One year on the mission!!
We passed a milestone on our mission this week and we can hardly believe it. As of Wednesday past, we have been on our mission for 1 year and in a few days we will have been in New Zealand for a year. The time has passed incredibly fast. At the same time it seems so long ago that we were living in West Bountiful. The mission life has become so much the normal for us that our previous life seems almost like a dream. New Zealand has become our home and everything is comfortably familiar to us. Of course we think of and miss our friends and family but this is where we need to be at this time.
After a few days of adjustment, we are back into the routines of a busy mission. With sending so many missionaries home due to Covid, it has allowed me to do some things with our flats I have wanted to do since taking over as housing coordinator. That is to evaluate each flat and clean and upgrade them as much as possible. We have removed literally tons of discarded clothing, rubbish, outdated missionary materials, trash and what not from the vacated flats. Many have furnishings that are old and worn out and I hope to replace them in the next month. That way we will be ready when we finally have an influx of missionaries again. We are having some New Zealand natives trickle in, 9 in the past 2 weeks and we expect to get as many as 30 over the next month.
Being locked down in their flats for nearly 2 months has had some negative effects on the missionaries. They lost motivation, which was expected given the circumstances and that translated into some very messy flats. I had to really crack down on a few of them this past week. I told one companionship their place looked like it housed drug dealers.( It really did!) That seemed to prick their consciences. They responded in a positive way and carted off 10 large bags full of stuff. With moving to less restrictions, the missionaries are able to resume more normal schedules and they seem to be much happier.
We are grateful to be serving a mission at this time. The challenges have been unexpected but they have helped us to grow, We feel so blessed that our family has been watched over in our absence and that the world seems to be emerging from the pandemic. We know the Lord has had a hand in the events affecting the world and the outcome will come with many silver linings. We have already experienced many of them. God bless you all!!
Love
Elder and Sister Folland
After a few days of adjustment, we are back into the routines of a busy mission. With sending so many missionaries home due to Covid, it has allowed me to do some things with our flats I have wanted to do since taking over as housing coordinator. That is to evaluate each flat and clean and upgrade them as much as possible. We have removed literally tons of discarded clothing, rubbish, outdated missionary materials, trash and what not from the vacated flats. Many have furnishings that are old and worn out and I hope to replace them in the next month. That way we will be ready when we finally have an influx of missionaries again. We are having some New Zealand natives trickle in, 9 in the past 2 weeks and we expect to get as many as 30 over the next month.
Being locked down in their flats for nearly 2 months has had some negative effects on the missionaries. They lost motivation, which was expected given the circumstances and that translated into some very messy flats. I had to really crack down on a few of them this past week. I told one companionship their place looked like it housed drug dealers.( It really did!) That seemed to prick their consciences. They responded in a positive way and carted off 10 large bags full of stuff. With moving to less restrictions, the missionaries are able to resume more normal schedules and they seem to be much happier.
We are grateful to be serving a mission at this time. The challenges have been unexpected but they have helped us to grow, We feel so blessed that our family has been watched over in our absence and that the world seems to be emerging from the pandemic. We know the Lord has had a hand in the events affecting the world and the outcome will come with many silver linings. We have already experienced many of them. God bless you all!!
Love
Elder and Sister Folland
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