Anzac day, investigaor updates, & speaking in sacrament....

  Well its been another week.... Wow. Man it goes by so fast!!! I honestly don’t even know what we have done this week.  It seems like it was just Monday yesterday!!!

     Tuesday was Anzac Day! So its basically like Memorial day in the states. So they make it a huge deal and have services and such and they all have work off and everyone goes to the park or the Beach and does a BBQ. So we had a Ward Council activity at the park. We had a big feed and played some fun as games! So I will have to teach yous those when I get home! We then had an appointment with one of our members who lives about an hour from the Chapel. That was at 7 so we left at about 6 and got there just before 7. It was such a fun as drive! It was dark most of the way there cuz its through the forest and there arent many street lights. So it was honestly just so fun! I love long forest drives!

     We got to have Trade offs with our Tongan Elders again this week. That was super fun! I got to go to the Tongan Ward with Elder Neifui. We got to go to a lesson with one of their Investigators named Noa. She is 16 and is friends with one of the Members in the ward. She is doing the lessons at the friends house. So we got to teach her about the Importance of CPR (Church Prayer Reading). The lesson overall was totally awesome and great! It was so fun to get to teach with Elder Neifui and teach a real normal lesson! Just because of how slow the ward has been it seems like forever that I have gotten to teach that!

     On that note though. We got a new Investigator named Miriam. She was born in Iraq and came here when she was 4. So she is Kiwi. We found her when we were looking for a Former Investigator in the area and she didnt live there but Miriam did. That was a few weeks ago. We saw her last week and were finally able to sit down with her and talk. She has a Boyfriend who is Less Active. She went to a baby blessing with a friend once to our church. So that time we just got to know her and did set up to start teaching. Then on this past Friday we saw her again. We got to teach the Restoration. It was an ok lesson. She didn’t seem to interested or I guess engaged... She was listening when we answered her questions which was good. So we left her with a Plan of Salvation Pamphlet and are going to see her tomorrow and see what she liked! So please keep her in your prayers!

     My spiritual thought this week comes from my Sacrament Talk on Sunday. Our Bishopric asked Elder Clark and I to speak this week. We also had 2 of our ward missionaries speak with us. We all had the topic of becoming a Disciple of Jesus Christ. Then we were all given talks from General Conference to relate it to. I was given the talk by Elder M. Russel Ballard titled "Return and Receive" I related it all to goals and how important it was to set goals in our lives. Elder Ballard says: "Wise goal setting includes the understanding that short-term goals are only effective if they lead to clearly understood longer-term goals." Our goals everyday can and will effect our long term goals. We have to be on top of it all. Its really important to look at the little things cuz they will effect the big things! 

Love yous!

     Love Elder Seelos

The Elders threw me a Suprise early birthday thing this morning in case we are not together for my birthday...

Love these elders!

pics from the museum last week...

More pics from the museum last week....

The sisters thought it would be fun to do our eyebrows... MAN!!!!!  It hurts!!!

School holidays, beautiful beaches, & a packed sacrament....

 Hello all!-

     I just wanna say that the best thing to ever happen to the Ysa ward is School Holidays. We have had school holidays all week and we have them all next week as well. So I am super happy! People are actually home and are fine to have us over! Like I'm not use to this. Its so great.

     We got to have trade offs this week with our Tongan Elders. Elder Neiufi and Elder Tutu'ila. I stayed in the Ysa ward with Elder Neiufi. We actually had a great day! Not much going on but still fun! There were a couple people in the ward that he knew from his old area's so we went and visited a few of them. Overall it was good! Made me realize how well/terrible I know the area... I know some places and how to get to some people but I am still not good at figuring out how to just find people around us when plans fall through. It’s a work in progress.

    Probably the biggest perk of the ward is the area. There are some mean as places in our area. Elder Clark and I went for a drive/visit run on Saturday. We decided to drive to some really cool as places and some far away beaches and things and then just spend some time in the little towns around there for a few hours. Lets just say that it was great! We started at a place called Maraetai Beach. From there we drove to Kawakawa bay. The drive there was breath taking! Rolling hills of pasture and then the beach. After that we found ourselves in Orere Point. That one was lame. It was basically a small town with a little point into the water that people just used for fishing.

     Now lets just say that last P-day was amazing! We took our Zone to the Museum and walked around there. I love museums. This one was so mean! They had old Maori and Pacific Island artifacts and things. They had a whole floor just for NZ and World Wars. Lets just say that I was in Heaven. Heaps of pics to come today! 

     We had a miracle this week! There were HEAPS of people at church yesterday!! Like it was Packed! More then I have seen in the ward the whole time I have been here. They were basically all members but it was good to see people coming cuz most weeks we just hear about all the people leaving and its just good to see new faces every once in a while! There was a new girl that has come a few times but we talked to her and she was there with her nonmember boyfriend. So thats exciting! We got her number and she said that we can come over and have a lesson with them sometime this week! So thats exciting! Finding new people is always fun! 

     My spiritual thought this week comes from 1 Nephi 10: 19  "For he that diligently seeketh shall find; and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost, as well in these times as in times of old, and as well in times of old as in times to come; wherefore, the course of the Lord is one eternal round." This stuck out to be because right after this Nephi gets his vision of the tree of life. Just picturing my self in Nephi's place hearing this are really wanting to know these things enough to go through the work to do it and hearing that God will give us the Mystery's of Heaven if we are diligent. Just reminds me that we can have to same mystery's unfolded to us if we are willing to work for it!

     Love Elder Seelos

Our gangsta zone#

Comp Study

Beautiful beaches

More beautiful beaches

& even more beautiful beaches

                                                         

                              Our P-day Museum field trip was so awesome! 

The weeks are flying by.......

     Just starting off I want to say that it literally feels like I was emailing like yesterday. This week just flew by! Which is good! Its amazing how fast things go!

     Elder Clark and I were able to go on 2 trade offs this week! We had the first one with the assistants.  I got to go with Elder Bass to the North Shore. It seems like I am always the one going to the shore for trade offs. No complaints though! I really enjoy leaving my own area! We had heaps of work to do that day too so that was super nice! I got to meet a few of their Investigators which was fun! We went with one of their members who just got home from his mission like last week. That was really fun! He is the man! It really makes me want to be a good RM to the missionaries when I get home. Hopefully I will get to see them! It stinks that we have to share the missionaries around the stake. I love getting to be in a ward and get to know the ward and members. You can actually get close to a lot of people. 

     The 2nd trade off we had was with our Elders. I stayed in the YSA ward this time! Lets just say that this was probably one of the most productive days that we have had in a while! It was Saturday, The day before Easter, and the beginning of school Holidays. So everyone was home! It was so fun! We got to see heaps of people! We caught up with Lima and Arlene our 2 investigators that have been MIA for the last few weeks. Then we were able to meet a guy named Tai. We have been trying to catch him home and meet him for weeks now. We also saw a few members that aren't usually home and set up a time for them to come out with us. It was funny though...Afterwards I was thinking about how great of a day it was when Elder Del Rosario said to me that he didn’t realize how hard the YSA ward is. He said that he thought it was all just fun and easy, but now he realizes how much driving it is and how hard the work is. So that was kinda funny! 

     So now for everyone and anyone who heard about Cyclone Cook, or as I like to call it "The build ups Cyclone." We were warned about this storm that it would be hitting Auckland and there would be feet of rain and 150+ Kilometer winds. It would go on for like 2 days and just destroy us. It was said to be the worst storm in like 50 years. So pretty intense. Well to make a long story short. It came and it completely missed Auckland. It hit Tauranga. Thats about a 2 hour drive down the line. All we got were weird random rain down pours for a few minutes a few times the last few days... We were SOOOO gutted! We were super excited for something actually cool to happen in our mission and we got nothing. So yeah. We were pretty annoyed.

     Our Easter was great! We had Church at 2 like normal and then we had our Come and See Fireside at 6:30. So that honestly took up most of our day! It was really nice to stay busy! Our Fireside was great! We got a referral for a guy named Ralulu that other missionaries met and he was keen to come to the fireside to we just had to get him a ride. So we got our Ward Mission Leader, Darren, to come and get him. He is Fijian and came here on a Rugby Scholarship 3ish years ago and so he is huge! He doesn’t work.... he just trains Monday to Thursday and has games on Saturdays. We are going to hopefully see him again this week and really set up with him and ask if he wants to take the lessons! He is honestly the man!!

     My spiritual thought this week is about Easter.  So the thing that I have been thinking about this week is the real meaning of Easter. Not only that but how it got to be what the world thinks of Easter now. The world just thinks of chocolate and eggs and bunnies. The thing that I think is cool is the representation of the Easter Egg. When we go and find the egg it is full and has things inside of it. But unless we open it and take the things out it does nothing for us. The same is true for the seplicher that Christ was in. Originally it was full with Christs body. He was laid in there for the 3 days. But as we know like the eggs the tomb was opened and the prize or Christ was taken out and that is why we care about the tomb. That is why we looked for the eggs. Was for the prize inside. Christ rising and being resurected is that prize for us if we will look for it and use it. We can all partake of this wonderful present that Christ has given us. We just have to search out the Tomb to understand it and really get all that we can from it.

              Love yous! 

                   Elder Seelos

Passing out our Easter cards

     

Our end of the night Chinese take away feast! Yeah, We're Super Healthy! ;)

Conference, rain, and teaching over Mexican food....

  This week was pretty great! Conference was great! Its always nice as a missionary to be taught rather then teaching! So Conference is always so great!!! There is always so much to learn! 

     This week overall has been pretty slow though. We have been going through heaps of old records and trying to clean out all the ones who have moved or are not interested so that we can better see what it is that we have to work with in our area. People in Auckland move so much... Like so often. Its amazing how many of these people don't live at these houses any more. We have been able to find some less actives that we are going to start to work with that we didn't know before so its semi productive.

     We had trade offs on Tuesday. That was fun. I stayed in the Ysa ward with Elder Tuaputa. He has been out for 2 weeks now and is from Australia. We had a pretty productive day! We had a dinner with our Ward Mission Leader. That was great! Doesn't happen too often. That day it was literally raining cats and dogs. Like there was so much water everywhere!!! The streets had like inches of water on it. There were huge puddles everywhere. So Elder Tuaputa and I got Drenched. We were happy that we were in the car though because our Companions were on bikes all day. So we felt lucky! 

     Saturday Elder Clark and I got to go to the city. We have gotten permission to meet our members and Investigators outside of our area if we need to because its so hard to meet with them at their homes. So we drove out to the city to see a Potential investigator. His name is Brian. He is a Filipino guy that works at Mad Mex in the City. So that is where we saw him. He told us that he has been reading the Book Of Mormon and has really been liking it and wants to understand it better. So we are going to hopefully meet up with him soon to help him understand it better! So we are going to be doing some mean drives all over Auckland now to see people at their works and schools!

     Conference really took a lot of time on our weekend. Our weekends tend to be the best times for us and so it was kinda stink to have it all taken up by Conference. We were happy with everything that we were able to do this week though. But my spiritual thought comes out of Conference. It is from Elder Mark A. Bragg. He said “This refers to the tendency in all living systems toward positive energy [light] and away from negative energy [darkness]. From single-cell organisms to complex human systems, everything alive has an inherent inclination toward the positive and away from the negative.” That is something that I want to improve in my life is positivity. People are attracted to light and positive people have more light. So I want everyone to keep that in mind. How can we be more attractive and radiate the light of Christ though us better.

Love yous!

    Love Elder Seelos

Working hard at school, one year as a Zone Leader, loads of work to do, & an April Fools joke...

     This week is great! We have had a great time trying to visit and see all of our members and not have much success with our Investigators.. We had a Potential tell us yesterday that she wasn't really interested so that was pretty stink. But all goods! Today is a new day!

     We had a mean ward activity this week. We went to Rowendale Primary School and did a bunch of outside work for them to help their school and clean it up a bit. So we did some digging to make trenches for water in their garden, then we filled in holes in the ground and we built edging to their flower beds with wood. It was a really mean activity!  We then had a beach activity. We went to a place called Maraetai Beach. There was a huge grassy field and we kinda took it over and had a feed and played some games. It was overall really fun just to be with the YSA. Elder Clark and I have started a Capture the Flag craze in the YSA ward activities. We played it with them a few weeks ago and now they always play it at the activities!

     We had probably the best feed on Thursday. We talked to the Member who was feeding us (Pearl) and he told us that we would meet at the Food Junction (Basically an international food court). When we met him there he came with another member Junie. After that 3 other members showed up Dose, Masio, and Camille. So that was heaps of fun. We got buttered chicken... then they wanted to take us to dessert. We went to Denny's. When we got there another member, Sio, showed up. We all got Lava fudge cakes. Then we gave them all some of the Easter Pass Along Cards that we got and they are all suppose to give them out! It was heaps of fun! 

     We had MLC this week at the Mission Home. It was great to be with the MLC group. This MLC marks the one year of being a Zone Leader for me. It was a weird realization for me. I still cannot believe that I have even been on my mission that long let alone a Zone Leader. We talked a lot about the Easter Message and how to use/share it. We talked about all of the great things that are coming up in April and how fast it really will go by! We have Conference and Easter and its a 5 week month so we have 5 chances to Baptize. This month is going to be awesome!!! 

   So for April Fools day we had a mean as idea! So we texted out to the whole Zone that it was my birthday. They all needed to meet at our flat just before 9 so that they could surprise me for my birthday. Well, as you know it isn’t my birthday. So Elder Clark and I were hiding inside the flat. We had a big white board that said "April Fools" on it. We put that in front of the door on the inside then closed the curtains. So they all showed up and were waiting for us. They were taking a picture and then we turned on the lights and opened the curtains and they all just stood there looking at the camera & no one turned around. So I yelled "April Fools" Really loud and then they all turned around and were pretty annoyed at us. So it was totally funny as but now I think a few people are mad at us... Oh well! Worth it. 

     Now for my Spiritual Thought about the Easter Message. The message honestly is awesome!!! It really is so cool. It is called the Prince of Peace for those who havent seen it. It is about how Christ is the Prince of Peace and how we can learn about gaining true peace from Him! If you havent seen the Video I want you to go to Mormon.org and look at it. It is so cool! I love the fact that it so clearly shows that Christ didn't conquer anything that most would. Didnt take any spoils that most would. He conquered Death and took nothing but us with Him. Its amazing!  

     Sorry for the short Email! 

           Love Elder Seelos

Thursday night feed