1 Down, 23 to go - 9/17/2023

Hey everyone!! So many big changes this week I don't even know where to start. I am officially one month (and some change) into the mission and so much has happened already, so I can't wait to see what will happen in the next 23 months!


I was assigned to the Tūrangi/Lake Taupō area, so our district is pretty much just a massive circle around Lake Taupō, which is in the very center of the north island of NZ. When you get the chance, look up pictures of the lake, its absolutely gorgeous! Elder Watson is my trainer for the next 12 weeks and is this 6 foot 5 basketball player from Texas. He's super cool and will definitely get me into some good habits for the rest of the mission. When I met him I thought he was a native because he's already got the Kiwi accent and slang going.

Since I don't have to learn another language I can just jump straight into teaching lessons, which has already brought so many awesome spiritual experiences. Like this one afternoon we were teaching a family who had been inactive in the church for the last 10 years (they all now have baptism dates set now 🥳), and they had their cousin over to listen in on the lesson. He didn't seem interested at all, but by the end of us talking about the Holy Ghost he was on the edge of his seat and his jaw was on the floor. I had never felt the spirit so strong in a lesson before! He is now set up to take lessons so we'll see how he does. 

I'm in a flat with my roommate from the MTC, so I got really lucky there because I get a familiar face for a while! The four of us have been playing a lot of "late" night card games and its been so much fun! I say "late" becasue we're all so exhausted from the day that we usually crash around 9:30. Since our area is up in the mountains it's A LOT colder than the rest of the island but we have a car so it's not too terrible.

One of our investigators invited us to a kapa haka which is where these schools perform hakas and sing songs and it was so awesome to get to know the Māori culture. My favorite part was at the end of the performances; it's customary that when someone does a haka for you, you're suppose to do one back. So the audience (which was pretty much the whole town) was standing up and SCREAMING in Māori, and we just kinda sat there. It was way cool!!

Apparently meth is a HUGE problem in this area so I think that will be one of the biggest challenges we'll face and I've already seen the effects of it. We had this guy set for baptism who was doing really well but out of nowhere he blocks us which was really weird. Then we heard from his mate that he had bought heeps of crack (meth is called crack here) and moved to Rotoroa. So that's awesome. First week in and already been ghosted!

I met all the memebers of the Taupō ward at church and they are some of the nicest people I have ever met. It was also their primary program and there was a feed after our second class with some of the best food I've had since I've been here! I've been hearing so much about how much lamb they eat here and hadn't even tried it until today; I loved it which is good because I'll be eating it a lot. I'll get to meet the memebers of the Tūrangi branch next week!

One of the members just dumped a trashbag of bread on our flat's doorstep, so now we just have HEEPS of bread.

Love y'all so much! Please keep me updated on what's going on back in the states!

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