This is Wilson and Ziporah
They are not members but their mom, Ata is less active.
They were in the Mount Ward

Levi and Charlotte are so cool!
Fin is the coolest though!
Definitely naming my kid Fin!

Kori and Nikki
I'm gunna miss them! :(

Monday, March 27, 2017

I got transferred :( 

Guess where?!!

Welcome Bay haha.  So I didn't really get transferred I just got moved out of the Mount ward.  So we used to cover two wards: Welcome Bay, and the Mount ward, but now I just cover the Welcome Bay ward.  Yes, I also got a new companion!!!  His name is Elder Miller.  Elder Miller is from Idaho, but guess where he spent his freshman and sophomore years in school?!  Hanford haha!  So who knows, I may have ran into him before and didn't even know it.  He has been out for a little over a year and he just got called as a zone leader.  So technically I'm training him to be a zone leader, but that's really not a very big thing in our mission lol.  There is not much of a training that actually goes on though.  Being a zone leader is really not that much different than being a normal missionary.  Elder Timu, my previous companion is now covering the Mount ward with a new companion, Elder Navaro.  To be honest I was gutted to have to leave the Mount.  We have some really solid people in the Mount so I was sad to have to say goodbye to them.  The hardest was definitely Nikki and Kori!!  They are the best family ever!!!!  I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Nikki is going to get baptized!!!!  I know Kori will get baptized as well, but it might take a little more time.  He is still having a hard time leaving the church that he is at right now.  He met a lot of really good people at his church and they put a lot of time into helping him understand the teachings so he feels obligated to staying around and helping the church.  He realizes that his church is in an "apostate" state and he wants to help them as much as he can because of the time they put into him.  He absolutely loves what we have shared with him, and believes that it is true, but he just has some obstacles to overcome.  They made us a really nice feed this week because they knew that one of us would probably be leaving.  It was an awesome meal, and we taught them the second half of the plan of salvation afterward.  They loved the fact that everyone will get the opportunity to hear the gospel and that there are multiple kingdoms of glory, rather than their just being Heaven and Hell.  Kori especially loved this principle because he had always believed in that principle even though he had never been taught it.  He is a total believer of 2 Nephi 25:23 that we are saved by grace after all we can do (works).

I was also gutted to not be Elder Timu's companion anymore.  When we first became companions I was sure that we would be companions for two or three transfers, but it turns out the Lord had different plans in mind.  I am curious though to see how long I will be here in Tauranga.  I wouldn't mind staying here 5 transfers.  That is how long I stayed in Manurewa.  Our area is really struggling right now so we are working really hard to get our teaching pool back up to where it was.  I definitely feel that the Lord is going to bless us though because we were willing to give up all of our investigators to let the work move forward in the Mount.

I will tell a really funny story before I finish my email.  You would really have had to been there to truly understand this story, but I'm going to share it anyway haha.  So the scariest thing of my entire life happened this week!!! I literally thought I was going to have a heart attack.  One night this week Elder Miller and I were lying in our beds and having a good ole chat.  I was the one who was talking at the time and Elder Miller was responding to my comments.  Well, as we were talking I heard a really loud rustling noise coming from where we keep our rubbish.  We keep our rubbish in the laundry room where we always have the window open because we don't want that room to get all steamy when the dryer is going.  Well, my instant thought was that a cat most have climbed through the window and it was getting into the rubbish.  I was a little freaked out because I didn't want to get up and find something that wasn't a cat.  I looked over to Elder Miller’s bed and he had gone dead quiet.  I was a little afraid to look, but I turned around to see if I could see anything.  I turned around and what did I see?!!!!  A person standing in our kitchen!!!!  I freaked out and quickly put my head behind the wall.  My heart was pumping like crazy.  I looked again to Elder Miller’s bed and he was still dead quiet.  I slowly peaked my head to look into the kitchen again and the figure was still there except he was moving towards the front door.  I didn't know what to do, but I thought I would just yell "hey" really loud.  So I yelled "hey" and the next minute the figure is standing right next to mine and Elder Miller’s beds.  He spoke and I couldn't recognize the voice.  He said, "good try."  My adrenaline was literally pumping so hard!!!!  The figure kept talking though and I finally realized that it was Elder Miller hahaha.  As I had been talking, Elder Miller had gotten up and I thought he was still in his bed because I didn't hear him get up.  I have had a cold all week so my ears were kind of plugged haha.  Well Elder Miller got in his bed and I explained the whole story to him and he died laughing.  Man I was literally so jacked haha.  My adrenaline was going out the roof.  I thought I was going to have to fight for my life lol.  Moral of the story:  don't be a pansy and choose the right so bad guys don't break into your house and actually fight you haha.  I was so happy and relieved that it was just Elder Miller.  I saw it as a tender mercy lol.

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Pansy...

I mean Elder Brunson haha       

Hiking Mount Maunganui on a day of terrible weather.

Mount Maunganui

Monday, March 20, 2017

Transfers!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Believe it or not it's another transfer week!  I have basically no time to write so this could very well be my worst email home haha.  Well, to be honest Elder Timu and I have no idea what is going to happen for transfers.  When we went with President on exchanges last week and he saw the investigators from the Mount ward show-up to stake conference, he asked us if we could bring in two missionaries to just cover the mount.  Right now Elder Timu and I cover both the Mount Maunganui ward and also the Welcome Bay ward.  However, President thinks that since we have some solid people in the Mount that it might be a good time to have more missionaries come in.  The mount hasn't had a baptism in over a year so it has been really cool for Elder Timu and I to see it get pumping!!  We both told President that we would be willing to get released as a Zone leader so one of us could be in the Mount and keep the work moving there.  We have no idea what President will end up doing, but it could be an interesting transfer, whether he keeps it the way it is, releases one of us as a zone leader and puts us in that area, or whether we both stay together and two new missionaries come in.  I don't really know what I want to have happen haha.  I love the people that we are working with in both areas so it would be really hard to not be able to work with some of the people anymore.  For example we had an awesome couple attend church with us in the Welcome Bay ward this week!!  Their names are Michelle and Zeke and they have 5 kids that are under the age of 6!!!!  They brought 4 of the 5 kids to church, including their two twin babies.  The ward loved them!!!!!!  We had ward council before church started and we told the bishop that they would be coming.  I'm sure he is used to the missionaries saying their investigators will be at church, but then they don't show up.  One of Bishop Arthur’s counselors, Brother Anderson made a comment to have the investigators sit up front so that the bishopric could fellowship them right after the meeting.  Well guess what?!!!! They showed up!!!!  Guess where we sat?!!!  Right on the second row!!!!  You could see that the Bishopric was pumped about the family, and so was the rest of the ward.  Right when the meeting ended the whole bishopric came up to them and greeted them, and heaps of the members fellowshipped them too!  It was so awesome!!!!  Zeke and Michelle's kids are normally really crazy too, but we were praying that they would stay quiet and they did!!! Miracles!!!  They had such a good experience though, and right away Zeke was like, “We will be back next week!”  Nikki is also doing so well, but she is in the Mount ward.  Nikki loved church!!!!!  She came for her second week in a row and stayed for all 3 hours of church.  She also texted us this morning asking us how she could pay tithing to the church haha.  She is so awesome!!  Guess what?!  I also got to speak for the second week in a row haha.  I talked about how my mission has helped me to increase my faith in the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  I focused my talk on Grace "the enabling power" that comes because of the atonement.  I talked about 3 ways I have felt grace in my life and how that has strengthened my faith in the atonement!

I love you all!  Have a great week!

Elder Brunson 

Monday March 13, 2017

Mean week!!!

We had a very eventful week this week!  The weather has been absolutely terrible though.  That is the only negative thing we have going for us right now.  It's funny because we are getting into the time when our weather is pretty similar for a short period of time.  You are just finishing up the bad days and we are starting to head into the terrible weather.  Hopefully it won't get too cold too fast.  This past week it has been raining heaps though.  It seems like we haven't had a day without rain in ages.  This week was Elder Timu's 21st birthday which was pretty exciting!  21st birthdays are a huge thing in New Zealand, but he probably had a pretty normal day.  I'm a terrible companion to be with when it’s your birthday because I don't do anything flash.  I did shout Elder Timu’s dinner.  We had a really mean feed from a place called Burger Fuel.  It was the closest thing I have had to an American Burger since being in New Zealand.  I also had the best Kumara Chips (fries) of my life!!!  Kumara chips are the greatest thing that New Zealand has haha.  They are apparently like sweet potato fries, but I honestly couldn't tell you.  I feel like I have had sweet potato fries and I didn't like them, but who knows.  Another highlight from the week was going on an exchange with Elder Hadfield!!  Elder Hadfield is a 25 year old Maori fella.  He is one of the funniest people ever.  The best part of the whole exchange was that his laugh is almost identical to Uncle Chadd's laugh.  It made me feel like I was kickin’ it with Uncle Chadd for a day, so shout out to Uncle Chadd haha.  This week was also really cool because we had interviews with President Cummings.  I love President Cummings so much!  He has changed our mission so much, and it will be amazing to hear about all the things he is able to accomplish in 3 years.  Well in my interview President asked me the basic questions making sure I was doing alright, and asking about how our zone is doing, and then at the end he asked if Elder Timu and I had some time that he could come out with us that night.  I of course said that we would love him to come out with us.  Well we went and visited a few people until 6:30 rolled around when we were planning to meet up with President.  Elder Timu and I had actually made some really solid plans for our night so we must have been inspired during our planning in the morning because we had already planned to see our investigators who are really progressing.  Well we met President at Charlotte and Levi's house who was our first plan of the night and they were not home.  Then we decided we would go to the Buenviaje's family home and see if they were home.  This was the Filipino family that we found a week after their 15 year old son had passed away.  We have had a pretty hard time connecting with their family, even though our message is so powerful.  Josan the father ended up being home and we had a really awesome discussion with him.  Elder Timu and I were pretty nervous to have President there, but it went pretty good.  We ended up spending quite a bit of time talking with him, but it didn't seem like anything overly powerful happened.  Well, we decided that we would go try another couple named Nikki and Kori.  Well we had to walk past Levi and Charlotte’s house again to get to Nikki and Kori's and guess who was home!  Levi and Charlotte!  So we went and had a really awesome talk with them!  President is so on to it, and it was cool to see him be a missionary!  We invited them to stake conference and they said they would come!  I don't remember if I said this, but Levi came to church for the first time this past week!  I will have to tell you about their family next week, but I don't have much time.  They have two boys though and I'm going to name one of my boys after him.  Are you ready..... Fin!!!!!  Is Fin not the best name that you have ever heard?  Well we had to get leaving and it was absolutely pouring rain!!!!  It was 8 o'clock so we had time for one more visit.  President told us that he had to get going though, and he left us to go out into the pouring rain haha.  Well we finished off our night with the best lesson ever with Nikki and Kori!!!!!!!!!  I met Nikki and Kori when I was with Elder Fellingham.  How did we find them? Of course the only way Elder Brunson knows how to find people.  Knocking on doors haha!!  Well, we went back and only Nikki was home when I was on an exchange with Elder Fesolai.  We ended up teaching the complete restoration and she loved it!  She especially loved it because she finally understood the doctrine of the godhead.  That Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are 3 distinct beings, but are one in purpose.  Well, we continued to go back, but we had no luck catching Kori, so we just kept teaching Nikki at the doorstep.  Well since I have been with Elder Timu, we finally got our first lesson with them both.  We taught the first part of the restoration, but it wasn't an overly amazing lesson with Kori.  Well a miracle happened and we ended up finishing teaching the restoration and Kori loved it!  They have been really progressing so much.  Well when we went around Friday night they shared with us some of their concerns and we were able to address them.  Nikki told us that she had been praying and felt like since she hadn't committed to the Mosaic church that she would start attending our church!!!  She said that she was going to come to stake conference!  Kori wants to come as well, but he first wants to sort things out with his current church!  Well Sunday rolled around and it was stake conference!!!  Elder Timu and I were so pumped because we were expecting a good turn out from our investigators.  Well we arrived early so we could wait for them to come!!  We were really nervous but excited at the same time!!  Guess what?!  Nikki, Levi, and Ashish and Nalini showed up!!!!!!!  We were so pumped!!!!  Guess what else crazy happened at stake conference!!!!!!!  The visiting authority and President Fitzpatrick the stake President called me up on the spot and had me come and bear my testimony!!!!  Far out there was heaps of people and I was pretty nervous haha.  I had no idea if I was supposed to try and preach a sermon or bear my testimony for 5 seconds or what.  I got up though and because the theme of the conference was Joy I explained how the thing that had brought me the most joy in my life up until that point was to come and serve a mission.  I read my favorite scripture from D&C 15:6 which talks about the thing which will be of the most worth to you will be to declare repentance.  I talked about how when I read this scripture before coming out on my mission I felt like it was Heavenly Father speaking directly to me and telling me that the most important thing I could do was to share the gospel.  I bore a brief testimony after that and then took my seat haha.  It was an awesome experience and I was thankful to be able to share my feelings about sharing the gospel.  I really do know that missionary work brings true joy.  If you are looking for more happiness in your life share the gospel with your family members, friends, and more importantly those random people you meet that you know are looking for something.  I love the gospel, it makes me so excited to share it and bring happiness into the lives of others.  I hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Brunson          

Monday, March 6, 2017

Cars!!!!!!  What a blessing they are!!!

This week has been quite an interesting week!  The craziest part of the week was that we had to bike the most hilly, massive area ever haha.  Okay maybe not the hilliest and biggest in the world, but definitely the most hilly and massive area in the Hamilton mission.  Our car had to be fixed this week because of some damage that the previous missionaries did to the car.  They backed into a shopping cart and so there was a big dent in the rear of the driver’s side.  Wednesday morning we took the car in and we were supposed to get it back by Friday morning.  I really wish I would have taken some pictures of some of the hills we had to ride up.  It probably wouldn't have been too big of a deal if the bikes we were riding were not pieces of junk haha.  The missionaries in the area never used bikes so two old, junky bikes were in our shed.  So going uphill was definitely a struggle!!  It made me appreciate the mail people even more.  The mailman rides a bike here and it's crazy to watch him.  There were two really crazy parts of our bike experience.  One was the fact that the street we live on is like the steepest hill ever!  So each time we leave our flat we’re immediately dead because of how hard it is to bike up the hill.  I never want to see another bike again after this week haha.  Although I shouldn't complain because we saw lots of tender mercies because we were riding bikes.  Before I tell the tender mercy though I will explain our trip from Welcome Bay to the Mount.  So we live in Welcome Bay, but the Mount is part of the Mount Maunganui ward which we also cover.  It is about a 10 minute drive away from our flat.  Well we were on bike so it was more like a 30-45 minute bike ride away.  Wednesday we had decided to spend all day in Welcome Bay, but on Thursday we decided we would spend all day in the Mount.  The bike ride there isn’t too bad except for the fact that it is a little dangerous because we have to bike on the side of the highway.  When the big trucks come by it gives you quite an adrenaline rush haha.  Well all was sweet except for this old guy that almost ran us over in a vehicle that was in between the size of a golf cart and the size of a small car haha.  He was driving down the side of the highway as well and I didn't know he was coming behind me until he was literally on me and I had to peddle fast as to get out of his way.  Well we worked all day over in the Mount and actually had a really solid afternoon.  It came to 4:50 though and we needed to get back for an appointment at 5:30 in Welcome Bay with Ashish and Nalini.  We headed back and there was heaps of traffic, which we were a little worried about since we would be biking on the side of the highway again.  We got to the highway and we realized that we couldn't bike on the side going with the traffic because there was no room to bike there.  So we made the decision that we would have to bike against the traffic haha.  I knew that this was probably not the smartest idea, but we decided to do it anyway.  Before we stated I told Elder Timu that I was sure someone would honk at us.  Well biking against the traffic was quite a thrilling event.  I'm sure mom would have given me a hiding if she saw me doing it.  We had a couple of close calls, but I'm alive to tell the story haha.  It was really funny though because sister Ngakuru came up to us at church on Sunday and she was like, "Elders what were you doing biking on the side of the highway??!!"  She wasn't too thrilled with us haha.  She was like please be careful Elders!  Well the tender mercy comes into play with the fact that we miraculously arrived at Ashish and Nalini's right on time!!!  Which is incredible because we have a hard time being on time when we have a car!!!  But guess what?!!  When we knocked on the door Nalini answered and said that Ashish wouldn't be home for probably another 30 minutes.  Elder Timu and I were gutted because we were so tired and ready to sit down and have a lesson with them.  Plus we were dying for a drink of water!!!!!!  Well we told her we would try someone else in the area and come back.  She shut the door and we got ready to get on our bikes and leave.  Guess who pulls up though?!!!  Ashish!!!!!!!!  We were so pumped!!!  It was seriously the best tender mercy ever!!!  We got to go in and we had a really good lesson with Ashish and Nalini.  We talked about the plan of salvation and it was a really solid lesson!  Ashish and Nalini want to be baptized, but because Ashish is Hindu he is expected to keep the family traditions alive because he is the only son.  The reason he doesn't want to be baptized is because he doesn't want to go against his parents will.  However, his mom will be coming in two weeks to stay with them and he believes that with prayer a miracle can happen and she will let him get baptized.  It was really cool to see the amount of faith that he has!!!

Well I love you all so much!!!!!  Shout out to Amanda for getting into BYU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  That is so cool!!!!  Also shout out to Ratch for getting engaged!!!!!!!!  Man that makes me feel like an old man haha!! I love being a missionary.  It has a lot of ups and downs, but I know every time I have downs and I put my trust in the Lord, things work out.  I love you all heaps!

Love,

Elder Brunson