Monday, December 14, 2015
Summer!

It's so weird to think that in the states it's winter right now.  It has been way hot the past week or so here in New Zealand.  The weather here is so bipolar though so you never really know what to expect.  One day it will be way hot and the next day it will be freezing cold.  Sometimes we have all four seasons in one day!  One of the days this past week was like that.  We woke up and it was freezing cold, but by the end of the day we were in short sleeved shirts.  This summer is supposed to be one of the hottest summers in New Zealand and I'm not too sure how I feel about it haha.  Elder Barbosa hates the summer, which I think is really funny because he is from Brazil!  He says it gets way hotter where he lives but that he just surfs all day so it doesn't bother him.

This past week was a good week.  We didn't have heaps of success but we worked really hard.  I will just talk about a couple highlights of the week and then we will be heading to Gizzy (Gisborne) for preparation day…going to do some Christmas shopping!  As my family knows, I'm not too much of a shopper so we will see how much shopping gets done haha.

So I don't know what's happening to me, I could very possibly be turning into a frog.  I have never had a wart in my entire life until I came out on my mission, then I got two!  One on my finger, which isn't too big but the other one was on my big toe and it was massive.  The wart on my big toe has been bothering me for the past couple months because it is in between the joint on my toe.  So after a long day of walking it will be pretty sore.  Turns out Elder Barbosa had heaps of warts on his hands so we both thought we might as well get them removed.  So Tuesday we drove to Gisborne and got some warts removed haha.  I think I might have to go back though because the wart on my foot was ingrown so I will need them to freeze it again.

Tuesday morning before we got our warts removed we had a pretty sad but good experience.  So last week we were knocking on doors and we ran into a lady named Coral.  Coral was way nice but said that she had been meeting with the JW's.  We talked to her for a while and finally got her to agree to meet with us.  We were super pumped because she just seemed like a really good person who would accept the gospel.  Well Tuesday morning came around and we went to visit her.  So we knocked on the door and Coral immediately said that she felt really bad but that she couldn't meet with us.  She said that she would feel like she was turning her back on Jehovah.  So we talked to her for a little bit but ended up leaving without really teaching her anything.  As Elder Barbosa and I drove away we just felt so down.  We had been so excited for her to hear our message but she wouldn't even listen to it.  We were sad because we knew how much our message could help her and we just wanted her to know that Jesus Christ’s church is on the earth today.  Elder Barbosa and I pulled over to the side of the road and started talking about her.  We decided after a while of pondering that we should go back to her house and just bear our testimonies.  I wish I could tell you that there is a happy ending to the story, that we went and she was converted by our testimonies.  Unfortunately that did not happen.  But I'm still so glad we went back and shared our testimonies.   The spirit was so strong and I increased the strength of my testimony just from going back and sharing it with her.  Hopefully one day missionaries will knock on her door and she will remember what she felt as we bore our testimonies with her.  I know that The Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints is Jesus Christ church on the earth.

Thursday we had zone meeting in Gisborne.  I have been to Gisborne way too many times in the past week haha.  We are going today too and then we have an exchange on Tuesday with the zone leaders so I might be going there again!  Zone meeting was way good though, I learned that I have a lot to improve on as a missionary haha.  I think that is about it for the week haha!  I'm loving New Zealand!  Missionary work is way harder than I expected but I love it!

Love,
Elder Brunson