Elder Zealand: Service, splits, and skyping....

Hello family!

The Northland has been so Great! It is very cold and different, but it has been heaps of fun! Its fun to be in the bush! Our area is heaps of little towns along 2 main roads so we do a good amount of driving which is fun! Its super green up here and there is always things to see!

On Saturday we got to do a service with one of our members. They had cut a good amount of trees in the bush behind their house and they needed to trek them out of the bush into the trailer and then unload it at their house. There were 2 trailer loads. It wore us out! Then after that a member called asking if we were busy and if we could come over and help him mow an older sister in our wards lawn. So we went right over to his house and helped him. So we did service from about 12 until about 4:30 then we went to our dinner appointment at 5. It was a fun day!

So our area is covering a ward in the "City" and a branch in the bush. The missionaries before us didn't do too much work in the branch and the Branch has been kinda neglected so Elder Inglis and I have made it a goal to work there. So we spent all day Wednesday there and visiting. We didn't get to see all that many people but the branch was so happy with what we had done when we reported at Rescue night that night. There is a whole lot of work to do there and I am so happy to be able to be the one to do it!

I want to wish a Happy Mothers day to all the Mothers out there! Hopefully it was a good one! I was happily able to skype my family today and talk with them. Its crazy to think that was my last skype session for my mission. For Mothers Day both our ward and our Branch did a Linger Longer after church so we all stayed after to have a feed. Because we cover the ward and the branch we can only go to one of them on Sundays. So we went to our branch Yesterday at 10 and stayed the whole time. Then because the Ward starts at 11 we left the feed with our branch and went to the one with the ward and we had heaps of food! It was a good day!

We had rescue night on Thursday with our ward and so Elder Inglis and I did splits with a few members. I went with a member of the Elders Quorum Presidency Brother Maxwell. We went to visit a guy named Sam. Well first off it was raining hard out and then he had a steep gravel driveway and so I was just glad that we made it up in our car. Then we started talking to him and he told us that he didn't like the church and had all of these issues with it. Well then right before we finally left Brother Maxwell shared his testimony with this brother and then we left. Brother Maxwell said afterwards that he has visited that man for about 5 years now and every time he goes his goal is to share his testimony and so for 5 years he has shared his testimony with this man. That's persistence.

My spiritual thought this week comes from a lesson that we had this week. We were helping one of our returning Less Active Part Member families explain what the Atonement was to their 6 year old daughter. After much testing and trying we got her to finally understand why Christ suffered for us when we asked her if she liked being sad. When she responded with a no we told her that Jesus did that for us so that we don't have to be sad and so we can be happy! It was a really sweet spirit when we saw it click in her head!

Love,

Elder Seelos