Elder Zealand: Food...feast or famine

Well this week was good. I guess not all that much happened. So just starting off we had a great thanksgiving with heaps of food and it was so good!! There was lots of good food and everything turned out great! The turkey was awesome and we had lots of fun talking and hanging out. I'm glad that everyone had a good time at thanksgiving! Mine definitely wasn't the same without everyone there!

So to start off we had trade off again with Mt. Albert just like every week. I got to go into their area and see the people there! But because I'm the only Elder in the District that can drive, the car stayed with me so we drove in their little area. We met a man named Trevor and he is a less active who has some mental issues. He's a super nice guy but has a few problems. But he lives alone and gets pretty bored and doesn't have a lot. So we took him HEAPS of food from the store and we went in and we ate with him and he was so happy and he loved it all! It was so fun to see the smile on his face!

We have a part of our area that is basically detached from the larger part of our area so when we go up there we try to spend 2-3 hours because it takes a lot of K's to get there. So we were up there on Friday and we spent the entire afternoon there. We started out knocking doors and we meet some nice people and were able to talk with them about Family History stuff! Then we started to visit some people and we went to see a Potential and they were not home but across the street some people were waving at us and we started to talk to them. I knew they were members because I tried to visit them with Elder Pennington and they were acting like they were not members. But then they told us that they were members and they felt bad so they invited us in for some ice cream because it was hot az! ( note from Mason's mom..."sweet az" or "hot az" are typical sayings in New Zealand...it's fun to see these phrases pop up in his letters ) So they are from the Samoan ward and we chatted with them, then we left with a prayer and we went to go see a Less Active family in the area. We went over and they invited us in and we started to talk and then the Mother (Old Lady) told her daughter (Semi Active) something in Samoan and so then the daughter left and we were talking and then the daughter came back with a new tub of ice cream and they fed us heaps of ice cream too so then we went home after that for dinner and neither of us were hungry!

Then on Saturday the Sisters asked us to come to a lesson with them to teach a New Investigator at the chapel. So we were going to meet this guy there at 4, but me and Elder Inglis were in the area and didn't have anyone to see and so we got there about 20 minutes early. When we got there we realized that there was a Samoan Wedding going on at the chapel. So we called the sisters and they said it was all good, we would just take one of the empty class rooms. So we got out of the car and as we get out an old white guy walks into the gate and so we figured he was lost because it was a Samoan wedding and he looked very white. So we started to talk to him and it was the guy we were going to teach. So we walked up to the chapel to get out of the rain and as we walk up everyone at the wedding recognizes us as missionaries and they of course started to offer us food because thats what Samoans do. So we told them we were ok, and that we were just there to teach this guy. But then one of the Samoan Missionaries came up and said in our culture it is very rude to not accept food when we offer it. So they shewed us into the kitchen to get food and we ate as we waited for the sisters to come and teach this guy with us. Good food again! So after that we started to teach the white guy and he is a crazy Christian guy and just really wanted to Bible Bash so we were stuck talking to him for an hour and a half. Which of course made us late for dinner...by 40 minutes. I was so done talking to him, He was just crazy...

Oh and guess what!!! I've used the Family history book a few times now! I used it last week for a lesson at church about family history and I also used it in a lesson with an investigator about family history!!! And then we were doing Family history work and I was trying to connect grandpa Seelos' parents to my tree and I was like "I don't know enough about them to find them!!!" Then I remembered the book and I was able to use it to find them and its all connected now!!! haha. It's awesome!

So the last thing to talk about is the fact that we had very little food all week at our flat. We have had a lot of visitors, mostly the Zone Leaders, because Elder Long is obsessed with Hanni Dip. He loves it so he has been over eating all of the left over dip from Thanksgiving. When they come over they also eat a lot of our food. So we ran out of food fast. So on Friday we basically finished off our food with the Zone Leaders and so we didn't know what we were going to eat for the weekend. We managed Saturday morning and afternoon, but then we had dinner with a Tongan Family and we left there with 4 burgers, 2 Pizza's, Ice cream, and cake. On top of the 3 burgers and 1 other Pizza we ate for dinner while we were there. So we figured we would be fine for Sunday and Monday. Then we had Lunch after church yesterday with another Tongan family and they fed us HEAPS and then we left with like 2 more full meals worth of food! So my spiritual thought this week is that prayers do get answered. Because that was an answer to prayers. Haha.

Love you all so much!!!