do the spreadsheet too. I haven't added wedding anniversaries to the plaque. It is strictly for birthdays.

Seminary started on Tuesday. We are making a huge effort to get to bed early so we can get up super early. It is hard when it is still light out when it is time to go to sleep. We are studying Church History and Doctrine and Covenants this year. I'm excited, because it is one of my favorite topics. We had a nice Comp Study with the Sisters after our morning walk. We made a nice big broccoli salad for a dinner party later that evening.

The Hikurangi Elders showed up later to let us know what was going on at their flat. They ran out of kilometers because Elder Moyes used up a chunk driving to Auckland when he went home from his mission. Anyway, our Elders didn't get any extra kilometers, so they were walking everywhere. Long story short, it looks like we will be closing their existing flat and moving them to another in the next few weeks. In the meantime, they will be staying with the Punaruku Elders in the interim. I think they are going to run out of kilometers again as Punaruku is very far from Hikurangi.

After they left, we headed to the Hester’s house for a goodbye party. Sister Horsford organized the little party. We all brought food and our own lawn chairs. The Hesters just supplied the house. We had a wonderful party with lots of food. After a couple of hours, we headed home so we could go to bed early again for Seminary. 

Wednesday started with Seminary again and another morning walk. Then we quickly put together some snacks for DCM since I didn't have time to make anything. After DCM, Elder Wilcox met up with some Elders to move the beds and a few other things for the Hikurangi Elders to have in Punaruku. They will be there for about a month. I spent the time working on the New Convert Initiative and some other work on the computer.

Thursday was my early morning Zoom Seminary lesson. Unfortunately, we didn't have any students show up. I don't think they are in the swing of things yet. Hopefully it will be better next week. Elder Wilcox and I went ahead and held the class anyway, in hopes someone would show up late. I found out later that my three new students from Bream Bay signed in on Friday. Apparently, there was a school holiday, so the Seminary weeks was pushed back a day. We didn’t know. We had fun anyway. After the lesson we did our walk and then got ready for our Zoom SPF meeting.

I spent the afternoon doing more prep for Sunday School and the New Convert Initiative before the DLs arrived for their Comp Study. We decided to study Doctrine and Covenants 3 – 5, which is the Come Follow Me study for this week. I was able to share several things I have picked up as I have been preparing my lesson. 

NO Seminary on Friday. Just as we were going out for our walk, we got a call from our District Leader telling us their alarm was going off. They checked it and checked around the house but didn’t see anything. They turned the alarm off and then back on again. A few minutes later it went off again. We told them to get out of the house and we would come right over. They opened all the windows and met us by the open sliding glass door. We also checked everything and couldn’t find anything. But we decided to replace the alarm. The new alarm didn’t go off, but the windows were still open. We told them if after they closed the windows, the alarm went off again, they had to get out and call the fire department. We are hoping it is just a glitch in the other fire alarm.

From there, we headed to the Chapel as it was our turn to clean. I also wanted to see if I could get my phone or tablet to screen share for my Sunday School lesson on Sunday. Needless to say, I got very frustrated because my phone would not recognize the TV even though they were both on the same Internet network. I contacted the olde Ward Clerk, who is now the Stake Clerk to see if he had any ideas. He said he could never get the screen share to work either and always just used an HDMI connection. Steve later bought an adapter for my phone. However, when I tried to get it to work on our TV at home, I got the same results. They wouldn't talk to each other. It has been a frustrating couple of days for me.

Saturday started with a baptism for a couple of young girls (cousins) in the Ngahere Ward. Our Sisters have been working very hard to mend some hard feelings for a very large family in that Ward. These baptisms were HUGE in mending relationships. They have been reporting great numbers each week and have made a tremendous amount of progress. It has been awesome to watch as that Ward has been very hard in the past.

The rest of the day was spent on busy work. We did laundry, I finished my Sunday School lesson prep, we sent out the final Ward Council agenda, and I got frustrated working on trying to screen share again.

Then it was time to make dinner for the Hikurangi Elders. We also had them for Comp Study. They arrived at 4:30. We had a nice discussion. They were on Splits, so we actually had Elder Erickson from Hikurangi and Elder Shupe from Punaruku. That really turned out good, because we don’t see the Punaruku Elders very much since we are not in the same District, and it looks like Elder Shupe will probably be transferred next week. 😢 This may have been the last time we see him. 😭Dinner turned out good and we enjoyed a very nice conversation during our meal.

We started Sunday morning with Ward Council at 8:30. Our discussion went well, and we talked about lots of ways to help our Ward. Fast and Testimony meeting was good. We had lots of beautiful testimonies that were born. After Sacrament meeting, we had Sunday School. 

Even though I couldn’t do the screen share I wanted to do, I was still able to talk everyone through what I wanted to share. It all turned out OK. I really wasn’t sure how the lesson would go as I couldn’t seem to make it a cohesive lesson in my head. But it all seemed to flow together nicely. We had so many great comments in our discussion. I wanted everyone to go away with an important principle that Elder Holland taught. He said, “I do not know who in this vast audience today may need to hear the message of forgiveness inherent in this parable [or these sections], but however late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.”

After Church we had a nice Linger Longer to say goodbye to the Hesters. There was just the right amount of food, and I think everyone had a good time. Once home, I worked on my weekly Recap as well as a few things for the Ward. 

All our Love,

Elder and Sister Wilcox