I Love New Zealand!

Yep. That's it. I love it here.

 

FINALLY did something fun this p-day! Yay! We are blessed with k's this month because our car is getting fixed after it got swiped during one of our appts, so we're using another car and it doesn't take away from our total k's, so we went to the Elders' area in Ngaruawihia (I think that's how you spell it) and went and hiked some mountain up there, don't know what it was called, haha. Some members just told em about it, so we decided to go out there. Pretty steep climb, with heaps of steps (they heard that there was 1000 steps or something). Anyway, it was beautiful, So many trees and plants you couldn't see out of them. The sign said it would take an hour to get to the top and we thought we might be short on time, but thankfully we went to the top because it wasn't that long and it was gorgeous! I forgot my camera cord, so pictures will have to wait til next week. Hopefully we're going to hike up to some waterfalls next week too! It feels good to have a good p-day.

 

Let's see, what happened this week. We have two pretty keen investigators in one ward. One is a member referral, she's 14 and so cute. She came to Stake Conference yesterday, and after talking to her after church when we asked her how she felt she said, "It was indescribable." Thankfully a good indescribable. We set her for baptism on the phone, she didn't know a whole lot about it, but after teaching about baptism and he Holy Ghost and how the feelings she had at church were from the Holy Ghost, she said she would LOVE to have more of those feelings. I'm excited to teach her more! And the members that picked her up told her about mutual as well, ahh! Dream come true when the members help out so much!

 

We have another girl who is so ready to get baptized, but has some family concerns. We're praying to know how to help her. We found out some more information from a member, like if something happens with her visa here and she has to go back to Samoa, her family isn't happy with her going to our church, so she would have to do everything undercover to be able to go to church. Something our district leader has been pushing us to do is to exercise our faith as a principle of power, which is really going to help me to exercise my faith and to make it stronger. Praying for a miracle so that we can have another baptism this month! Our mission goal for the year is 2012 baptisms! Yay! So this means we have to like 167 per month, and we were all invited to pray about it, which we did and know it was an inspired goal from our mission president, so we've got to do our part to help reach that goal and I know that people are ready! We just gotta find them! Something I need to work on is just really, truly, believing that we can have those miracles that we ask for. I was reading Enos today and in there it says, "Whatsoever thing ye shall ask in faith, believing that ye shall receive in the name of Christ, ye shall receive it." We really do just have to have faith! & serving a mission in New Zealand has really opened my eyes to the fact that miracles still happen today all over the place! At the end of last year, we were asked to email in our favortie miracle and they made a "Book of Miracles" with a miracle from each missionary and it's been a good reminder to read it and to see how we never know how miracles can happen! So keep your eyes open for the miracles!

 

Love you all! Hope you have a good week!

 

-Sister Mullen

Half Way Official

So like the first week I got to the VC, I ordered a nametag that says "New Zealand Temple Visitors' Centre" under my name, and I FINALLY got it last week at transfers and was SO excited for it, because that's what I get excited about, new name tags, and then I opened it...& was as depressed as I was excited. The nametag was a pocket one, which I have no way to wear. But I ordered a clip one, so hopefully it gets here soon.

 

I can't believe I've already had a whole transfer here at Hamilton! This past 6 weeks flew by! & yep, I'm still in Hamilton, still with Sister Clark--bring on the new transfer! One change though is that we changed the district we're in, so instead of 3 sister companionships and 1 set of elders, we'll be with 2 or 3 sets of elders. I'm excited for the change, elders just keep things exciting and more interesting.

 

So we had a baptism this week, woot woot! And the more we spend time with this girl, the more I see how we would be legit friends even if I wasn't a missionary. I just love how she has no shame and does dorky things. She was SO excited for her baptism and after her confirmation, it was so fun. Right after she got baptized, still in the font, she threw her fist in the air and said, "Yeeah!" Probably not the most appropriate,but I loved it because it was so her.

  

We had a lesson with one guy, covered in tattoos, has "HELL" across his knuckles, pretty nice and chatty guy. His son has cerebal palsey, he actually didn't let us talk a whole lot except when I just butted myself in and didn't let him interrupt me, but when we were getting ready to leave, he told us, "You two are freakishly the most interesting messengers I've ever met." uhhh...thank you?

 

This happened a couple weeks ago on chat, I was feeling like being fun and saw that I was chatting with Eduardo from Mexico, so I said, "Hola Eduardo!" And he said, "That's racist...I'm German." I never found out if he was serious or not, but it'll probably be a while before I do something like that again, haha.

 

So our mission president wants us all to have a 5 minute talk on the Atonement and then another on the Plan of Salvation incase we randomly have to get up to speak in Sacrament Meeting, and as I've been working on improving mine, it's been fun to learn new things even though I feel like I'm forever away from being able to understand the Atonement. But one thing that stuck out to me that I learned this week, from reading an Ensign article by Elder Holland, was that we have unconditional gifts from the Atonement, like resurrection, and then we have conditional gifts that are dependent on our faithfulness, but even the "conditional" gifts aren't really earned by ourselves, they're still given freely by the Savior and His grace. I know that we are all blessed more than we realize every single day because of the Atonement and I know that it is the most important even that has and ever will happen in the history of mankind. I am so thankful for my Savior and all that He was willing to sacrifice for each and everyone of us!

 

Hopefully I have more to tell you next week, love you all!

 

-Sister Mullen

Happy Waitangi Day!!!!

Another holiday!

 

This week has been good! I think I mentioned this investigator last week, but her name is Ngavaine, she's the hip-hop dancer, and we found out that she's on the team called Request, which is as good as it gets in NZ. Apparently Request was on America's Best Dance Crew a couple summers ago, I vaguely remember hearing about them. This is probably as close as I'll get to teaching a celebrity of New Zealand, haha. Anywho, she's awesome! I feel like she's just one of my best friends now and it's always so exciting to see her. Definitely a confirmation that this is where I need to be by meeting people that I have become good friends with! She's also been the perfect investigator, so willing to accept everything we tell her, especially the commandments, and has heaps of friends who are members. Everything has been going so smoothly with her, it's been a huge blessing! The plan is for her to get baptized on Thursday afternoon and apparently people are taking off work to drive down to Auckland to be here for it.

 

Highlights of the week: long story short, we were outside for two hours because a member who came with us to an appt, her car died, we tried to jump it (I didn't know you have to push the gas to get it to actually jump...but now I do! I can't believe I'm going to be a Mechanical Engineer sometimes...), but ended up walking around trying to find members who were home since we couldn't take her in our car...it was completely overcast and even sprinkling sometimes, and my part STILL got burned. Yeah, the NZ sun is a little more intense.

 

Sometimes when things are slow inside the VC, we go outside to talk to people, trying to get referrals or trying to get people to come inside. So last Saturday, there are always heaps of people for stake temple trips or weddings, and obviously I plan on them being members. Anyway, we were up at the top by the temple doors, I saw 2 boys, around my age, come sit on a bench, i thought I could tell one of them was wearing garments, but when I started talking to them, they said they weren't members. One guy was waiting for his mom to come out, his mom got baptized a year ago and he knows nothing about temples, they might have seen some videos on youtube about inside the temple, the other guy was apparently his half brother...blah blah blah, thankfully it didn't take long to come out that they were members and I didn't make too much of a fool of myself. The one I was talking to said he just got home from his mission and hated it when they would go talk to people and they would say, "oh, we're members." He obviously didn't serve in Hamilton which is like mini-Utah where we run into members all the time...especially on temple grounds. Thankfully there are some people who keep the work interesting and keep me laughing.

 

I feel like lots of members lately have been asking us if we had even heard of New Zealand before we got our mission calls...little do they know that pretty much everyone has heard of New Zealand and tons of people told me "Oh man, if I could have picked anywhere to go on my mission, it would have been New Zealand..." They're not a tiny, forgotten island out in the Pacific like they think they are.

 

One thing I forgot about last week was dinner with this Samoan family. The mum's sister was in town from Samoa, and she just wanted to talk away with me to practice her english (which was actually perfectly fine). It was so neat to hear her say how much she loved us even though she just met us and she had been cooking all day for the missionaries! The islanders really do love the missonaries so much. & then it was the most fun meal I've had in a long time, islanders are just fun and I haven't laughed that much in a long time. White people can be lame sometimes, haha.

 

I should probably through in my spiritual thought. I know it's a little late, but I absolutely loved the January engisn. Especially Elder Christofferson's talk about our "daily bread" and taking things one day at a time. Like when we make long goals, we don' have to take on all 3 months at once, just one day at a time. That's something I've really been working on and I feel like it really has helped me to stay in the present and to be happy now. Just thinking about what I need to do specifically today. & I feel like it's also made time FLY! I can't believe this transfer is almost over. I'm almost certain I'll be here and with Sister Clark...and I think I'll be here for quite sometime since there aren't very many VC sisters.

 

Love you all!

 

-Sister Mullen