So Jainalee and her sister we were able to go over and we have had a couple good lessons with them but they didn't come to church this week :( Katrina is the sister's name but she goes by Trina. We are also teaching Trina's partner's younger brother who lives with them. His name is Darren. I am not sure if I have explained how they have "partners" here. If you say you have a partner it doesn't mean you're gay like it could back in the states. A partner here means someone that you have decided to be exclusive with - you live with them. It is pretty much the same as being married except without officially being married. Law of Chastity concerns all over NZ. Anyways we are teaching Darren and he is the one that I think has the most potential at the moment. Really cool though. Things are going great with Elder Lloyd. His first name is Kolby, he is from Cedar City, grew up in the church, wrestled, oldest of 5 kids, first one to serve a mission in his family. I am pretty sure he wishes he was still in the Cook Islands (it's literally all he talks about) but he is slowly starting to love our ward I think. We get along great. Yes we still have the car and I still have the official made up title of Assistant to the District Leader. All the perks of being a district leader with 0 responsibility. Food is good. I did have horse. It was the last meal Elder Johnson and I ate together - very lean meat and stringy but overall really good. It is still weird that Kaden is in YMs I can't believe they went to Airborne - that is awesome! Historical Sites in Cache Valley, huh? Wow, sounds exciting. :) I know you love it Mom and it is awesome that you found a friend at the Museum. Did she have any scars?
This week was pretty cool. Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles came to speak to us here in Auckland. He spoke to all of the Auckland Mission and all of Hamilton Mission too. Pretty much about 500 missionaries were there. I thought it was going to be like a normal meeting where we just listen to him talk. He had asked all of the missionaries to read over 3 of his previous talks in our personal study last week. As soon as he started speaking he just explained that he was not going to speak to us, we were going to learn from each other. In front of 500 missionaries he started calling on people to answer questions like, "What did you learn?" and, "How has that changed your missionary work?" Stuff like that. It was really good and I learned a lot but the cool part was that after that he told us that we could ask him any questions we wanted. This part was awesome. He told us a lot of things about how to be better missionaries, no he doesn't know where the sword of Laban is and he doesn't care, and of course he taught us that we were learning more from each other than him. It is amazing how much we can learn from the Spirit, I came away from this meeting realizing that we didn't have to have an apostle answer our questions, we can always ask Heavenly Father.
Something cool that happened to me this week was that I ate almost an entire pig. I know, not exactly a surprise. It was a small pig but still. It was a man's birthday here and so we went over to see him and say happy birthday. His name is Brother Fifita. We went over just for a quick visit and it ended up not being quick at all. We walked in his backyard and he was roasting an entire pig. As soon as he saw us, he asked us to help him. We told him we had to go to this lesson at another person's house but he wouldn't let us. He was like "No...No, you eat puaka." We told him we would come back later and This Week:
Overall it was a pretty good week. I have seen many miracles here while on the Lord's errand. I am happy to hear that all is well at home too.
Love,
Elder Summers