Week 5- 1 month down, conference, and service!

Hello everyone!! As you can tell by the title, this past week I hit my month mark!! It was super crazy, it has felt like an eternity!! But at the same time it has gone by quickly. So this week was actually a very good week!!

Monday- We went over to this guy named Jaemish. 27, Indian guy. Elder Murdock met him before I was in the area so we thought we'd pop by. We found him and he was really discouraged. He had a court case for a DUI he had about a year and a half ago. The case would determined if he'd get deported and have to go back to Fiji or not. So Elder Murdock offered to give him a priesthood blessing and he accepted. After the blessing his mom came out. I saw her in the doorway before we started the blessing so I knew she was watching. She came up to us after and asked if she could "have a prayer also" haha. So I got the chance to give her a blessing of comfort. Very cool for them and us to experience. Right after we went to a FHE at the Tongimua's. Their son and his partner aren't members so we went in focusing on them, mainly the son Jerome. We talked with him a lot about faith- 

Sorry i accidentally pushed some button and it sent my email. so let me continue! If any of you are having a hard time with Faith in Jesus Christ, this gospel, or anything at all! I encourage and invite you to read Alma chapter 32. And really focus on 21, 27-30. Those helped me a lot. And these are the exact scriptures we shared with Jerome. That really hit him. and he said he wanted to follow through with this. I gave him the baptismal invite and he accepted! He said he will go to conference this weekend and let us know about the date we told him so when we saw him at conference yesterday we were super excited!!

Tuesday was nothing special. Wednesday was awesome tho!! Our day really started after lunch. We went and were going to mow this ladies lawn so we got to be in our p-day clothes. And we didn't have a lawn mower that we could borrow. so we made arrangements to have someone with a mower come and cut it on friday. We just had an edger and she insisted that we cut it with that since it was so long, so we did!! We started going and got like 1/4 of the way done and she went and asked the little school next door if they had a mower we could use. They let us borrow one and she wanted it cut super super short so we went over it like 3 times. It was an old mower but I liked it! Right after we mowed her lawn we went to this families house that is always working in the yard so we thought we'd go offer them help again. We come to the driveway and the youngest one (Daniel) goes running inside yelling to his mom (Mum the mormons are here the mormons are here again!!) Haha so they came out and put us right to work! We dug up their garden and put their own kind of fertilizer on it (coffee beans) So we got to do that and we had a follow up appointment with Jaemish at 4. So we had to cut the service/lesson with them short and run. Jaemish had his case and they are making a decision sometime this week. They were super nervous and stuff. But we taught them a lesson and told them how much peace and comfort can come from our gospel. He told us he was planning on coming to church next week without us even inviting him yet! So he came to a session of conference with us this week and that was super cool! We then  had a dinner appointment with a less active/ part member family. So we talked with them, had a good meal, and had to run to another FHE with a Niuean family. I like going to that family because they always feed us no matter what 😁 After that lesson Elder Murdock realized he forgot his planner. So we ran back to Jaemish's and we called him to let him know we were coming, but he said he wasn't home because his mom collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance!  She's been in there since then and is in intensive care so it was kinda scary. Any way the rest of the night was pretty relaxed. But you may have noticed that I didn't say once that we went back to our flat. We spent the WHOLE day in our P-day clothes!! It was by far the best proselyting day ive had  😉 Friday was mine and elder Simelanes month mark. But it was also Elder Murdocks year mark. So the other elders brought over some cake and we just chilled. It was way fun!

Saturday after priesthood was awesome. We decided our post meal would be Wendy's. They have a Black bun here for the All Blacks. Looks super gross. Any who. We went to take some other elders home. However we took a wrong turn and got totally lost. We went around one turn and BOOM there was the main city!! We were in downtown Auckland!! So we thought we'd take this chance and go see the Sky Tower!! We drove past it and then had to find our way home haha. We were lost for like an hour. But we drove over the Harbor bridge and the view from there of the city was a sight I will never ever forget!! It was so cool to see all that!!

Other than that the week was chill. Weekend was very slow, but conference was awesome. I highly recommend rereading some of them or watching them again because there is some great insight and perfect for our days!!

I love you all, 1 month down and it's going fast!! I'll talk to you next week!!