Lots of Busy Work, Seminary, Flat Inspections, Family Name Assist, and Baptism

I feel like I have been playing catchup all week. I have also been organizing. I organized a chat group for our Personal Finances group. I had to organize our calendar to keep all the training meetings straight. I organized several other things that I can't think of right now. LOL.

On Monday, we had a nice long video chat with Season. We were hoping the boys would have joined the call as we wanted to hear everything about Young Men’s camp they went on last week. We tried to follow the Facebook page about YM Camp when we could. There were so many exciting things they did. I am so impressed with the youth programs in Oregon City. They are amazing.

Later the Bream Bay Sisters came over to use our Wi-Fi for their calls home. I’m so glad we can provide that for them.  It gives us a brief chance to visit with them. I spent the rest of the day working on ACORD forms for HawkSoft. 

Tuesday started with Early Morning Seminary. When we passed the Elder’s flat on the way to the Church, we noticed the lights were off. So, as soon as we got to Church, I gave them a call. They thanked me for waking them. They were down there with two minutes to spare!  It is a good thing they only live down the street from the Chapel. We had a good lesson on sharing the Gospel. It was a perfect lesson for the Missionaries to give.

The rest of the day was filled with Flat Inspections (Steve got excited because he saw a train cross the road near our home), Seminary Lesson preparation, FHE lesson prep for Wednesday night, and an English Connect Lesson with Sister Vili. After her lesson, we involved her companions and did a group conversation practice. Then we had to kick them out so we could do a Zoom meeting with a Branch up North for the Family Name Assist tool training. It turned out better than I thought, so I am now open to doing some Zoom training if we can't do them in person.

Sister Carlisle, Elder Hassell, and Elder Carlisle

We had a wonderful DCM on Wednesday morning. We got to be part of the TWEEING (talk to everyone) role play in our training section. It was fun. It was Elder Hassel’s last DCM. He leaves for home next week. We will miss him. He has been a GREAT Zone Leader. 

After we got home, I did a little work on the Family Name Assist training schedule. I also sent out the tentative Ward Agenda. We were able to watch Follow Him with John Bytheway and Hank Smith after lunch. 

Later, we headed over to the Snow’s house for Family Home Evening. We had a really good time tonight. Our lesson was about how the Church set up the program to care for the poor and needy. We watched a short video and then did a maze by choosing Christlike qualities to get to our Eternal Rewards. After that we played a couple of games and then had ice cream cones.

Thursday started with Early Morning Seminary again. We had 9 students, and I think the class went pretty well. We talked about our divine nature and the fact that they are sons and daughters of God.

Later we had our mission SFP Zoom meeting. We talked about the miracles that have happened in our mission over the last few transfers. As we all do our part and live the missionary standards and work hard, we can expect miracles, as President Nelson told us a few General Conferences ago. The is hastening His work and we are reaping the harvest.

At 5:30, we visited Ben and his mom for a while. Ben gave his first talk in Sacrament meeting on Sunday. He wanted to let us know what he was planning on saying to make sure he was on the right track.  It is so wonderful to see how he has turned his life completely around. Those who know him have seen the changes in him. 

We actually took a walk on Friday! We drove to the Whangarei and walked around for our morning walk. It was so nice. On the way home we got a call from one of our members who ran out of gas on the highway. He was going to walk to the gas station, but it was way too far. We ran down there and took him to the gas station and then back to his vehicle.  

We no sooner got home, than we got a call from the Elders. They were at the Chapel filling the font for the baptism we were going to have later in the day. Their key would not unlock the door to the font so they could fill it. So, Elder Wilcox headed down to the Church to help them out.  

Elder Olson, Paige,
and Elder Na Nongkai

Later we headed to the baptism. We didn’t have a pianist, but the songs we picked were pre-programed into our organ. I worked the organ and one of the brothers directed the music. It worked very well. Both of our talks were so good. Winnie gave the talk about Baptism. She shared about the three bears. It wasn’t the story we all know and love. Instead, it was about bearing the name of Christ, bearing one another burdens, and bearing testimony. It was really good. Paige used to live in Punaruku so she wanted the Bishop of that ward to baptize her. After the baptism, AJ sang the most beautiful song about prayer and the Holy Ghost. It was so sweet. Then Kea gave a talk about the Holy Ghost. She had her children come up and sing a song in Māori that was so beautiful. It was about the Holy Ghost. One of her young daughters did beautiful hand movements to the song. Everything was so very nice for her baptism.  

I spent much of the day on Friday, organizing our Ward Directory in my SQL database. I haven't used it in a while, so I had to delete records who had moved out and add the records of those who have moved into the ward. After that was done, I ran some reports of the remaining people who we either never visited, or they were not home when we did try to visit. We are hoping to finish the cleanup of our Ward Directory before our mission ends. We will get the Elders to help visit the remaining members. The list really isn't too long. We should be able to start visiting again in a week or so. We have a busy week coming up, so it probably won't happen this coming week.

Elder Na Nongkai, Elder Olson, Paige,
and Bishop Randell

We also moved the desks around in our office space. Instead of having our desks right next to each other, we are now back-to-back. This is to help Steve work on his laptop without me seeing everything he does and then try to jump in and help too quickly. I think it will be better for both of us. LOL He will be able to work at his pace, and I won’t get so frustrated when he takes too long. Hahaha. 

On Sunday morning before Ward Council, I was able to help a sweet Sister in our Ward print out her Patriarchal Blessing. She was very happy. I love helping people in any way I can. 

Elder Olson

After that we had our Ward Council meeting. Our Young Women President gave a wonderful training about the focus of her presidency on the Young Women. We then had a good discussion about being prepared for every needful thing. This includes ways we can help our members be prepared for unexpected life events. We are afraid that Elder Olson will be transferred this week. So, Bishop Henare presented him with a shirt "All Blacks" game sure with his name on the back. 

For Sacrament meeting, we had three young men give brief testimonies, and then a talk by our new member, Ben. He was nervous, but he did a GREAT job. You could feel his sweet spirit and he bore a beautiful testimony of how many blessings he has received since he joined the Church. Life is still hard sometimes, but the blessings far outweigh the difficulties.  We also confirmed Paige, who was baptized on Friday. Our last speaker was a High Councilor. He talked about the General Conference talk by Elder Dale G. Renlund entitled “Personal Preparation to Meet the Savior.” We talked about section 76 in Sunday School.

We took care of a few more things after Church, before heading home for lunch. I worked on the recap and then we got ready for our Personal Finances class.  It had been a very full day.

All our Love,

Elder and Sister Wilcox