Crazy stuff goes down in Auckland haha

Cute sign made by a little girl that we kind of know haha.
We hae tried to meet with their mom a couple times, but
she is super busy.  The girls love us though.

Cleaning our old flat.

Elder Holmes and Elder Brunson

Beautiful Temple!

Moving into the new house!

Elder and Sister Templeton helped us move in!

Ward Conference

Sending off Elder Meek at the airport.

Elder Hawkins going home.

The mean cookies!!

Whiti, K, Hariata, Ray Elijah, Bo
Best family ever!!!!

Our new flat

Zone Conference

Zone Conference

Exchange

Our mean investigator that we got to church haha!
His name is Nathan.

Monday, September 26, 2016

I can't believe another week has gone by.  I had a cold so that hasn't been heaps of fun.  My ears got plugged!!!  One of my least favorite things in the entire world is when my ears get plugged.  It drives me absolutely insane!  My ears are finally starting to unplug today though.  Having a cold and working isn't too bad until it starts raining.  The first part of the week was nice weather so my cold didn't really affect me.  However, the second half of the week rained nonstop which made working with a cold not fun!  But we pressed forward and had a really awesome week.  Sunday was insane in the rain.  Before church started it was pouring rain and nobody was home!  We tried heaps of people, but nobody would answer their doors.  We were in our suites because we had meetings in the morning so we got our suites absolutely drenched.  Then we went to church and we were soaking wet.  I sat in church and I was freezing cold.  After sacrament I went into the bathroom and tried to dry off/ warm up under the hand dryer.  It worked alright haha.  Anyway, I will give you a rundown of the highlight days of the week.  

Monday-  Monday was a good day.  For preparation day we went and played basketball with Brother Pilling and two of the Bishop’s daughters.  It was heaps of fun!  We also got haircuts from Elder Vaea so that was good!  Monday night we had an awesome miracle.  Monday night we went to try and see a lady named Angie.  Angie stays down a long driveway and she says if her car isn't there she isn't home.  There are several other houses that line this long driveway.  Well we pulled up to the long driveway and looked toward her house at the end of the driveway and guess what... her car was gone.  So we were a little bummed.  We sat there for a minute and decided what we should do.  Elder Saurey asked me if we should go and try.  We decided that we might as well and said who knows maybe we will find someone else down the driveway.  So we parked the car, said a prayer, and headed back to try and see if Angie was home.  On the way back we saw a man outside of a less active ladies house named Alofa.  Alofa is a Samoan lady in her 20's that we met two weeks ago.  She was really nice and she told us that her partner was not a member and that he had met missionaries is the past.  She said we could come back anytime!  Anyway so we saw this man outside of Alofa's house and we were guessing it was her partner.  We started talking to him and found out that he was in deed Alofa's partner and his name is Daniel.  We had a really good conversation with him, and got to know him and asked him what he thought about meeting with the missionaries.  He didn't seem overly keen, but he was super nice and said we could come by anytime.  We were about to leave, and we asked him if he would be keen to take a pamphlet.  Normally I give out restoration pamphlets, but for some reason I felt like we should give him a plan of salvation pamphlet.  Well we were just about to leave and give him the pamphlet when all of a sudden he asked us if we wanted to come in and meet their two kids.  We said sure and so we came in.  Alofa was so happy to see us!  Alofa immediately asked us if we could review the plan of salvation with her.  We agreed and so we sat down and taught the plan of salvation to Alofa and Daniel.  Alofa told us that her mom had just passed away a week ago and that she wanted to know what she needed to do to be with her again.  We had a really awesome lesson, and the spirit was definitely present.  There were some distractions with their kids, but I know our message helped her.  It was so cool that we had planned to leave him with the plan of salvation pamphlet and then that's exactly what they needed!  I'm so thankful for the spirit which can lead and guide us.  It was also amazing that the spirit prompted us to get out of the car and try Angie.  Alofa said she really wanted us to stop by, and I'm thankful that the timing worked out.  I know the Lord sent us there because he loves Alofa and knew she needed our message at that time.  

Tuesday-  Tuesday we had a Zone conference.  There were two other zones at the conference and about 50 missionaries in attendance.  President Cummings gave a really good training on teaching repentance and baptizing converts.  President Cummings is a really awesome mission President and I have already learned so much from him.  The conference went from 10:00-2:30 but Elder Saurey and I had to be there early to set everything up with the Assistants.  It's always good to see Elder Holmes.  I love Elder Holmes. He is the man, I wish me and that fella could be companions again haha.  We would definitely smash it haha.  Elder Saurey and I also had to stay after the zone conference to help clean everything up, so pretty much our whole Tuesday was gone.  

Wednesday-  Wednesday we went on an exchange with the Mountfort Elders, Elder Osborn (Utah), and Elder Ellsworth (Oregon).  We had a really solid exchange!  The highlight of the exchange was finding a new lady to teach named Adrianne.  Addrianne was a cool experience as well.  So we went to try and see a potential investigator named Joseph.  Elder Ellsworth and I were on the bikes because it was a beautiful morning.  Well we tried to see Joseph, but he wasn't home.  As we were biking from his house I pulled a classic Elder Brunson.  A certain house caught my eyes attention and we rode a little past it and I didn't stop.  I felt like we should go back so we wheeled around and went back to try the house.  So Elder Ellsworth and I got off our bikes and knocked on the door.  A lady answered the door that obviously had a cold and didn't really want to talk because of her cold.  She told us we could come back another time though.  Somehow, and I can’t even remember how, we ended up getting into a longer conversation with her than we originally thought we would be able to.  We briefly talked to her about the restoration and then we got into talking about prayer.  She said she had prayed a little bit in her life, but wasn't too sure how to pray.  We taught her how to pray and invited her to read the restoration pamphlet and pray to know if the things inside of it were true.  She was really excited and committed to reading it and we have a return appointment with her tomorrow.  The exchange went really well.  Elder Ellsworth is a new missionary, but he is a hard worker and very intelligent.  It was awesome to be on an exchange with him.  He was even able to convince me to eat at Carl’s Junior twice haha so that was good.  

Sunday- Unfortunately Angelina who is set for baptism didn't come to church on Sunday :(  and neither did some of the other people that we were hoping would come.  However, Harmony was there.  Harmony is the 8 year old girl that we have been teaching whose parents are both nonmembers and she comes to church with brother and sister Kalonihea who are active members of our ward.  She is going to be baptized this Saturday so we are excited about that!  She is getting baptized with her cousin Selina who also just turned 8.  It should be a really awesome baptism.  Our real goal is to get the parents baptized!  We are slowly working on them though.  Harmony's mom even prayed this last week. Sunday night we had a mean feed at the Bishops house.  They have lots of family in town so they cooked a mean feed.  There was heaps of Samoan food so I was in heaven!  I love Taro!!!  I ate heaps!  I also had some mean shrimp!  I love Island food so much!  Well we had a huge feed at the bishop’s house and then guess what happened?

Well, after we ate at the Bishop’s we went to Whiti and K's house.  Guess what happened there?  They fed us again!!!!  Man I almost died!!!  I was so full!  They fed us dessert as well!  After dinner we had another awesome lesson with them!  We taught them about prayer and had a mean lesson.  The best part was at the end of the lesson K offered to say the closing prayer!  He gave a really awesome prayer.  They really want to come to church this week though!  I definitely think they are going to come!  We got some really sad news though :(  They told us they would be moving in a couple of weeks :(  They are moving like one street out of our boundary.  It will still be in our zone, but not our area!  We are so sad :(  They are literally the coolest family ever!  They are Maori and are so awesome.  I don't know what I'm going to do when they move.  

Overall it was another mean week!  I love serving the Lord!  Hope you all have a mean week!  Eat some Islander food if you are cool!  

Love,

Elder Brunson

Monday, September 19, 2016

I'm in love I'm in love and I don't care who knows it!

Yes, it's true.... I'm in love with the gospel of Jesus Christ!  As for Katie I think she has a little different kind of love story going on.  Shout out to Katie and Tanner for getting engaged this week!  That is such exciting news!  I'm very glad that I don't have to worry about that kind of stuff yet haha.  So good luck Katie!  I can't believe you will have a husband when I get home haha.  I was telling Katie last week that I felt like we would never grow up.  We would always be brother and sister who stay with their mom and dad at 3207 W. Canyon Lakes Dr.  It is strange that we have to grow up.  I just want everyone to know that I have the best family in the whole world and that we are very lucky to have Katie as our oldest sibling.  Katie is the best example ever!  I remember my last week of seminary, bishop Moses asked us "who is someone that you have really looked up to?" or something along those lines.  Anyway, heaps of people chose, not Tyler Brunson, but Katie Brunson.  Katie is always choosing the right, she doesn't change her standards for any reason.  I have loved growing up with Katie as my big sister.  I'm excited for her to start a new chapter in her life, and I will always be here in full support of you.  Thanks for being the best.  

This week has definitely been one of the best weeks!  We saw so many miracles this week it wasn't even funny.  I don't even know where to start though.  But I recon I will start with the spiritual experiences so I can make sure to talk about them.  I think I will talk about three awesome experiences we had this week.  

1.  Angelina is a miracle!  Several weeks ago, maybe even several months ago, we met a lady named Angelina.  We were walking down the street and Angelina was walking with her 3 kids.  We stopped her and started having a chat, she immediately said that she was in a big hurry though!  She said that she had met with lots of missionaries in the past, and that she was at a really busy point in her life.  We were able to work her address out of her though.  She said that she couldn't give us a time to come around and that we would just have to try our luck.  Well for the past two months we have tried our luck... and guess what?  Apparently we have no luck!  The best thing we got out of it was a brief 10 minute conversation with her at her front porch.  It seemed like we would soon have to move on from Angelina as we were not having any luck with catching her at home.  Angelina told us that she would just text us when a good time would be.  This is code for I'm going to tell you this just so I can get rid of you.  Apparently our code interpreters were not functioning properly because about two weeks after she said this we got a text.  This text came to us on Thursday morning.  Angelina asked if there was a good time for us to be able to come around.  The only available time we had in the morning was 10 o'clock and this was also a miracle.  This was also a miracle because Elder Meek a missionary who was finishing his mission stayed with us Tuesday night and Wednesday night.  He needed to be at the airport at 11 to check in for his plane back to Tennessee.  It was a miracle because Elder Meek had one more hour of proselyting left in his mission and we were able to make an appointment.  I definitely know that it was a tender mercy from the Lord.  However, we did have a slight problem because Angelina's partner Dylan wouldn't be home so we couldn't go in her home.  We called Brother Pilling and asked him if he would be available.  He said he was really busy and wasn't sure if he would be able to come.  However, he changed his mind before we hung up and decided that he had an hour to spare.  So to this point everything has come together.  So we met brother Pilling at Angelina's house at 10 o'clock.  We got in the home and had one of the best lessons on my mission.  Angelina pretty much asked us if she could be baptized and we set her with a baptismal date of October 15th.  She accepted the date and was so excited!  She is pretty much the most prepared investigator ever!  She has been taught by lots of missionaries so she recognizes the spirit in her life.  She just kept saying how good it felt to have missionaries back in her home.  It was such a cool experience for all of us!  It was especially cool to have such a great last lesson for Elder Meek before he went home.  We got a return appointment with Angelina for Sunday morning.  So Sunday morning we went over again with Brother Pilling.  The first time we met with Angelina the kids were not there.  However, this time the kids were there and they were really loud.  We still had a good lesson though, and we did an object lesson that went along with the gospel of Jesus Christ for the kids.  Guess what?!  Angelina even came to all three hours of church!  We were so excited that she came.  She brought her son Lushen as well, who is 8 years old.  We also set him for baptism so we were pumped about that!  They had a really good time at church and Angelina was so happy.  She originally told us that she could only stay for sacrament, but she ended up staying for all three hours.  Elder Saurey and I taught the gospel principles lesson as well so it was really good to have her stay.  We taught the restoration to several of our investigators and one of the sisters’ investigators.  It was a really awesome lesson!  And guess what we brought for dessert???!!!  Momma Brunson's chocolate cookies that we made!  Guess what Mom we did you proud this week.  Elder Saurey and I made your chocolate chip cookies and they turned out really well! They weren't as good as yours, but they were still really good!  We took them to church and everyone from our class was saying they were the best cookies they had ever had!  We were both really pumped that we made the cookies haha.  We decided we are going to have to start making heaps of cookies, so we can hasten the work with our cookies haha.  Also shout out to Momma Brunson for sending me her cookies in a package.  That was seriously the best package ever!  I was so pumped to see the cookies!  Thanks for being the best momma.  The bad part is that I have ate heaps of cookie dough and cookies this past week.  I'm sure I have gained about 100 pounds.  When you don't have your mom at home to yell at you for sneaking into the cookie dough it is easy to get carried away haha.  

2.  Well some of you have probably fallen asleep to this point in the letter so I will apologize haha.  Hopefully you were able to take a power nap and you can finish the rest of the email.  The second miracle of the week was an awesome lesson we had with the Herewini Family!!! They are the coolest family ever!  It was such a good spiritual experience!  So I don't know if you all remember a couple of weeks ago when I told a story about meeting a lady named Whiti.  Well I met a lady named Whiti several weeks ago when I was on an exchange with Elder Osborn.  It was the super nice lady that we biked past that waved to us and we waved back, but kept on biking.  Then I said to Elder Osborn "this might be really weird, but I think we should go back and talk to her."  So we ended up going back and she was a super nice lady.  She even told us that her husband was a member.  Well it turns out the husband isn't a member, his parents are, but he was never baptized.   Anyway, so we have also been trying to see Whiti over these past few weeks, but we haven't had any luck.  Well Saturday our luck came around!  We were able to get in the home.  Whiti is the mom and she is in her 30's and she is married to Kay who is in his 30's as well.  They have been together for ages, but just got married a couple of weeks ago.  They have two boys name Elijah (14) and Bo (11).  Whiti's little sister also stays with them and her name is Hariata and her partner Ray.  Well we got into their house on Saturday afternoon.  We had absolutely no idea what to teach, and it was pretty awkward at first.  However, we were praying in our hearts that we would be able to be directed by the spirit.  It went from being really awkward in the beginning to being one of the best lessons of my mission.  We started with a Mormon message and then everything just flowed after that.  It was such a cool lesson and they were so excited to learn.  They asked heaps of questions which really helped us to teach them the things they needed.  When we finished the lesson we walked out and had the biggest smiles on our face!  We were so happy!  They told us that they were going to come to church though so we were also pumped for that.  Sadly they didn't come to church :(  But next week!

3.  We went to an awesome baptism for the Mountfort Elders.  They baptized a family of 6 and it was such a cool baptism.  We were able to do their baptismal interviews so we felt like we really knew them as well.  The baptism was really cool because it was a whole family.  I really hope we can find a whole family to baptize as well!  Sorry I kind of ran out of steam so the 3rd miracle is just going to be really brief haha.  

I love you all heaps though!  Thanks for your prayers!

Love,

Elder Brunson  

Monday, September 12, 2016

Livin’ in Beverly Hills!

It’s been a crazy, fast week!  Monday was a super boring preparation day.  We spent pretty much the entire preparation day moving out of our flat.  We did have time to have a mean game of basketball with Brother Maasi (ward mission leader, Tongan, really funny, the man, like 24 years old) and Brother Pilling (Married to bishop Leelo's daughter, lives with the bishop and brother Maasi in bishops house).  It was heaps of fun!  Brother Maasi and Brother Pilling are the best members ever.  We play basketball with them every Saturday morning for workout.  Brother Maasi and I play on a team against Brother Pilling and Elder Saurey.  Brother Maasi is about 6 ft 3 and Brother Pilling is about 6 ft.  They are both really good at basketball!  It is way fun to play with them!

Tuesday we had MLC in Hamilton!  We drove up early Tuesday morning and our meeting lasted until about 1.  We had subway for lunch and then got on the road by about 2.  It was a really good meeting and I learned a lot.  I love being in meetings with all the other missionaries.  It always makes me think that only in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints could you have 19 and 20 year old young adults gathered together and learning how to help others come closer to Jesus Christ and also how to help ourselves.  It's hard to explain in words what I'm trying to say, but it is a really cool feeling to know that we are members of the Lords church hear upon the earth, and that we have the standards that we do.  After the meeting Elder Saurey and I drove back to Manurewa.  On our way back we stopped in at Pocono's and got an ice cream cone.  Guess who we ran into?  An American girl member of the church and her Kiwi husband who were visiting all the way from Virginia.  They were really happy to see us and they even shouted us our ice cream.  They were a young couple and the American girl has a brother serving in the Philippines.  My theory is, if you want your missionaries to be blessed in the mission field you need to bless the missionaries in your ward.  I was happy to hear that you made pretzel jello for the missionaries mom.  I'm sure they really appreciated it.  I bet you give the best meals for the missionaries.  I'm sure they love coming to our house.  There are always families on the mission that you are pumped to go eat with.

Wednesday was our big move in day!  I'm sure you are anxious to hear about our new flat, momma.  Drum roll please.... We moved into the nicest flat in the entire mission!!!!  We seriously live in the Beverly Hills of Manurewa haha.  Our flat is only a year old and is in super good condition.  It has never been a missionary flat so it's really nice.  It was completely clean when we arrived so all we had to do was unpack!  It all went really smooth, and we are loving the new home.  At first it felt really weird to be in a new home, but we love it now!  Elder Templeton said that if they were to sell the flat it would be worth $1,000,000.  It is crazy how expensive housing is in South Auckland!  We are getting a really good rental deal on the flat though.  The only downside of the new flat is that we don't have two showers :(  That has been a little hard to adjust to, but we are still loving it! Sorry mom I don't have any pictures of the flat yet.  I know you would enjoy some pictures.  I have a picture of the outside though, so I will send you that.  The flat is two stories and our bedroom and bathroom are upstairs.  We also have a bathroom downstairs though, so that is really convenient.  I was just thinking about our last flat and I forgot to write home about the worst thing in New Zealand!  Bed bugs!  Bed bugs are the worst!  A couple of weeks ago I got rocked by a swarm of bed bugs.  I literally had heaps of little bites all over my body.  They are similar to mosquito bites.  They are pretty small and itch like crazy!  I hate them so much.  We have this spray that you can spray on your bed to try and keep them away.  I sprayed my bed heaps and I think they have finally gone away.  Also my bites are finally starting to fade.  It's funny the saying, "don't let the bed bugs bite!"  I always thought that bed bugs were a made up thing, until I got here in New Zealand.  They are the worst!

Thursday and Friday were pretty normal days so I don't have much to say about them. Saturday was a mean day though!  This weekend we had our Ward Conference.  For ward conference we had a movie night Friday night, service Saturday morning, Culture night Saturday night, and then church Sunday, and a huge feed after church on Sunday!  It was such a fun weekend.  We didn't attend the movie night because they weren't watching a church movie though.  Saturday was a mean night, I think our ward should have a culture night when I get back, and I will make food from Tonga, Samoa, and New Zealand.  For the culture night we picked five countries to have food from.  We had food from Polynesia, Jamaica, Mexico, India, and China.  Before we started we did a chapel tour.  Unfortunately, we didn't have a very good turn out from our investigators.  Elder Saurey and I did an object lesson on the gospel of Jesus Christ and it went really well.  Although we didn't have investigators show up for the chapel tour, they did show up at 6:00 for the culture night!  We had a couple named Poco and Boaza show up, and a family named the Monros!  Also, we had one of our investigators named Flutee.  Besides that there were heaps of other nonmembers as well.  It was a really awesome night and the food was mean!  I ate way too much.  After the feed there were heaps of performances by the ward members.  They had heaps of dances to go along with the different cultures.  It was really entertaining and lots of fun.  I think our investigators had a really good time.

Sunday, we were really blessed as well. We were able to have 5 investigators at church!  It was awesome too because we had a part member family come named the Chipendale's.  Brother Chipendale is a long way from being baptized, but it was awesome that he supports his less active wife and came to church with her.  He believes in God, but doesn't like religion at all.  One of the investigators at church was an 8 year old girl named Harmony!  Harmony is a really cute girl.  We have just started teaching her and are planning to have her baptism in October.  Harmony comes to church with her aunt and uncle and cousins.  Both of her parents are nonmembers, so we have been teaching her in the members (Kalonihia family) home.  I have never been a huge fan of teaching little kids whose parents both are not members.  However, teaching Harmony has been so awesome!  Her parents are both really involved, and they sit in on all the lessons.  Neither of them is religious at all, but we are hoping they will come around by the end of us teaching her!  We had such an awesome lesson with her before church on Sunday.  As part of the lesson we played a cute video from lds.org about these kids who talk about who Jesus Christ is.  The mom really felt the spirit and said that she really learned a lot from it.  It really is amazing the influence that children can have on people.  They are so humble and can simply teach the gospel.  I love kids!

Sunday night we had a mean feed, I wish I could explain to you in detail island food!  I love island food so much!  My new favorite island food is this dish with fried mackeral, coconut cream, and onion, and you eat it with taro!  It is so good!  Look it up on the internet haha.  My other favorite meal is luau or lu (if your Tongan).  It is made with taro leaves, coconut cream, and meat filling!  That is literally my favorite meal!  I could eat so much of it.  You definitely should look it up and see what it’s like.  I don't even think you could make it back home because I'm almost 100% sure that we don't have taro or taro leaves that you can buy.  You all will have to come to South Auckland so you can try all the island food!  Well I'm sorry this email wasn't overly inspiring haha.  Hopefully you enjoy hearing about all of these random topics though.  Have an awesome week!

Love,

Elder Brunson

Monday, September 05, 2016

Mom please forgive me haha! 

This is going to be the most useless email ever!  This week has been so crazy!  The reason I am emailing so late today is because we had to move out of our flat today.  Elder Saurey and I are really sad that we have to move out of our flat.  The reason we are so sad is because we probably have the nicest flat in the mission!  One of the perks of our flat is that we have 2 showers.  Having two showers has been so nice because it makes getting ready in the morning really easy!  This week we spent half of a day cleaning on Friday and Saturday.  We were super stressed about having our flat clean by Monday because we knew that we would be moving out.  We had spent the entire week using our lunch and dinner breaks to clean, but we still had lots to do.  Our flat wasn't even dirty, but in order to have it deep cleaned (according to momma Brunson standards) it takes a long time!  There were heaps of marks on the walls, and lots of random crevices that we had to clean.  Anyway, so we called President Cummings and asked him for permission to have some time to clean the flat.  He said that was no problem so we went hard on the cleaning both Friday and Saturday.  On Sunday both Elder Saurey and I had really sore bodies.  It is amazing how much effort it takes to completely clean a little flat.  After we finished cleaning we were really sad to have to turn the flat in.  This morning Elder and Sister Templeton came and helped us load all of our furniture and belongings into a trailer.  Unfortunately we can't move in to our new flat until Wednesday, so we are staying two nights with Elder Osborne and Elder Ellsworth, which should be lots of fun!  The good news about getting a new flat is that we will still probably have the nicest flat in the mission.  We are moving to a new housing complex, so our house will only be like one year old.  Hopefully it will be really clean and nice!

The miracle of the week (besides getting our flat cleaned) was setting Mary for Baptism!!!!!!!  Mary is set October 1st for baptism!!!!!!!  We had a really awesome lesson with Jay and Mary on Saturday.  We talked to them about Eternal marriage and taught them the law of chastity!  It was such an awesome lesson. Mary wants to be able to go to the temple to be sealed to Jay and their daughter Marissa!  And she has been telling us how she wants to join the church because everything makes so much sense.  Mary grew up going to the Catholic Church and she says that nothing really ever made sense to her.  She said that since meeting with us everything makes sense and she really feels God has a plan for her and her family.  We were not sure how well Mary was going to take the invitation to be baptized on a specific date.  We knew Mary wanted to be baptized, but we weren't sure if she would be willing to commit to get married in a month.  However, we invited her to be baptized on October 1st and we anxiously waited for her response.  She paused and thought about it for quite some time, and then she replied that she wanted to be baptized that day!  We were so excited that I can't even put it into words.  Elder Saurey and I got out of the lesson and were so pumped!  We also had a really awesome FHE with their family on Monday night.  Jay made us the biggest plates of spaghetti that I have ever seen! We had no clue how we were going to eat it all.  It was literally a mountain of spaghetti.  Their food is in short supply in their home though, so we both knew that we didn't want to waste any of it.  Somehow we were both able to finish the mountain of spaghetti.  After Elder Saurey and I gave the lesson we played charades.  It was super fun!!!!  I have come to love this family so much!  They are seriously the best family ever!  I love being a missionary so much!  It is so worth it!  I hope everyone has a stellar week!

Love,

Elder Brunson