Aug 6th

Kia Ora Whanau!!

     I'm happy that today's a sunny day.  Its been a rainy past couple of weeks.  But it doesn't bother me too much because I'm in a car now :)!  And better yet, I'm the driver.  Before now I've only driven a handful of times.  I'm finally used to the steering column being on the right side.  I was used to being on the left before, but now I'm used to the driver on the right side. 

     Its been pretty easy to be a district leader in this area because 1 because of a zone meeting I haven't had to lead a district meeting yet, and 2 its only our companionship and two sets of sisters, so I don't have to worry about setting up trade offs!  Last Friday we had a good little Zone meeting about trying new finding ideas.  In this mission 'zone conference' means 2-4 zones coming together with president, and 'zone meeting' means just 1 zone and sometimes has president or the ap's.  But the hard thing about the sisters here, is that their proselyting time is cut by half or more because they work at the visitors' centre.  So my challenge is to gage how hard they're working given the less time.  

     Then on Saturday we went on trade offs with the zone leaders.  I stayed in this area with Elder Smith.  As we traded off he was telling me he had chicken pox and so we should stay away from children and pregnant women.  Then in the morning he decided to call Sister Lekias before we went out, and she told him it would be better to stay in the flat and not take any risks.  So all of Saturday we stayed in the flat.  The most boring day of my mission.  

     Despite all of that we have some good potential for baptisms here.  First off there's Nicole.  She is pretty much ready to be baptized.  She's been investigating for the last 2 years, and knows its all true.  Her only concern is that she will only get baptized when she see's her husband (rm) really go back to church.  And his biggest excuse is that he plays in a Rugby league tournament.  But the final for that is this Saturday then he'll be finished for the year with games.  We're hoping that will be it, and that he'll come back.  Ripeka (9) is ready to be baptized, she was just sick all last week.  And then we just found out that a member has just adopted a 13 yr old from Samoa thats been to church twice now, and loves it.  

Arohanui! 

Sincerely,

Elder Sorensen