Kiwi Connection: A New Mission Formed

The new mission at Hamilton had its formal beginning earlier this month. Our mission has gone from 240 missionaries to 120. But the mission will be receiving many more missionaries over the next few months until our numbers are back to around 200. Our zone leader, Elder Smith is being released this week to return home to British Columbia. He has been a good leader. Another team of Elders has been added to our zone. They will live not far from us in Kerikeri, but their areas are a few miles south from here, the towns of Paihia and Moerewa.

This has been a disappointing week. Our most promising investigators, Marama and her daughter, Genieva called the morning of our appointment and told us that after her discussion with her partner they decided this would not be a good time in their lives to proceed with the lessons because of the conflicts that have come up with the father. We asked if we could visit for a half an hour that afternoon. We were pleasantly surprised that her partner was there and was somewhat willing to discuss the situation. He was baptized in his youth but had been inactive since he was twelve. He didn't want his daughter and her mother to accept the gospel because that would put a crimp in his life style(a little smoking, drinking, cussing etc.). She already understood that before she could become a member she would have to get married or stop living with her partner and that most likely was a sore spot with him. We left a prayer in the home and she promised us that she would get back in touch with us after she had resolved things with her partner.

Another promising investigator, Paul Haddon, is a 75 year old gentleman who's wife is a member but is inactive and due to diabetes needs dialysis 3 times each week. He is reluctant to move forward because of the criticism he fears from his siblings and children. His father was a Methodist minister and he would be breaking tradition. His wife thinks if he got involved now he wouldn't be able to adequately take care of her. We encouraged him to tell his family how he really feels about the church and to continue to express his love towards them and they would get over it. May be there will be some new developments this week.

We also visited and encouraged Brother Leef, a widower of 10 years who's eldest daughter just died of cancer. This is motivating him to get active and prepare to go to the temple to have his family sealed. We next visited Sister Yvonne and her non member husband. They are an older pakeha (New Zealanders of European descent) couple in their mid 70's and finding it hard to keep up on all the work a large parcel of land requires. They have declining orchards, chickens, and several dilapidated out buildings and an old crumbling house. They were hilarious, they both started talking so Sister Olsen listened to her and Elder Olsen listened to him. It seemed like they were starved for company and they each talked non-stop for almost an hour before we could get a word in. Gary seemed to be quite proud that his great grandfather was one of the criminals sent to Australia from England in the mid 1800's.

Saturday we visited a rugby game that our young investigator, Desire, played in. She's on a mostly boy team. Her parents were there and we wanted to meet her father, who is a non-member. She needs to let him know that she wants to join the church before he will give his permission.

This week we will be working hard to find some new investigators to teach; hopefully the members will start to get more involved in giving us referrals after the world-wide missionary training 3 weeks ago. We spoke in Sacrament meeting today and reviewed the plan for the wards and branches to take on the responsibility of finding, referring and fellowshipping.

Saturday night we went to the stake talent show put on by the YM/YW and it was awesome!

Fabian Himiona of our branch presidency in Matauri Bay

Several weeks ago on our P-day we visited a little town on an isolated peninsula in the Bay of Islands that we accessed by ferry. The name of the town is Russell, the earliest place that British sailors and whalers began frequenting in the mid 1700's. It lived up to its wild reputation.