New Zealand Hamilton Mission

Week 3 in New Zealand We can't believe another week as passed.  I guess since it is constantly busy with not enough hours in the day, the time passes quickly.  This past week was the last with President and Sister Cummings.  They left yesterday to head back to Australia and our new president and companion, the Ereksons arrived.  It is intersting, when there is a change of presidents, they only have about 30 minutes together.  The new president comes in with no bias and very little foreknowledge of the mission and it's missionaries.  It's like the mission has a clean slate to start with as do the  missionaries.  In a way it gives them a chance to start new and make changes in their behavior.  We were sad to see the Cummings leave as we were just starting to get to know them but are excited to learn from our new president and wife.  We will  have a chance to train them a little about how the mission office runs, too. The new experi...

26 June 2019 Elder Folland and I are intrigued with the unique Maori and Kiwi names and expressions.  We’ve been learning to pronounce correctly these names. The vowel sounds in Maori are pronounced the same as in the Spanish language.  The words sound really beautiful.  There are also many expressions that are unique.  Today we learned what the terms flog and lolly mean.  Flog means steal or rob and lolly means candy.  Other expressions are:  give way means yield when you’re driving; takeaways are to go orders; crossing the ditch means traveling to Australia; gone to custard means fallen apart as in things haven’t come together well.  We’ll post other expressions as time goes on. This past week we had two zone conferences.  They were both held in a church building in Hamilton so we just had a 15 minute drive.  President Cummings, our mission president, spoke to the missionaries about “secret combinations “, a term used in the Boo...

We've been in the Hamilton NZ Mission for about 1 1/2 weeks now.  We had some intense training with the Pierce's for several days until they finished their mission on 11 June.  The work involves lots of details and the key to success is patience!  Every new job has a learning curve.  We're doing our best and it will all come together in TIME.  The Spirit's guidance is so necessary, and we know that we've been helped immensely.  The Pierce's and Taylors have been so kind----they took us to Nando's for dinner and we enjoyed a delicious grilled chicken salad our first night here.  The Taylor's left us some yummy chocolate and a beautiful flowering plant on our dining table.  They also introduced us to cream buns at our devotional last week! We had our first zone conference in Tauranga Zone on Wednesday the 12th of June which was also our anniversary.  Elder Folland and I were responsible for vehicle inspections.  We left around 6:30 am fr...