Where did my sleep go??

  I just have to start out saying that this week was a very exhausting week!  We had meetings, appointments, and just plain old work this week.  Looking at the numbers it was a slow week, but looking at my energy meter it was a fast as week! I have honestly loved this area! It has been a good one to go to from Favona. It would have been VERY demotivating if I had gone to a crap as area. This is definitely not a crap as area!

        So first stop on the BIG NEWS train. Malachi (The 9 year old kid in the Part Member family that I talked about last week) during our FHE on Monday we talked about Baptism and tried to make it look fun for him and not scary! So after a bit of coaxing we asked him if he wanted to get baptized. Well he said maybe, and his mom said "How about Friday? Nan is coming down this weekend anyways!" So yeah... That definitely happened... So another surprise Baptism. Its amazing how the Lord works... We had set our baptism goals at 0 the weeks before but we decided to set it at 1 in faith that something would work out, God answers our prayers as long as we show him the faith and the work that go behind it!

         Now the next stop on the BIG NEWS train! We have an investigator named Grace, she is the 16 year old Niece of our Relief Society President. She has been Investigating for a while and isn't able to be baptized because her dad is saying no. Well we have gotten her and Dora to be friends from Youth and Church. So we had a combined Lesson with Grace and Dora on Tuesday Night right before Youth. So we had planned to teach the Plan Of Salvation. Yeah, that didn't happen. We were following up with Grace and Dora on the commitments that we had left them. We started to talk about baptism when we asked Dora if she had prayed about a day to be baptized. So we talked for about an hour about baptism and what their plans were and the reason behind it and how to get through the issues that they were struggling with to get there. Well after the lesson we had them both committed to pray about getting baptized on either the 1st or the 15th of October. (The 15th is Elder Boyack's last day) Dora told us that if it was up to her she would get baptized but she has to talk to her parents. Her dad is a less active member though so we are not too worried. Please keep them in your prayers!

          Next Station! We had the Come and See Fireside last night back in Mangere! So it was in the Penrose Stake Center! It was REALLY weird and cool to be back! As I walked in I was just happy and couldn't stop smiling! I felt like I was coming back home. Good, Bad Feeling! Mama Lynn from Favona ward was one of the speakers and She did AWESOME! It was so great getting to see her and a few of the ladies from the ward! Also, our Investigator Grace, She sang with her cousin in our ward for the Fireside. So Grace, as a Non-Member, sang in a missionary Fireside! She did GREAT! That was also really cool!

          Sunday Morning was an interesting one. So at about 10:30 we got a text from our Elders Quorum President asking if we could cover the Elders Quorum Lesson at church that day. Well we were all goods. Its pretty easy to make up an Elders Quorum Lesson fast cuz noone cares anyways. So that was fine. THEN we got a text from Bishop... This was about 10:45, Bishop asked us if we could do the Sacrament talks also... So of course we said yes. I haven't spoken in Sacrament since my First week on the Mission. That was over a year ago. It ended up being really great though. I took my Farewell talk on The Gift of the Holy Ghost and did some tweaking and basically just took out the stories and quotes from that and started talking. It really made me realize how far I have come... At my farewell I completely read the talk, Yesterday I just used the talk for quotes. Other than that I just talked. It was really cool! I was praying REALLY hard!

          One thing that I have been studying lately is Repentance, and how Heavenly Father tells us to Repent, then the blessings that we will get from it after that. We have a Less Active Recent Convert in our ward that doesn't fully understand the Idea of being fully forgiven of our mistakes in God's eyes and has a hard time seeing past the opinions of others and focusing on God's opinion of him. So if anyone has any thoughts or scriptures or help, we would really appreciate it!

          Well sorry it's a short ride today! Thanks for the Email's and the Prayers!

                  Love Elder Seelos

Muriwai Beach! Its was about a half and hour drive. Its a MEAN Beach! 

Malachi's Baptism!

He said now no one can say we didn't like each other!