"God created only a select number of men with perfect heads; he put hair on all the rest." A statement made by our area seventy, Elder Thompson, who is not that old, but doesn't have much hair left on his head.
These past couple of weeks have been faith building, challenging at times and lots of fun! March 3rd was the latter - just a fun,, enjoyable day. Our mission zone (10 Elders and 14 Sisters) all met for a picnic on the beach in Raglan. We gave a couple of the Sister missionaries a ride and enjoyed getting to know them better - Sister Hansen from Minnesota and Sister Vodo from Fiji. It was a "Goodbye" to Elder Sua, the zone leader, who is Tongon but lives in Australia. He is one of the nicest and funniest Elders and definitely the biggest. He was big to begin with and had to lose some weight to come on a mission, but has gained over 125 lbs while here. He has not told his mother, however, and said, "She is not going to be a happy mom when she sees me get off that plane." Anyway, we sizzled some sausages and had some good eats and, of course, with every picnic you either have flies or the wind, at least we didn't have both. One of the sisters was cutting up a watermelon, and I commented, "Oh that's a waterless watermelon," meaning "seedless," as we hadn't seen any without seeds here. They gave me a bad time about that. It was fun to see the younger missionaries' P-Day playtime personalities.
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| Several Sister missionaries in the our zone--Raglan beach |
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| electric grill for anyone to use at no cost |
Look them up on YouTube and have a listen. They have earned 3 platinum awards this past year and are very well known here (they must be popular as tickets were $72 a piece).
It is now a few days later, Sunday, again. But before telling about today, I'll go back to last Sunday as we had such a good sacrament meeting. Sister and Brother Garisou spoke and used as the basis of their talks a very faith promoting experience they had during the previous week. The weather has been very dry here, for the second summer in a row. People do not have sprinkling systems here, because there is usually adequate rain to make that not necessary. The temple has a sprinkling system on the front lawn, but the rest of the lawn is very brown. People in towns are on city water that is piped into their homes, like we have. However, outside of the towns people use water tanks to store water as it runs off the roofs of their houses and they use that to cook, do laundry, bath and some even drink it. Brother Garisou had recently quit a good job to go into business for himself and it has been taking longer than planned, therefore they have really been struggling financially for the past few months. Their water tank was getting very low and they could not afford to pay for the city water truck to come out and fill their tank for $200. They had prayed for rain and had tried to conserve water by bathing at the beach. One morning after her family had left, Sister Garisou climbed up on the water tank and peered down into it and was dismayed as she could see the water just barely covered the bottom. She said a quite prayer once more, pleading with the Lord for rain. She felt a peace come over her that the Lord was aware of their needs and that all would be well. She climbed down, went in the house and put a load of laundry in, believing though the sky was blue, they would be blessed with a rainstorm. Time passed and no sight of clouds; she then thought of the story of the widow in the Old Testament who obeyed the Lord's promptings and used the last of her meal (flour) to feed Elijah when he came hungry to her door, even though she only had enough for one more meal for her son and herself. Sister Gerisou thought that perhaps the Lord would bless them in a similar way, with a tank that never really goes dry. A short time later she heard a rumble from outside and looked out the window to see a truck coming up the road. She walked out and saw that it was the city water truck, driven by a man they knew. She yelled to him, saying you must have the wrong address, as they had not ordered any water. Peter told her he didn't have the wrong address, the water was for her family. She tried to explain that they couldn't pay for it, but he assured her not to worry about it, as he had been approached in Raglan a little earlier by a man who handed him $200 and told him the Garisou's needed water. Sister Garisou was so overcome emotionally she sobbed as she hurried into the house. After composing herself she went back outside and asked Peter, as he was finishing up, who the man was that paid for the water. He told her that he had promised not to tell, as the man did not want them to feel any obligation to pay him back. The Garisou family were deeply touched by this experience and were so grateful to our Father in Heaven for hearing their prayers and answering them, though in a way they had not even thought about. They were also grateful to the man who had listened to the spirit and obeyed the promptings he had felt . It was indeed a great example of the message: God hears and answers our prayrs, but it is usually through our hands that he does so.
This is going to be a l o n g blog; you might need to rest your eyes. Later last week we had a Zone conference and then all the missionaries, about 8 Elders and 14 Sisters, changed and followed us out to the camp. We had ordered and picked up pizza on our way as it was lunch time and missionaries are always hungry. But we were surprised at how much pizza the sisters could put away. The Elder had them go first and I was concerned there wasn't going to be any pizza for the Elders. We had bought 9 or 10 pizzas, thinking the sisters would probably only eat 2 or 3 pieces at the most. It's a good thing I had made some lemon bars and a banana cake for a couple of birthdays. They were really good workers, however, and there was such a good spirit there. They laughed a lot and really had such a fun time, they want to come again soon.
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| Elders and Sisters in our zone |
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| the Sisters worked really hard |
Dad called in her referral to the mission office and later that day they called back and said that the sisters
were really excited to get it and find out her her name because they had gone into Dotties Dress shop a couple of times and had felt they should approach this cute young woman who worked there, but didn't want to interfere with her work. So it was like a confirmation to them that they would receive a referral for her. It seemed more than a coincidence!
Elder Olsen (Don) does a great job of talking to everyone (TWE) and has gotttten quite a number of referrals. He is just naturally friendly and has the gift of gab (which can be a little annoying if you are waiting somewhere for him). He is more involved in working with the men that are employed by the contractor at the camp and is not shy about talking to them about the gospel and asking them questions. Recently he invited two young men, employees of a subcontractor, to get involved with the YSA in doing service work at the camp and they agreed. They also agreed it would be nice to learn more about the church and why the church is building such a nice facility for the young people. He submitted their names to the mission office as well.
Denise Peacock, our English Lady convert from up North, came down by bus to visit for a few days. We worked Friday morning and then drove to Cambridge, about 45 minutes away and had some yummy lunch and then went to the Sheep Dog Trials we had heard about. They were out of town quite away and they don't get a lot of spectators, but we thought it would be a fun experience. So there were the 3 of us and all these old sheepmen and a few young ones and even a couple of younger women and their dogs. There were 2 types of dogs; the herders and the headers. In one group the dog ran up the hill and brought down 3 sheep and eventually herded them into a small pen within a 15 minutes. In another trial the dog had to herd 3 sheep straight up to the top of the big hill, without letting them veer off to the side. Some of the men have 7 or 8 dogs, some trained to do one thing and some another and some younger dogs being trained to take over for the old dogs. There were some pretty smart dogs, but none of them were as amazing as "Babe," the pig dog in the movie of long ago. We are going to rent it so Denise can see it.
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| a boarder collie moving the sheep into the pen |
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| Denise was able to enter the temple for the first time |
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| Denise with Elder and Sister Olsen at the visitor center |
We love the Sister missionaries in Raglan and enjoy working with them. They had 3 little girls lined up to come to church today so when we got there I drove one of them over to pick them up. They were cute, about 4, 5 and 6 or 7. The youngest was in pants and no shoes; but you see lots of barefoot children here. The dad and mom both have drinking problems; today the dad was at work and the Sisters felt like the mom loved to have them go to church just to have a break from them for a while. When we took them back home, however, the little girls were so excited and when they told their mom they wanted to go again next week, she replied that she would go with them. Hope so!
The Sisters had a cool experience over the weekend. Sister Hansen was going to put some laundry in the washing machine before going to bed Friday evening, but decided she should wait until morning. She had a bucket of water she had used for something, but instead of emptying it out she just sat it on the floor by the washer and dryer. During the night she dreamed that they had a fire. Saturday morning she put her laundry in the washer: she returned to the laundry area a few minutes later to see a fire blazing behind the washing machine. She yelled at Sister Hunt to call the fire department and then spotting the bucket of water, she picked it up and threw it on the fire, mostly extinguishing it and were able to completely put it out by the time the fire department arrived. The firemen told them how lucky (or blessed) they were that Sister Hansen had returned to the room when she did and that she had that water close by because the fire could have gotten out of hand real fast. It would have especially been bad if they had put the laundry in before going to bed the night before. Now Elder Goodman, who is over setting up the apartments for the missionaries, is concerned as it was a new washing machine and the same type he has put in over a 100 apartments.
Barry and Denise made up our Gospel Principles class today. Elder Olsen and I take turns teaching the lesson with the Sisters. Barry had some good comments and questions today and it was nice to have Denise, a new convert, share some of her thoughts with him.
Elder Olsen just asked if I was STILL writing the blog, so I had better end it here as we have a meeting to go to in a bit. The busier we are the faster time goes by and the happier we are! We love all of you lots!
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| hues of the evening onset |
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