Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July!  We'll be thinking of the Good Old USA Thursday.  We have a Zone Training that day and I thought I would make some kind of dessert and decorate it with red, white and blue sprinkles, but you can't find such a thing, so I'll just be picking out the red and blue M&M's from the bag I guess.

We had a really discouraging few days a couple of weeks ago, but things are looking up.  Let us tell you about some of the people we have met and some investigators we are working with:

Amelia, the widow with 14 year old twins, boy and girl.  We have worked with her since we got here and she read the Book of Mormon pretty regularly at first and said she knew it was true and came out to church once and just loved it.  Then there were a lot of complications in her life (sick kids, daughter-in-law had new baby, grandkids got ckickenpox, she had to go out of town, etc.) and she kept cancelling her teaching appts. and wasn't making it out to church.  We kept in touch but were beginning to think we should move on.  However, we stopped by on Saturday afternoon when we were over er way (along way), we invited her to go back to the stake center for a production of "Women at the Well" and she accepted and loved it.  She really feels the spirit through music and through the association of other sisters at church.  She then said she would come to church the next morning and arranged a ride with a neighbor (several miles away).  She came and participated and asked us to visit her this week.  So we are thinking after she has the 1 year Maori commemoration of her husband's death and the end of this month she will go forward with baptism.  Sometimes we just have to exercise greater patience and love.

Then there was Divena:  She came to a presentation a couple of weeks ago by Herrewini Jones, who is a very spiritual and  knowledgeable member about both the gospel and the Maori and their connection to the Book of Mormon peoples.  Divena,. is a neighbor to the Snow's, who were hosting the fireside.  She felt the spirit very strongly that evening and was excited to take a Book of Mormon home with her and immediately started to read it  However, when we checked with her a couple of days later things had gone amiss.  She had told her sister, who had immediately called her 90 year old mother, who immediately called her and  demanded that she have nothing to do with those Mormons.  Her mother told her how important it was to stick together in their religious traditions.  We asked her if it were more important to listen to the spirit or her mother, but Satan knows just how to get to each of us, and  apparently Divena decided she should listen to her mother).. (Which is usually a good thing, but not in this case when the Holy Ghost had testified so strongly).

A week or so ago we were out finding inactive members, and located some Maori rednecks.  We pulled behind the house and found a bunch of family members cleaning and hanging up eels (100 or more) that they had caught in the marsh behind their home.  Apparently, they dry and smoke them and told us they were delicious.  Maybe we'll give them a try, someday.  They do not have any snakes, but these eels were about 3 feet long and looked like slightly flattened snakes to me.  They were rather yucky to look at and smell.  We told the group who we were and asked if Toko, the member was there.  They pointed at a man sitting on a chair near by, who grunted at us but wasn't willing to say much more.  The rest of the family was friendly, but religion was not on their priority list.

Friday we found (literally) the member, Sister Forsdyke, who lives furthest (30-40 miles of windy  roads with heavy vegetation as we got closer) from the church.  She joined 5 years ago and was active for about a year and has pretty much been out of contact since.  She has a 5 or 6 year old son who is autistic and she said it was just too difficult to take him to church because he caused such a disturbance.  (For instance, when the members were singing a hymn, if someone was singing off-key, he would curl up in the corner and cover his ears and cry.)  We mostly listened to her and after some time, she said that perhaps once in a while she could find someone to stay with her son so she could attend.  She has still been reading the scriptures and praying and we  told her about all the resources that are available on lds.org website.  We also talked to the RS president about someone being assigned to be her visiting teacher and at least calling or e-mailing her a couple of times a month.  She seemed to be so pleased that someone had noticed she was not there and had gone to the effort to visit.  Wow!

view from the road to Sister Forsdyke home

We can't end before mentioning the world-wide missionary conference that was broadcast last week.  If you did not go to it, take the opportunity to watch it on lds.org.  It was wonderful and is going to change missionary work to keep up with the changing world.  Tracting is going to become a thing of the past and members,  particularly ward and branch counsels, are going to be much more involved in finding, preparing, and helping to teach and fellowship investigators.With these changes and the big increase in number of missionaries, we are going to see some fantastic things happen, even "a marvelous work and a wonder. "  We love this work and are excited to be a part of this new missionary effort!

Relief Society service project, food for needy

poinsettias grow year round

Love ya lots, Elder Don and Sister Dian