Monday, May 23, 2016

It's raining man hallelujah it’s raining man. 

The weather this week has been absolutely crazy!  I think it has rained every day for the past week!  Sometimes the rain is just normal rain and other times it rains so much I don't even have words to describe it.  I have literally never seen it rain so hard in my life until I came to New Zealand.  It has been absolutely insane.  There were swell warnings this week so all of the crazy surfers were pumped to go catch some huge waves.  The rain doesn't really bother me too much though, I actually kind of like it.  We had fun playing in the rain on our last preparation day.  Our last preparation day was really crazy!  We mostly just went shopping, which absolutely was terrible.  Shopping back home absolutely stinks, but shopping on your only day off on your mission is even worse.  I thought I was going to die haha.  The reason we were shopping was because the Zone Leaders went to Howera for their pday so we were all by ourselves.  We went shopping because Elder Suriben needed some things and I needed to find a camera.  Turns out I'm not even going to buy a camera though, so that was a waste of time haha.  Anyway, it was going to turn out to be the worst pday in the history of pdays.  However, we still had an hour left and Elder Suriben and I decided that we would go play each other in basketball.  We are both really competitive and love basketball.  I will tell you a little bit about Elder Suriben’s game.  Elder Suriben has handles like Steph Curry and Kyrie Irving combined.  It is way fun to watch him move with the ball, he makes me look pretty stupid sometimes.  We started our first game at 4:00 and I was smashing Elder Suriben.  However, Elder Suriben had a mean comeback and won.  The second game started at 4:30 and the rain started as well.  At first it was just a light rain, but then it was a downpour.  I can honestly say I have never played basketball in that much rain in my life.  It was so fun!  Well the second game finished at about 4:42 and I barely edged out Elder Suriben.  Well the third game started and it was all or nothing, and guess what else started haha.... the lighting and thunder!  It was absolutely crazy!!!!!  It was so much fun though.  I can't even describe how crazy the weather was.  It was pretty sketchy, but we had heaps of fun.  I ended up winning the last game, but it wasn't really fair.  The court was so wet that we could hardly dribble, and so that took away Elder Suirben’s advantage.  So I don't really count it as a win.  We ended up having heaps of fun though, and got absolutely drenched in the process.

I think people feel bad for us because we are out in the rain so sometimes they are more willing to listen to us.  Other times they just think we are absolutely stupid, which could partially be true.  However, the worst part about the rain in when it is accompanied by the cold.  This week was also freezing cold!  For those of you who do not know, I'm currently serving in Taranaki which is next to Mount Taranaki.  During the winter Mount Taranaki gets covered in snow.  It doesn't usually snow in Waitara, only once every 20 years or so, but it gets very cold.  So this week has been really interesting trying to stay out of the rain, and keep from getting sick.  Some of the days we would be soaking wet and then we would go into someone's home and have a lesson.  If there house wasn't warm than we would be sitting in our soaking wet clothes and freezing.  You would probably think with these factors that we had a bad week, however, we had a really good week!  Elder Suriben and I worked really hard to try and achieve the standards of excellence.  We were talking with everyone we possibly could, and having good attitudes while we worked in the rain.

The highlight of working in the rain came on Friday.  Friday morning around 11:00 am we went to pick up brother Tapuke to take him to a lesson with us.  Brother Tapuke is in his 60's and plays the piano at church, he is the man!  He doesn't work anymore and he is always willing to go out with us and teach.  He has a really weird and funny sense of humor.  Back to the point though, when we went to pick up Brother Tapuke we saw one of the investigators that we had dropped a couple of weeks ago loading his house up into a trailer.  Not only did they not have very many people helping them, but it was absolutely pouring down rain.  I really wanted to stop and help them, but we had a set appointment with one of our investigators.  Well the appointment ended up falling through and so Elder Suriben and I decided to go and see if we could help this family move.  Well to make my long story a little shorter we ended up spending several hours helping this family move in an absolute downpour of rain.  I really don't know what they would have done if we hadn't shown up.  They would have been up all night moving!  Their home was very messy and cluttered.  I'm so thankful for a mom who has taught us to clean.  I sure hope that my home is always up to par with my mom’s standards.  Lots of the homes that I have been in here in NZ have been really cluttered though.  I'm so thankful for all the hard work my mom does to keep our house clean and tidy.  Elder Suriben and I got a good workout lifting all of the stuff though, they had heaps of heavy things.  I forgot that I wasn't supposed to say "haha" but I self-corrected my paper and I think I go the majority of the "haha's".  Anyway, Elder Suirben and I were really thankful that we were able to serve their family and we hope that we can try to share the gospel with them.

I thought I would tell you some random facts to end my email.  Elder Brunson loves sweet chili sauce, I eat it with everything, I put it in my noodles, on my sandwiches, and even in my soup.  The food here is really plain so I have to spice it up with some sweet chili sauce.  Also Elder Brunson no longer hates peas, I actually quite enjoy them.  I don't know what has changed, whether it is my taste buds or the peas here are different I'm not sure.  Thanks for all of the support from everyone though!  I love you all, and hope that you have a tremendous week.  

Love,

Elder Brunson