Monday, November 2, 2015

Tracting! Halloween! and Germans!

Mom you can no longer say that I haven't ever had to work hard in my whole life haha.  This week Elder Barbosa and I smashed it!  I have literally never been so tired when I go to bed as I have been this week.  I think we have knocked on about every door in the entire town of Wairoa.  Wairoa isn't very big so it doesn't take long to cover the entire town.  We haven't actually knocked all of the doors, but I'm sure by the end of these 12 weeks, we will have knocked almost every door. Elder Barbosa loves working hard so it is great to have him as a companion.  He is the man!  Our teaching pool is so small that when I run out of ideas, we just go knock on doors.  It's not very effective to say the least, but it's better than driving around in circles, or wasting time at a member's home.  We also have done heaps of street contacting!  I like street contacting but it's not very effective in Wairoa.  We have one main street in Wairoa that has several shops on it.  So when you try and talk to people on the main street they are all going somewhere and don't want to stop to talk to you.  With that being said, we found heaps of potential investigators from street contacting this week.  We had some really keen people but sadly our return appointments with all of them fell through.  One of them was an empty house haha. The other one hasn't been home and her Aunt keeps telling us to stop wasting time.  The other one was a 15 year old girl named Evening who we invited to church but she didn't come.  I'm hoping we are able to work with those people, especially Evening because she is searching for which church she wants to join.  Although we didn't have heaps of success with return appointments this week we did set one of our investigators for baptism.  I don't know if you remember the mean exchange I had with Elder Mathews who is an assistant to the president.  Well we found two sisters, Tenika and Carol a couple of weeks ago and taught them the restoration on the street. Well Tenika has come to church the last two Sundays and we set her to be baptized for November 21st!!!!! We are super pumped.   We are also teaching her son Ricky (12) and his friend Taquinn (15).  They both went on a youth trip to Gisborne this weekend.  I hope they had a really good time!  They are both keen on getting baptized so we will see how it goes.

Halloween was so lame haha!  Halloween isn't really big here. There were heaps of kids on the main street trick or treating but other than that it was pretty lame.  It is nothing like what it is in the States. Mom I loved the candy corn that you sent me!!!  I ate my last couple of pieces yesterday to celebrate Halloween in the States. The costumes here are also pretty lame.  Everyone was pretty much dressed up as a zombie, so everyone looked the same.  Elder Barbosa and I talked about going and dressing up as missionaries to try and get lollies. The town is too small though and everyone would recognize us so we decided we should not haha.

Alright you are probably wondering about the Germans haha. This week we had two crazy experiences.  On Friday night I had no idea what we should do.  It was 8 o'clock and the people we usually see on Friday nights were gone. So we drove to one of our less active member’s house named Senie. He lives by himself and a car we didn't recognize was parked outside of his house so we thought that we better not interrupt him.  We decided to say a prayer and ask Heavenly Father to help us find something to do.  We decided to go to our go to spot....Marine Parade (the main street) and guess what???!!!! There was nobody down there haha.  By this time it was 8:20.   We decide to go back and try Senie again. Guess what??!!! The car was gone!!! But also guess what?!!! I forgot my USB and our plan was to show him a Mormon message.  So we drove to the flat and got my USB and we were about to drive back but  I looked over at Elder Barbosa and was like, "Do you think we should go to Senie's?"  We both felt like we shouldn't but we still had no idea what to do.  I decided that we would drive to Marine parade and no matter what we would just get out and start walking.  We saw a couple people but they were all really busy.  We kept walking and I was like man, we really need to find someone!  Than out of this parking lot came a guy that looked like he was in his 20's.  We end up talking to him and his name was Nicholas and he is from Germany!  He is just traveling around New Zealand for fun and was just staying the night in Wairoa and then going to Napier in the morning.  We ended up having a mean lesson with him!  We taught him the Restoration and then gave him The Book of Mormon and invited him to read and pray about it.  He said he would and he was really pumped!  It was a mean lesson but we were sad that we won't get to see if he reads and prays about The Book of Mormon.  Elder Barbosa and I talked about how mean it would be to have him come up to us in the afterlife and be like, "Do you remember me?" and then he tells us the story of his conversion. Who knows what will happen haha.  Well if it is not crazy enough to meet a German in one of the smallest towns in New Zealand, listen to this. So Sunday Elder Babosa and I were street contacting. Guess where we were street contacting?!  Marine Parade haha.  Well we ran into this girl who was 25.  We start talking to her and guess where she is from?!!!  Germany!!!!!  We were like, no way!!!! I asked her if she was with Nicholas.  She said she wasn't and that she was just with herself.  She said that she was just traveling around New Zealand for fun (same as Nicholas).  We told her about Nicholas and she thought it was the coolest thing ever.  We ended up teaching her about the Restoration and gave her The Book of Mormon and invited her to read and pray about it.  It was also a mean lesson! She wasn't as keen as Nicholas but it was still way mean.  We than asked her where she was going next...guess where?!!! Napier!!! hahaha We were like no way that is where Nicholas just went. We than told her that they were going to meet up and they were going to talk about The Book of Mormon and then become members of the church.  It was so crazy haha!  Elder Barbosa and I are hoping they meet up, fall in love, become members of the church, and live happily with their family forever haha.  It would be one in a million though.  But I think it was already one in a million that we found two Germans doing the exact same thing in Wairoa.

I know that Heavenly Father does answer prayers and that he loves each and everyone one of his children.  No matter what choices we make He will always love us!!!!!

Love,

Elder Brunson