Monday, February 29, 2016

I think by the end of my mission I am going to have arthritis from trying to type so fast.  I think I have elderly hands haha.  Anyway, momma I'm sure you are dying to know who my new companion is.  It is weird to think you don’t get live feed of everything that is happening in my life haha.  I'm sure that would make you a lot happier.  I’m a trainer again.  I now have a Filipino son!!!!!!!!  I'm so excited to be training again.  I knew transfers were coming up but the last thing I was expecting was to be training again.  I'm so thankful for the opportunity to train again.  I think I did an alright job training Elder Barbosa, but I'm excited to be able to improve my training skills.  I would train the rest of my mission if I was allowed to haha.  My son’s name is Elder Suriben, and he is the man!!!  I don't really even have to train him because he is already trained.  I'm sure he will teach me a lot more than I will teach him.  Before he came out on his mission he had heaps of callings that helped him to prepare for the mission.  He was a ward missionary, a young men's secretary, and a family history consultant.  He worked really hard at his callings and they have really helped him to mature.  He went out with the missionaries heaps and learned a lot of things from them.  He is a great example for the Priests that are preparing to go on missions.  Papi make sure you get those priests to get out with the Elders!!!!!!!!! I wish I would have gone out with the missionaries more and really studied preach my gospel.  I now have lots of ground to make up to make sure I can be the servant that our Heavenly Father wants me to be.  You priests will be so thankful when you get out on your mission that you went out with the missionaries.  It really will prepare you to serve the Lord.  I always was too concerned about my life to want to go out with the missionaries.  When we were baptized we all covenanted to be missionaries, so find out how you can more fully keep you baptismal covenant.  Elder Suriben has one younger brother who is 12, and his mom and dad.  Both of his parents were raised in the church and so was he.  Elder Suriben's favorite food is rice haha.  Today when we went shopping he bought a massive bag of rice.  I think he might eat it in a week.  He is 18 years old and is really, really skinny!!!  Maybe even skinnier than Uncle Adam haha which would be amazing, I think he weighs 125 pounds.  I think I could toss him across the room.  He is a pretty quiet fella, but I'm sure he will talk more once we get to know each other a little better.  He loves to play basketball, so I'm sure we will play some basketball before the transfer is over.  Great news!!!!!!!!! Guess who my Zone Leader is?!  Elder Fellingham!!!!  Elder Fellingham was my zone leader for 2 transfers when I was in Gisborne.  He is way cool, and is actually the son of Elder Lingwall.  The funniest part of the whole thing was that I called Elder Fellingham coming to be the zone leader in Taranaki.  About halfway through last transfer I went up to Elder Lingwall and told him I just had received revelation that his son (Elder Fellingham) was going to come to Taranaki next transfer.  It was the weirdest thing ever haha.  So who knows, maybe I will get to golf this transfer since Elder Fellingham likes to golf.  I haven't swung a club in ages though, so I'm a little skurd haha.  This morning during companion study it was pouring cows!!!!!!!  The weather is still really hot though!  I'm so ready for it to be cold, because our flat is rubbish and always hot haha.  Also yes mom, my camera is pretty much toast, so I will have to buy a new one, and I forgot my camera at the zone leaders flat so I won’t even be able to send any pictures, sorry!!!!  Also, the watch I came with broke, and it would be $85 to fix and I wasn't about to do that.  After ages of contemplating I finally convinced myself to buy a $20 dollar watch.  I knew I should not have done that because I figured it would break really quick.  Not to my surprise, that is exactly what it did.  It broke, and then I fixed it, but then it went through the wash and got ruined haha.  So I'm really struggling at the moment haha.  I don't really want to buy any new things because they will just end up broken haha.

I'm not really sure if I have told you guys about Matiu one of our investigators.  He is the man, and has been coming to church every week.  He is set for baptism this Saturday, but still has some things we have to work through.  He is doing really good though, and we are really hoping that he will be baptized.  Elder Suriben and I have been working really hard to find new people to teach.  We had a really good experience this week following the promptings of the spirit.  It was Saturday night and we had come back to do 12 week.  The first 12 weeks of your mission you get an extra hour of companionship study to do 12 week.  So we opened up 12 week with a prayer and then I had the thought that we should go visit one person and just invite them to church on Sunday.  So we went to invite the people to Church and they were not even home, but there were two people that we were able to set up a return appointment with.  They had met with missionaries ages ago, but had gotten really busy.  They are Samoan and are way nice!  It was something really simple, and who knows if they will even progress.  But I'm so thankful for the gift of the Holy Ghost.  I got to go.  Time is up.

Love,

Elder Brunson!!!!!!         

Elder Brunson and the pretty flowers.

Les Parish's Baptism

Elder Brunson, Sister Katene, Brother Parish,
Sister Flake, and Elder Vaea

Maori Art

Dawson Falls
Mount Taranaki

Flash Back pictures with Elder Barbosa

Eating too much at Bishop Edward's house in Wairoa.

Monday, February 22, 2016

Transfers again?!!

It’s time for transfers again.  Time is flying by.  It feels like I just left home yesterday.  I have really enjoyed being companions with Elder Vaea.  We are always laughing and having a good time.  Elder Vaea is from Tonga and is 21 years old.  It’s kind of weird to think I'm practically 3 years younger than him.  He is one of the happiest people I have ever met.  He is always smiling and saying hi to people.  When we go to church on Sunday he makes sure to shake everyone's hand.  I still don’t know if we will be companions this next transfer.  He has already been in Waitara for 3 transfers so it is pretty likely that he will be leaving.  We are guessing that he will be going to the Tongan program because the Tongan program needs good missionaries.

I will tell you a little more about our branch though.  Our branch president is President Murray.  He has been the branch president for the last 4 years.  He is a really straightforward guy, and works really hard.  Brother Patu in the Ward mission leader and is a 60 year old widower.  He is also a golfer just like me, but we haven't really talked about golf.  He is a good fella but doesn't really come out with us.  Right now we are working really hard for our branch to become a ward.  We get about 70 people in attendance to Church each week.  Elder Vaea and I have been able to get quite a few people to church this transfer even though we don't have very many investigators.  The main investigators we have are Les Parish an 85 year old man that we just baptized, Matiu (yes, I seem to teach all of the Matiu's), a dad in his 40's who is set for baptism, and Tawhio.  Matiu is the man though.  He has come to church the last couple of weeks and is working really hard to be able to keep the word of wisdom.  He is really excited about his baptism!  The members in our branch are really nice, but they don’t really feed us haha.  In Wairoa we got fed almost every night, but in Waitara we get fed about twice a week.  We had a mean feed this last Sunday with the Maonga family, they are Samoan.  They gave us a huge feed and I almost died I was so full.  Guess what I got to eat?! Raw fish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It was mean!!!!!!!!!!!  I think I could eat that for every meal.  It is a salad dish that they have in the islands.  It has raw fish, vegetables, and coconut milk.  I'm not really sure what they call it.  We also had mutton, noodles, and an egg salad.  They are Samoan so they made us keep eating and eating.  We skipped dinner that night haha.  We get our haircut from brother Maoanga, in return we do service for him.  This last week I mowed his lawn.  It was practically a jungle!!!  It was a pretty tiring job.  The grass grows so fast here!!!  I love getting out and doing service though.  I especially love mowing lawns.  Maybe I will go work for Marshall when I get home.  Shout out to Brother Decoria for being the best teacher’s quorum leader.  He had to put up with me and Forest, and that is not an easy task haha.  I used to be a punk, so I don't know how he had the patience to work with us.  He definitely has played a big influence in my life though.  He has always reached out to the young men and made sure we felt important.  My dad would never let us go use the church gym unless we had a Melchizedek Priesthood holder there so Marshall would come short notice and play basketball with a bunch of teenagers.  I have always appreciated his great example!

A little bit about our flat.  Our flat is alright haha, to put it nicely.  I definitely miss my first flat haha.  We have no A/C and one fan, which is right next to my companion’s bed.  The weather has been so hot that it is absolutely miserable to sleep at night.  It has taken some time to adjust but I'm finally getting used to it.  This summer has been one of the hottest in New Zealand, especially in Taranaki.  This last week however, has been really rainy.  I love the rain though so I really don't mind it.  Plus we have a car so we don't have to worry about biking in the rain.  Our flat is about 2 minutes from the church and 1 minute from the main street.  The area is pretty similar to Wairoa, but there are a lot more white people, which is sad haha.  No offence to white people, but the Maori people are a lot more humble haha.  It only takes about 5-10 minutes to go from one side of Waitara to the other.  Waitara is about 10 minutes from Bell Block which is another area that we cover.  The sisters stay there though, and so they pretty much just cover Bell Block.  We have a few investigators that we go and visit there though.  We go about once or twice a week to Bell Block.  Right now Elder Vaea and I are staying with Elder Lingwall, our Zone Leader, because he killed his companion (his companion was done with his mission and went home).  This morning the zone went to the bus stop with Elder Fagaloia and sent him home.  We did a haka off!  We did the haka that we learned at the Christmas Conference haha.  I did not remember it at all!  I just yelled and threw my arms around haha.  A Moari kid lead it though, and he was way mean.  Elder Fagaloi cried so that was pretty sad.  Elder Fagaloia is from American Samoa and he is way cool!  I got to go on an exchange with him the other day.  Elder Vaea and I are staying in New Plymouth until Thursday when Elder Lingwall will get his new companion.

Touch (Rugby) on the beach was so fun last week!  I love rugby!  I just wish I was better at it.  The beach we went to was way mean though!  I don’t really even know how to explain how cool it was.  It was this part of the beach where two tides came in from separate parts.  I wish I had my camera so I could have taken pictures of it, but I forgot it in the car, and it was quite a hike down to the beach.  We will definitely go back there before I leave this area though.  Taranaki is really beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!  The other day we went up to Mount Taranaki for pday and went to a place called Dawson falls.  I'm not even sure if I ever talked about that, but it was way mean.

Shout out to my Papi and little bro Chevin, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   I hope you guys have a mean birthday and party it up!!!  I'm sure Kevin is getting even more ladies than before without his braces, he looks like a studd.  I'm sure my papi will have to keep fending off the other woman because he is already married to my beautiful mom haha.  The mission is mean and I hope this email was a little better.  Katie I hope you are staying out of trouble.  Amanda you are beautiful.  Emma you’re funny and cute.  Mom you are the best mom in the whole world!!!!!!!!!!! 

Love,

Elder Brunson  

PS  I got stung by a bee this week through my long sleeve white shirt

Also, the world wide missionary email was not working properly last week so if you didn’t get a reply to your email, that is why.

Monday, February 15, 2016

Te amo dio Valentines.  Nomas estaba bromeando!!

I felt like it would be cool to attempt to start my letter in a foreign language haha.  I don't think I did a very good job.  Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone back home.  I am very thankful for the Valentines package that I received momma, I love Valentines candy.  That is probably my favorite candy of the year.  Yes, it beats Halloween candy, except for candy corn, that is my favorite.

This week has been pretty crazy!  Some weird things have happened that have thrown of the missionary schedule so we had to adjust to that haha.  None the less we were able to work hard this week and have found some awesome new investigators.  I love being a missionary!  It is so awesome to meet new people and to be able to help them in whatever circumstances they are in.  It is definitely my favorite part of missionary work, finding new people to teach.  The end of this last week has been extremely crazy. Friday night we found a note in our mail box that said we would be having a flat inspection by our land lord Monday morning at 11.  Well, like I said previously, our flat was pretty nasty from the previous missionaries and so we had heaps of work to do and not very much time to do it in.  Saturday for our dinner and lunch breaks we cleaned.  It was probably one of the nastiest cleaning jobs I have had.  Except for the time that RT threw up all over our driveway haha.  That was a pretty slimy cleanup as well.  I remember getting the hose and spraying the chunks of pizza off our driveway. Unfortunately the chunks were sticking to the little pieces of gravel so it was not an easy job.  Back to the cleaning story, Elder Vaea and I worked really hard and got all of the cleaning finished this morning.  Our flat smells like beautiful roses now, and doesn't look too bad either.  This experience has made me very thankful for all that my mom does to make sure our house is clean.  She puts a lot of effort into making sure our house stays nice.  I wish I would have appreciated that more when I was home and helped her out more than I did (which was none haha).  My mom told me in her letter this week that Katie spent 3 times as long cleaning the floors as I did when I was home doing them.  But Katie did just get off a mission.  I'm sure when I get home you will be a lot more impressed with my work ethic haha.  Thinking back though, I do remember doing a pretty good job on the kitchen floor, maybe not a very good job everywhere else.  I would get a pretty mean work out doing the kitchen floor.

Everyone who reads this letter and lives somewhere near Kennewick should be supporting Katie at her homecoming talk on Sunday.  She is the best sister missionary that has ever served.  The church could have made a District DVD just about her, the district 3 haha.  Many of you will probably not get that joke, so if you don't, ask Katie haha.  Being a missionary is hard work, I'm not going to lie, but I love it.  I will just keep saying that.  There are lots of things that are disappointing, but those good moments make up for everything else.  This week one of those good moments came from our district meeting.  Usually when I plan my district meetings I really don’t know what to plan.  I throw something together and it usually turns out all right.  This past district meeting though, I felt like I really was going to be training on what our sisters really needed.  The inspiration flowed as I was preparing.  After district meeting both sets of sisters called me and said my training was exactly what they needed.  Now I'm not trying to make myself seem so inspired haha, because I'm usually not, but it definitely was so nice to hear that I had planned my meeting by the spirit.  Hopefully this week’s training will be just as good!  Well I love you all so much.  I'm now off to play some touch (rugby) at the beach.  I love New Zealand. 

Love,

Elder Brunson 

Monday, February 8, 2016

Well once again I will most likely have a really lame email this week haha.  This will probably upset my mother because now she only has one child on a mission instead of two.  So I won’t have my big sister to make up for my lame emails anymore haha.  I can’t believe Kathryn Joy Brunson is home.  I'm sure you are all realizing now how good of a missionary she was.  I'm so glad I have such a good example for an older sister.  She really is the best sister ever!  But I love Amanda and Emma just as much.  It is weird hearing that she is home in our house.  I can’t even really picture what our house is like, and I have only been out for two months.  I can’t imagine what it will be like when I have been gone for two years haha.  I'm sure the family has had such a good week this week.  I'm sad that I'm missing out on the celebration, but I know I'm where the Lord needs me to be.

This week has had a lot of ups and downs. One of the ups was that we had a Zone conference on Thursday this week.  Zone conference was so mean and I learned so much!  Elder Tibbits, one of the Assistants gave a mean training that really helped me out.  It was getting towards the end of zone conference and we all gathered back together in the main room.  President Rudd was giving his closing remarks and then has said, “I would like Sister Green and Elder Brunson to come and share what they have learned over these past two weeks with listening to an Apostle and having this Zone conference.”  My heart started racing and I was like, “oh great” haha.  Luckily sister Green spoke first, so I had some time to prepare.  I pretty much shared my experience that I shared in my last email and also bore my testimony.  It was a good experience to share my testimony with heaps of missionaries.  I'm thankful for my testimony and I'm thankful for the many spiritual experiences that I have had in my life and so far on my mission.  After I got done sharing my experiences President Rudd grabbed a hold of me.  He walked me to the front of the room, and I was like oh great what did I do haha.  Then he said to everyone, "I want all you Elders to look at Elder Brunson's shoes. Some of you need to follow the example of Elder Brunson and introduce your shoes to some polish.”  Mom I thought you would enjoy hearing that I was wearing my really shiny shoes haha.

Now the down for this week is that we were having a really slow week, and by slow I mean we were having no success.  It was really bringing me and Elder Vaea down and we were not sure what to do.  Elder Lingwall, our zone leader, told us that Satan was trying to smash us before Les Parish’s baptism on Sunday.  Les Parish is an 85 year old man who we baptized this Sunday.  He was set for baptism by Elder Vaea and his companions and they taught him all of the lessons.  So Elder Vaea and I were just preparing him for baptism.  Les is a really nice fella and loves the missionaries.  He is always looking out for us and wants the best for us.  I definitely think what Elder Lingwall said is right because after the baptism on Sunday, Elder Vaea and I smashed it!!  We had such a good day Sunday and found heaps of new people to work with.  It was pretty amazing.  I definitely have a firm belief that before and after a miracle Satan really tries to work on us.

I will tell you about one of the cool miracles that happened on Sunday.  So Sunday night we went to try and visit a part member family that we just recently met.  We went to visit them and they didn't answer the door.  We were pretty sure they have been home the past few times we have tried and are just dodging us.  After knocking on their door we figured we would try and find our purpose for being in that area at that time.  We knocked a door and had a nice chat with a lady but she wasn't interested.  Then the fun began haha.  We decided to knock on one more door.  So this fella opens the door tells us to beep off and slams the door on our face (like really slams the door hard) and then continues to swear at us from behind the door.  So pretty discouraged and angry, Elder Vaea and I returned to the car.  As we were about to get in the car and leave, I turned to Elder Vaea and said, “We can’t end on that note, we can’t let Satan win, let’s go knock one more door.”  So we knocked on this door and this fella answered the door.  He looked angry and said absolutely nothing to us and walked away.  Then his partner yelled to us to come in.  We knew that she had no clue who was at the door, but we were guessing that if she knew it was Mormon missionaries she wouldn't be saying come in.  Well Elder Vaea and I figure here is our chance, so we took our shoes off and went in.  The lady looked surprised to see us.  I was like, “Are you surprised you were inviting the Mormon missionaries in haha?”  She was like, “yeah I had no clue who it was haha”.  The good news is this lady was nice.  So we kept talking to her and it turns out that she is a member of the church.  We talked with her for quite a while, while her partner went off into another room.  She apologized and said her partner was really grumpy.  Finally when we were about to leave he came into the room. So we tried to make some small talk with him but he was grumpy.  After a while though he started to warm up. We asked him if he believed in God.  He said he wasn't really sure.  We taught him about prayer and committed both of them to pray every night for the next week, and they accepted.  We are really excited to go back and teach them though.  I definitely know that the Lord lead us to them.  I love being a missionary, when you have one small miracle it makes up for an entire week of no success.  Keep my sister out of trouble haha.

Love,

Elder Brunson