Mom you got this email to me just in time, I was just about to finish emailing. The second cleaning inspection was a breeze. This time she was pretty happy with everything and we did a good job cleaning. I attribute it to my time as a janitor (and also mom of course.) Elder Garth also decided he wanted to be there for the inspection. He is the missionary from one of the office couples and is in charge of the housing and cars portion of the mission. He was impressed by us and it all ran smoothly. No Thanksgiving dinner for me this year. I have decided I didn't really miss Thanksgiving - I kind of forgot about it until one of the American Elders, Elder Berger, reminded me. Every time I bring it up to a kiwi, they just make some crack about how they are grateful every day, why do they need a special day to do it? I am getting pretty sick of that comment. :) Everything from Thanksgiving sounded pretty normal - the food, the cousins, sleepovers, Dad and Justin making cheeky comments, and an adventure of course. Everything sounds pretty normal except for pickleball. Why the heck haven't we done that before? It sounds like it was a lot of fun but I have just got to say yous are lucky that I wasn't there. I bet I would have given Keeg and Dad a run for their money. I also need to say, man I have an ugly brother! What is that on his face? (haha joking!)
This week:
This week was kind of slow in our area. All of our investigators are disappearing. One went to Christchurch, one we just found out is in Sydney now, and another one moved flats and is now working two jobs. Good news is Prince came to church again this week, bad news is that he got a job as well as his full time studies so he is pretty busy, we still haven't really had a missionary lesson with him. I am still having a lot of fun in this ward. The ward is divided into flocks, which are essentially families. They run family home evenings and activities and all this other fun stuff that we get to go to. There are some really cool people in our ward.
I was able to have a pretty cool experience with Sister Hyunh. She is from Vietnam and she has been being taught by Elder Clark (Travis Clark who I went to high school with) and Elder Chi. She is in her late 60's and is about the same height as Grandma Great. I was able to do her baptismal interview but it was different than the others I have done in the past because we had Brother Yong come into translate for her. It was interesting. He doesn't speak the language very well, and the questions didn't really translate over exactly. As we began the interview I just said a prayer in my heart for Heavenly Father to help me so I could make sure she really understood what she was doing and that she was really ready. I tried to simplify the questions as best I could and Brother Yong did his best to translate back and forth. I didn't really understand everything but I could feel her love for the Savior - it was a happy feeling mixed with excitement and I could feel the Spirit as she testified about the Savior, and how much she loves this church and how she wants to follow him. It was like I knew what she was saying even before Brother Yong translated for her. It was so cool! When I told her she could be baptized she said a bunch of Vietnamese words as she took a couple of quick steps and hugged me. I was also able to attend her baptism on Saturday. It was a wonderful service and I am so excited for her an her family. Plus afterwords we were able to have fresh spring roles homemade by her family, a good treat. (We had sweet chili sauce but they could have really used some of Anny's peanut sauce.)
Overall it was a pretty good week.
Love,
Elder Summers