Monday, November 28, 2016

I officially got my first sunburn of the season this week, which means summer is on its way.  On Friday, Elder Taito and I were able to ride our bikes, finally!  It felt so good to be back on the bikes!  The sun really cooked my arms haha.  New Zealand has a super thin ozone layer so it's really easy to get burned here.  Well we rode our bikes on Friday and it was a super awesome day!  We talked to about a million people.  It was so hard to get to our appointments because we didn't want to let people go by us without talking to them, but it was such a nice day so there were heaps of people out!  I don’t think I have had that much rejection on my mission, but we ended up finding someone and we taught him the restoration while he was working on a car with one of his less active mates so that was awesome.

On Wednesday night the Assistants stayed with us before Zone conference on Thursday.  They brought a pumpkin pie with them so we got to celebrate Thanksgiving with them.  It was nothing like my mom’s pumpkin pie, but at least we had something to celebrate Thanksgiving.  On Thursday we had a Zone conference which was really good.  I learned a lot of things to help us with our investigators.  We had hamburgers for lunch which were made by Elder McGregor, one of the senior couples.  They were the closest thing I have had to an American Burger so that was awesome.  I found out that my new favorite thing on burgers is pineapple.  So I'm going to have to find a good pineapple burger when I get back to the states!

Elder Taito and I are getting along great.  I'm really glad that we will get to be companions for two transfers.  Elder Taito is very humble so it’s pretty much impossible to be upset with him.  He works really hard and loves the gospel, so you can't ask for a better companion!  He loves sports, which is possibly a negative because we have to make sure we are focused on the work and not getting detracted by talking about football players haha.  Elder Taito even lived in Washington State for a little while growing up before he moved to Oklahoma.  His dad is in the military so they move according to where he needs to go.  I think they have been in Oklahoma for a long time though.

Coolest miracle ever with Daniel!  Daniel is so prepared for his baptism and we are so pumped!  While Daniel was in Korea guess what he did?!  Daniel took his church clothes and he went to church by himself!  He obviously doesn't speak Korean and had to take a taxi to the church which was an hour away.  He got the address of the chapel from Alofa and then he had a Korean write down the instructions on a piece of paper that he could hand to the taxi driver.  Well it was a miracle that he even made it to the chapel and when he got there, he was welcomed warmly by the missionaries there.  They were so excited to hear that he would be getting baptized on December 3rd.  An American missionary serving in the ward that Daniel attended translated everything from the meeting into English for him.  After attending church Daniel really wanted to go to the Korean temple.  It was another hour drive from the chapel he attended and he had the missionaries write down instructions for the taxi driver again.  Well another miracle, Daniel ended up making it to the Korean temple and he was again warmly greeted by sister missionaries.  They took his picture outside of the temple.  Daniel is excited for his baptism, but he is even more excited to be able to be sealed in the temple with his family.  We are so excited for this weekend and we are praying that everything goes smoothly.  It’s Daniels birthday today so we are excited to go and have family home evening with their family.  I hope you all have an amazing week!

Love,

Elder Brunson