Kia Ora!
Today has been pretty dark and rainy. The sun is poking through a little bit. I'm still loving the rain. Everybody says its been abnormally wet, and that they don't like it. I don't know what their problem is, but I love it.
Things here are going much better. I'm really starting to get into the work! I had a couple of trade offs with a couple elders this week. Thursday with Elder Mayer, and Friday with Elder Burr (ZL). With Elder Mayer I was in charge of everything, had to plan who to see and what to do. The whole time I was thinking 'I've only been here for two weeks, give me a break' but we pulled through and had some good street contacts and potential investigators. Elder Burr is amazing! He knows what I'm going through being shy and being homesick. He gave me some good advice that seems to be working (along with prayer. Prayer works). We taught one of his investigators who was quite a miracle. Her name is Katherine, she comes from a Anglican church background and suffers from severe depression (to the point she couldn't bring herself to shower, or even get out of bed until late afternoon). She said a prayer to find the truth and it had to be by a person with her same background. The next day Elder Rezel, the only one in the mission who comes from an Anglican background talked to her on the street. She said within 3 days she was feeling so much better, and to me, I would have no idea she suffers from depression. It was such a spiritual lesson. Testimonies were shared, questions were asked and answered, and if sh didn't already have a baptismal date, we would have set her right there.
We have one person set (for baptism), Tera, and the disappointing thing about him is his partner is less active and doesn't want to go back yet. She said that she'll come back, but not yet. And they keep dodging us...frustrating, but we'll keep on trying. We're looking to set Mike on our next visit, and his two 'step-daughters?' (he's not married to their mother) this week as well. Our goal for October is 4 baptisms. It can happen.
I live in a house or 'flat' as they call it here. I'll email some pictures. Its not too bad for a missionary flat. There's a little bit of mold on the bathroom ceiling. We have a washer with the warm water broken, and a drying rack rather than a dryer. It takes all day for things to dry.
My companion was born in Utah and moved here when he was 5. So he's not officially a Kiwi. But he does have a Kiwi accent, which is pretty different than an Australian. And people are already saying that my heavy Utah accent is going away. They have a whole bunch of different expressions, but the most common is "sweet as".
The area I'm in isn't very concentrated with Maori's. Much less than 50/50. There's no more 100% Maori's left. Yeah, they're mixed pretty good. Some are white and say they're Maori. They have same living conditions as the Kiwi's. The ones who still hold on to their Maori beliefs, at least the ones I've see, are usually alchoholics or into drugs and stuff. But there are a lot of good Mauri's as well.
The kind of people I teach...hmmm. Well most people here drink, and a lot smoke. But the people that invite us back are usually the nicer side of society, so they're willing to listen. But its only the ones who have an open mind to other things that usually will let us talk. I'd say most people say, nope, I'm happy where I am. Being content is the hardest problem we're running into. People aren't willing to change.
Nope, no mutton yet.
And the accent is actually pretty different from Australian once you've been around it for a while. There are a few things that make it hard to understand what they're saying, like they're "r's". They say them like the English. I'm trying to learn to speak Kiwi as best I can. Its pretty fun.
Ka Kite, Love you all!
Love,
Elder Sorensen
Today has been pretty dark and rainy. The sun is poking through a little bit. I'm still loving the rain. Everybody says its been abnormally wet, and that they don't like it. I don't know what their problem is, but I love it.
Things here are going much better. I'm really starting to get into the work! I had a couple of trade offs with a couple elders this week. Thursday with Elder Mayer, and Friday with Elder Burr (ZL). With Elder Mayer I was in charge of everything, had to plan who to see and what to do. The whole time I was thinking 'I've only been here for two weeks, give me a break' but we pulled through and had some good street contacts and potential investigators. Elder Burr is amazing! He knows what I'm going through being shy and being homesick. He gave me some good advice that seems to be working (along with prayer. Prayer works). We taught one of his investigators who was quite a miracle. Her name is Katherine, she comes from a Anglican church background and suffers from severe depression (to the point she couldn't bring herself to shower, or even get out of bed until late afternoon). She said a prayer to find the truth and it had to be by a person with her same background. The next day Elder Rezel, the only one in the mission who comes from an Anglican background talked to her on the street. She said within 3 days she was feeling so much better, and to me, I would have no idea she suffers from depression. It was such a spiritual lesson. Testimonies were shared, questions were asked and answered, and if sh didn't already have a baptismal date, we would have set her right there.
We have one person set (for baptism), Tera, and the disappointing thing about him is his partner is less active and doesn't want to go back yet. She said that she'll come back, but not yet. And they keep dodging us...frustrating, but we'll keep on trying. We're looking to set Mike on our next visit, and his two 'step-daughters?' (he's not married to their mother) this week as well. Our goal for October is 4 baptisms. It can happen.
I live in a house or 'flat' as they call it here. I'll email some pictures. Its not too bad for a missionary flat. There's a little bit of mold on the bathroom ceiling. We have a washer with the warm water broken, and a drying rack rather than a dryer. It takes all day for things to dry.
My companion was born in Utah and moved here when he was 5. So he's not officially a Kiwi. But he does have a Kiwi accent, which is pretty different than an Australian. And people are already saying that my heavy Utah accent is going away. They have a whole bunch of different expressions, but the most common is "sweet as".
The area I'm in isn't very concentrated with Maori's. Much less than 50/50. There's no more 100% Maori's left. Yeah, they're mixed pretty good. Some are white and say they're Maori. They have same living conditions as the Kiwi's. The ones who still hold on to their Maori beliefs, at least the ones I've see, are usually alchoholics or into drugs and stuff. But there are a lot of good Mauri's as well.
The kind of people I teach...hmmm. Well most people here drink, and a lot smoke. But the people that invite us back are usually the nicer side of society, so they're willing to listen. But its only the ones who have an open mind to other things that usually will let us talk. I'd say most people say, nope, I'm happy where I am. Being content is the hardest problem we're running into. People aren't willing to change.
Nope, no mutton yet.
And the accent is actually pretty different from Australian once you've been around it for a while. There are a few things that make it hard to understand what they're saying, like they're "r's". They say them like the English. I'm trying to learn to speak Kiwi as best I can. Its pretty fun.
Ka Kite, Love you all!
Love,
Elder Sorensen
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