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