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