Seminary, Walks, Comp Studies, Transfers, and Moving

We started Monday early with Seminary. When we got there our Seminary teacher was surprised to see us. She said that a Sister had been called as the second adult for her class. Of course, we stayed anyway since we were already there. We had 4 kids and with the three extra adults we had a great discussion. 

I managed to take walks every day this week, except Friday. It is so beautiful in the morning and not too hot. I enjoyed it a lot. I worked on my Sunday School lesson for the 16th all week. We are going to be gone most of this week, and I didn't want to have to worry about my lesson. I finished my preparation on Saturday.

Steve met several missionaries at the Hikurangi flat to get it all cleaned out and ready to close. They moved all the furniture into the living room so it can easily be loaded and moved. They took a TON of stuff to the dump. It is in pretty good shape and almost ready for the closing.

We had our Zoom call with Douhet's family. We got to see everyone except Alyson and Tyus. We even got to see Roman. He is getting so big and cute. He is very bright-eyed and happy. He loves to bounce. I was so happy to see him. We had a very nice visit with them. Kinzley went to the Temple last Friday to receive her Endowment. Most of her extended family plus all her sisters were there with her. I wish we could have been there. 

Lastly, we had a nice dinner appointment at the Read's home. We had Hawaiian Haystacks. We each brought fixings the way we do it and compared our meals. We all got to eat some of both. It was very good, and we had a lot of fun just talking and visiting.

We didn't have to go to Seminary on Tuesday. It was nice to wake up without an alarm. I worked mostly on my Seminary Lesson for Thursday. The Seminary Supervisor sent me a link to a lot of training material, so I spent part of the day watching training videos and reading the material. 

We had comp study with our Sisters. I was sad, because I was pretty sure Sister Jones was going to be transferred on Thursday. She was. However, we had a wonderful Comp Study session. We will continue with the new companionship. I spent the rest of the day working on the New Convert Initiative. 

Wednesday was DCM. We combined with the North District since we were missing one of our Sister companionships. They closed the Denby Sisters and sent them to Auckland. They also had Elders serving in that Ward so now it is just the Elders. The Elders were also serving in Te Horo with the Carlisles. Now they will be mostly in Denby and only stop in Te Horo from time to time. Our DCM meeting went very well. 

The Central District got hit the hardest with transfers. We lost the Denby Sisters. We also lost Sister Jones and Elder Swensen. We are only keeping Sister Koi and Elder Sanders. They dissolved the Central District so we will be meeting with the North District again. Elder Erickson is our new District Leader. North District lost Elder Braithwaite because he went home. Elder Bartholomew already picked up his new companion, Elder Hassel last week. They also lost Elder Shupe. 

The Carlisles came over after our DCM so we could plan for Zone Conference. I was planning on Pizza, but Sister Carlisle said the missionaries would prefer not to have Pizza since they get it a lot for member meals. Apparently, someone suggested Hawaiian Haystacks from our Christmas lunch, so that is what we will be doing. LOL

Elder Wilcox was sick in the morning. He lay on the couch most of the day. In the afternoon Sister Koi and Elder Sanders brought over their new companions to meet us. By then, Steve was feeling much better. Sister Koi's new companion is Sister Fale. She is a friend of Pollyanna. Pollyanna was one of our interpreters in Salt Lake City, so we have that in common. It was fun to finally meet her. Elder Sanders' new companion is Elder Davis. He fit right in, and it felt like we had known him for years. Fun side note: Our previous Elder G. Sanders who served here for many months is BACK in our Zone. He just happens to be our current Elder W. Sanders' cousin. So now we have to use first initials to tell them apart. 

Elder Wilcox was feeling so much better when the Sisters came by, he invited them to dinner. So, they came back around 5:30 for dinner. We had a wonderful time getting to know them better.

Friday was exhausting. We helped the Hesters load up their moving van so they could move to Auckland. The Elders were unable to come, because they were required to have a mandatory three-hour planning meeting with the district. Since Elder Erickson is the new District Leader, they really had to be there. So, it was just us, the Hesters, and the two movers with the big truck. They were well organized, and the men did all the heavy lifting. I carried out a lot of boxes into the garage to be loaded into the truck.  Sister Hester and I also vacuumed the rooms as they got empty and cleaned the baseboards. After about two hours we had to leave for another project. They were almost done, so I didn't feel too bad about leaving early. It was very hard to say goodbye to them. The only thing that makes it OK is we will see them regularly when we go to the Temple in the future. 

From the Hesters we went to the Hikurangi flat to load all the furniture into Elder Garner's van and trailer. Only Elder Garner didn't come. Instead, we had Elder and Sister Rose. Again, the Missionaries couldn't be there because they were still in their three-hour meeting. The Carlisles showed up, so with the six of us it didn't take up too much time. Again, the men loaded everything into the van and trailer, and we Sisters cleaned each room until we were done. We finished about the same time. 

From there, Elder Wilcox and I picked up some Luggage at the Zone Leaders flat. We took it to one  of the Elders in Kaikohe. The Elder was just transferred to Kaikohe in a threesome. There wasn't room in the car, so he volunteered to leave his luggage behind since Elder and Sister Rose were coming up as far as Whangarei on Friday. We know how precious kilometers are to the missionaries and for the Elder to drive down to pick it up would have cost them a lot, so we decided to help them out. Besides it was at least two hours we didn't have to move anything. 🤣🤣🤣

By the time we got back, we only had a thirty-minute break before we had to be at Leona's house to load up her moving truck. She wanted to move on Saturday, but the brother getting the truck could only do Friday night. This time the missionaries were able to be there to help. We were very happy to see them. She was all boxed up, so it didn’t take that long to load the truck. Sam, who brought the truck, also brought another brother to help. They both serve in the Elder’s quorum. Sam is the president and Kapotai is one of his counselors. They are both very strong so that helped a lot.  We were all loaded in about an hour. Then we drove to the Hesters’ house (now Leona’s new house) to unpack. It didn’t take too long before we were done. She still has a lot of unpacking and stuff to do. She left quite a bit of smaller items that will fit in our car that she will move over in the next week or so. The house is much bigger than the one she had. I know she is really going to enjoy it. She had prepared some food for us before the move and brought it out so we could all have something to eat before we went home. 

Saturday was supposed to be a day of rest. Steve took it easy all day. I wanted to, but I had several things I wanted to get done before we leave next week. I finished my Sunday School lesson prep for the 16th. I won’t have to worry about that on the trip. I also worked on ACORD forms for HawkSoft and got those all done. It turned out to be a bigger job than I had hoped, but it is all done. Hopefully Darrin won’t find any issues with them. I’m feeling very good about our prep for our trip. I’m hoping we won’t have to worry about anything other than just enjoying our trip.

On Sunday, we had a packed Chapel because we had a baby blessing. It is always nice to see the Chapel full. All of our speakers were very good. I enjoyed each message very much. The baby is the granddaughter of one of our members. She is adorable with dark, curly hair. 

John and Diane Hester

After Sacrament meeting, we had several items of business to take care of. A record of the baby blessing needed to be created. Since the family lives in Auckland, we wanted to get it done so they could take it home with them. They were all headed to a family gathering at a cousin’s house. We got the record made, and the Bishop signed it. Then we found a family member who had stayed for the second hour to take the certificate to the family gathering so they could take it with them to Auckland. 

We also helped an elderly brother get into his Church account so he could order the Liahona magazine. He didn’t think he had a Church account set up, so we tried to create a new one. In the process we found that he already had an account set up. That meant we had to find out what the username was and create a new password. We managed to get that all done and were finally able to order the magazine. 

At 5:00, Elder Wilcox joined the Ward Clerks training meeting on Zoom. Brother Shepherd, the Stake Clerk) said I could sit in out of camera view. 🤣

All our Love,

Elder and Sister Wilcox