Monday, March 21, 2016

The pressure is on!

I have one hour to finish a really eventful week haha!  I don't think I will even be able to say half of the things that I want to, but I will give it a go.  This week was pretty crazy!  I think I say that almost every week, but it really was crazy haha.  I have lots of things I could talk about and I'm not really sure what would be the most exciting for you all to hear about.  I think I will start with the best part of the week though.  I will tell you a little bit about one of the cool spiritual experiences that we had this week.  So it was Friday night, and we were supposed to have a sports night.  Every Friday we have a sports night down on the beach and play touch (rugby) and basketball.  We used to be able to play as well, but unfortunately that got banned a couple of months ago.  Now we can only play sport on Mondays.  Anyway, even though we can’t play we still go and run sports night and talk with lots of nonmembers.  Not very many people turned up this Friday though so we had to cancel it.  We decided to go to our backup plan for sports night, so off we went.  On the way to our backup plan we felt like we should go try one of the former investigator’s houses that we had been trying to contact since it was close by.  We went to the house and gave the door a good ole knock.  Hohepa, a Maori fella in his 20's answered the door.  When he answered the door he responded as a typical 20 year old would.  He was like, “nahh man, I aint into church, that's not me bro.”  Well me being the punk that I am, I kept trying to talk to him.  Really we could have just left because he told us that he wasn't really interested, but we decided to just try and get to know his background a little and then see if we could share the gospel with him.  We started talking and he started to open up.  We asked him about his religious background and if he believed in God.  As we kept asking him questions he really started opening up to us.  We taught him about prayer and how through prayer we can have peace brought to our hearts through the Holy Ghost.  He said that he has been really trying to find peace in his life.  It's hard to explain how the entire lesson went, but the spirit was really strong.  It was so cool to see the way he opened up.  At first he didn't want to know about our message, but by the end he had committed to praying about the truthfulness of our message, and if God really loved him.  We invited him to church and he said that he would come.  There must be opposition in all things though and unfortunately he didn't come to church.  We have a return appointment with him tonight though, and we are hoping that it goes well!  Sunday at church we were pretty bummed though because we didn't have any investigators at church.  We felt like we had done a good job inviting people, but none of them turned up.  Then, about 20 minutes into sacrament meeting we heard the door open up behind us.  I was expecting to see another member, but to my surprise a less active and investigator showed up.  Their names are Trayc and Cyrus, they are partners and are 20 years old.  We worked with them ages ago, but then they went out of town for a month.  They just got back last week, so we went around and invited them to church.  I was so surprised when they walked through the door, and it just put a huge smile on my face.  It was definitely a tender mercy from the Lord!

Monday we had a mean preparation day.  We went and hiked a massive hill haha.  It’s called Paritutu. Look it up! It’s a pretty intense hike up to the top.  At the top was a mean view!!!!  Funny story though, it might be hard to explain so bear with me.  So we were at the top of the hill and there are railings that go around the top to keep you safe.  So I decided to jump up to sit on top of the railing so we could take a picture.  As I jumped up my foot got caught on the railing and I rocketed face first toward the ground.  Unfortunately, my hands were holding on to the rail so I had nothing to catch my fall.  I smashed my dome into the ground and scraped up my arm and bruised my leg.  It was probably the most embarrassing thing I have done in my entire life haha.  It was something that would for sure make it on to New Zealand's funniest home videos haha.  I don't have heaps of time to explain about the other things that happened this week, because I still need to send pictures home.  Elder Suriben and I found a strange animal on our way home for the night. It was like a small porcupine thing.  Elder Suriben decided to pick it up, he didn't realize that it was spiky though and it poked his hand haha.  It is a funny little creature, and I took pictures so I will send them home.  I might try and explain some more things that happened this week in my next email, sorry I couldn't get you all of the details.  I hope you all have a great week this week!

Love,

Elder Brunson