New Zealand Hamilton Mission

How is everyone holding up during the 4th week of lockdown?  I think we're realizing even more the importance of  a ROUTINE.  We're trying not to look at the situation as a loss of choices, but as opportunities to make more choices of what to do with our time.  Before lockdown, we had a set schedule---wake up, exercise, shower, get ready, head to the mission offfice about 8:00 am, handle everything that came our way during the course of a given day, take a break for lunch, come home at night, eat dinner, read, go to sleep, and then do it all over again the next day.  Now that we can't go to the office, and much of our work has disappeared temporarily,  we have found that when we think and pray about what to do and make a list, the day feels productive and satisfying.  It's working pretty well! We have five more missionaries leaving the mission to return to their homelands on 1 May.  We will be left with 47 missionaries.  One of our sister m...

Who would have ever thought we would reach this point serving a mission?  It wasn't that long ago our days were so full it was hard to find time to do everything.  Now we struggle to fill our days with mission-related work.   Don't get me wrong-we do have work to do, but we have to pace the work to stretch it out a little bit.  We don't want to work so hard on Mondays that there is nothing left for the rest of the week.☺  I still have bills to pay and emails to respond to.  I get the same amount of emails in a week I used to get in a day.   Sister Folland's work with travel and incoming missionaries has dropped off to nothing. Towards the start of the lockdown we were visiting flats that had been vacated by the rapid loss of missionaries.  Our objective was to remove any perishable food from the houses.  We actually found a lot of food that needed to removed.  In one flat we found 5 dozen eggs out in the cupboard.  That co...

Things have quieted down now that most of our missionaries have returned to their homelands.  We try to get out of our flat (apartment) once or twice a day to take a walk or a bike ride. We enjoyed viewing General Conference.  It began at 4 am here in New Zealand😊.  It was wonderful to listen to the inspiring talks, to witness the introduction of the Bicentennial Proclamation, to hear the announcement of eight new temples, and to hear the combined choir arrangement of the hymn "We Thank Thee Oh God For a Prophet". We were able to enjoy a family video chat to celebrate our grandson Rune' s first birthday today.  We love that little boy!  He is such a delight! We were able to have a Zoom chat with all of Doug's siblings and their spouses this past week.  One thing we talked about were the silver linings that are a result of our mandated homestay to help curb the spread of Covid-19.  The one silver lining that has stood out to me is Dads being ...