Monday, May 22, 2017

When I received my call to serve in New Zealand I was so pumped because I thought I would be serving in a tropical paradise haha.  Turns out I was wrong!! It has been so cold the last 2 weeks it's not even funny!  I literally cannot explain how cold it has been.  It's apparently not even winter yet and it is so cold already haha.  Last night we were knocking on doors at like 7:30 in pitch black, in freezing cold weather, on a college campus.  It was cool as haha.  I can't explain how much I love knocking on the college students’ doors.  You have the most crack up conversations ever with people.  We had a bro slam the door on our face last night just as his two friends were walking up to his front door.  They saw the whole thing and felt super bad.  That was the first time we have had a college student be super stand offish to us.  I think because we are a relatively similar age to the students they are usually pretty nice to us.  The only problem with the college students is that they are busy as. We had a really solid lesson with a girl named Miharo this week!  She is a Maori girl in her early 20's and seems really keen!  We taught her the restoration on her doorstep last week and gave her a restoration pamphlet.  We told her she could write down any questions that she had while reading the pamphlet and that she could ask us next we came by.  Well we came back for the return appointment this week and we asked Miharo if she had a chance to read the pamphlet.  Over the past year or so I have given out about 3 million pamphlets so I will try and explain what the usual conversation is with our investigators.  Missionaries: “Thank you so much for allowing us to come over and share more of the restored gospel with you. Did you happen to have the chance to read through the pamphlet we left with you?”  Investigator:  “No problem.  Long pause.  Yeah I did have a chance.  I kind of skimmed through it, it was really good.”  Missionaries:  “Did anything stand out to you as you read it?”  Investigator: “No it was all really good.  Strong message.  I liked it a lot.”

Missionaries:  “What are some things you remember that the pamphlet talked about?”  Investigator:  “Oh you know, just about God and stuff and finding happiness.”  At this point you know the investigator didn't read the pamphlet and that you will have to go through all of the points of the lesson so they actually understand what the restoration is.  However, Miharo is not your typical investigator.  She is one of the few people that without a doubt in your mind you know that they sincerely read the pamphlet.  When we asked Miharo if she read it she was super excited and said that she had written down heaps of questions!  When we got to the part of the lesson when we talked about Joseph Smiths experience we read James 1:5 with her and then before we could explain what happened next Miharo was like, "And then he went into the bush and prayed and God and Jesus Christ appeared to him and they told him not to join any of the churches.”  We were amazed that she actually understood Joseph Smith’s experience and that she remembered that he was told to join none of the churches.  We are really excited to work with Miharo.  We were hoping that she was going to be able to come to church this week, but she is preparing to join the navy so she had to go to a training out of town.  Hopefully this week she will be able to come!  We have an exciting week this week though!  We have zone conference and then we have interviews!  I'm pretty pumped!  Love you all!  I'm jealous of your nice weather!  Be thankful for the sunshine haha. Have a tremendous week! 

Love,

Elder Brunson