How has it been 9 months already?

How has it been 9 months already, honestly i still feel like i just got out here! ha :) Things went really well this week, Jordon got baptized! i am so happy for him, and he is so happy. i couldn't help but smile so big when he received the Holy Ghost. What a precious gift that he can now enjoy. :)

So i don't know if i told you but sister samataua and i are still together here in tuakau! yay! We are becoming great friends, and i feel that 3 transfers is the perfect amount of time to become lasting friends. We have so much fun together, lots of laughs and jokes! ha she's making me a funnier person! ha 

I wish i could think of more things to write, but i am stuck! ha 

I'll tell you a bit about the baptism. so honestly is was the most spiritual baptism i've been to... and i'm not saying that because we planned it because i've planned a few in the past. But i'm going to tell you some reasons why it was so good. We were given a list of things to accomplish starting at 2 weeks in advance to prepare for a spiritual baptism. So we did that. we were able to get the ward involved and delegated a lot of things and then stayed in contact with them so that they got it done. Honestly, the ward helped out so much . there were no hiccups or nothing that went wrong for the baptism. i am so pleased and continue to thank my heavenly father for a great day. I sung at the baptism with our zone leader, elder terry. It was really nice. i started off soloing... bad idea. i got so nervous you could tell but as the song went on and we sang together, it progressed. i am so grateful to have a companion that plays the piano beautifully and i am so blessed to be able to sing like i do. i am grateful to the Lord for our protection each day and for my talents he has blessed me with . i know i wouldn't be able to have have accomplished any of this without him.  

i know that God lives. i love you all! have a great week! 

Sister Bird

This week i learned about keeping my mind focused and centered on the work.

Wow! Another week come and gone. i honestly cant even remember what happened to write you about. All i know is what happened today. so i will start with that and the rest will probably come!

so this morning we had a zone activity in papakura. We played kick ball and it was a blast! usually sister samataua and i do our own thing on p-days but it was so fun to be with all the other missionaries! loved it! Hey by the way, i'm actually getting better at sports and i'm liking them:) Sister Samataua has been training me on volley ball in the mornings. We gotten to the point where we can pass it back and forth without having to run after it every hit! yay! i'm not as afraid of the ball. Remember back home when we would play. It would come at me and i would duck and run! ha silly  me! sometimes that still happens but i've gotten SO  much better.

So the next fun even of the day was.... We went to go do a spirutual thought at someones 21st birthday party. We get there at the ward members home and their giant dog runs out, bite's sister princes' companions let and it was bad! We all freaked out but she was in the front so she got attacked. She got a bit hole in her thigh. So we left straightaway and took her to the doctor. Mom understands me, i just couldn't stop laughing. It wasn't funny but i always laugh when someone gets hurt. ha :/ ha So we just came from the doctor and here i am emailing at 5pm. ha sorry!

Jordon is coming along so great! He has great fellowship in the ward. None of them are his age at all, because there are none his age but all the RM's take him around and take him to institute. He loves it all. Everyone's been asking him if he was excited about his baptism and since we told him about the interview he wasn't giving an excited reply. ha so finally i asked him if he wanted to see the questions and he said yes. He looked at them and was good! ha silly kid!

Transfers is this week. We will find out in the next few days what will happen. So i'm not so sure if i'll be here for his baptism... but that is okay! i am just excited for him!

So earlier this week it was crazy stormy, raining and windy. Because it was so windy it was useless to have an umbrella, so we walked around in the rain and tracted for 2 hours. We had some good experiences! Most people actually said no. But we got chased by a dog for one of them and i look up and see that it passed me and was chasing sister samataua. ha and so i stopped. nec minute there is a kid standing by us asking us if we are okay. ha we ended us teaching him a bit. super nice kid, erik, who sounds like he is from england but is kiwi! loved it!

we have found an almost new investigator from doing that. We knocked this one door and the lady wasn't interested but said that her husband was. So we went back to meet him the next day and he said that his family has recently joined the church and are urging him to do so and learn. So i'm so excited to teach him. He really wants to learn. His name is fili!

please pray for these people!
This week i learned about keeping my mind focused and centered on the work.

2 ne 9:39

Dc 4
mark 6:22 this one really touched my life! so good
i love you all!

Sister BIrd

I love conference

Hello Family:)

I miss you! But things are going really well.

This week we had a lot of great things happen that kept us away from the work, so that was sad but man oh man i love the temple and conference!

So since we are half way around the world we have conference a whole week later! It was amazing to hear from the prophets and apostles. I love listening to their council. I really like the talks that mentioned love. To express love in word and deed. DO NOT LET ANY CORRUPT COMMUNICATION  PROCEED OUT OF YOUR MOUTH. I also really liked the talk on pornography and her amazingly strong testimony at the end. wow. those words that she said about the strength of the book of mormon is something that i've been striving to know how to put into words and she did it so perfectly. If you have not watched or listened to conference, i so urge you to now. It truly has strengthened my testimony of the Savior. I also love the words of Elder Holland, He said he knew that the Savior lived more than he knew that those people sat before him at that conference. That is the strongest witness i have ever heard. I know too, that the Savior lives, and i will continue to strengthen my testimony more and more until i have that strong conviction as well, and then i will carry on strengthening until i see him myself someday! :)

We went to the temple on thursday this week. What a lovely experience we had to feel the spirit of our Heavenly Father. It's a wonderful place to be. Although i didn't have as a great of experience as i had last time we went, it was still nice to be there.

Jordon is progressing well. He understands the doctrine, reasons and blessings so clearly.  It truly amazes me every time we teach him just how well he understands. We taught him word of wisdom this week and he understood the blessings at the end of D&C 89 better than i ever have! i was so impressed. i can't even remember how he said it, but it was so perfect. He's been through it, so he understands why God would give us such a commandment.

John, Gina and calias all came to a family home evening last monday! Yay! we finally got them out of the house. John had just got back from work and was really tired but gina and calias convinced him to come. We decided to lead the way, so we wouldn't loose them, incase they tried to change their minds along the way. (which did almost happen at one turn, but he kept coming, thank goodness). We had it at our ward mission leaders home.  Sister stanford shared a lovely message and then we played games to get to know each other and have fun. We played a game called signs where you pass the sign around and the person in the middle has to guess who has it. sometimes you can see it being passed. John was such a crack up during this!!! ha we would pass it right in front of him and tell him we had it and he didn't notice! ha He was the one complaining but i swear he had the most fun. so many laughs were shared that night! i love them! please keep praying for them.

After conference 
we had some lessons and i swear we were so bold in them it was crazy! We basically told them that there was no point in learning from us if they weren't going to change. Our purpose is to help them change to follow the Savior and have more happy and fulfilling  lives. They both agreed to continue learning and showed a desire to change. This was arohaina and kura.
i love being a missionary! Thanks for all your prayers and love and sacrifice!

Sister Bird

We get to go to the Temple!

Hello Family,

things are going really well in my area. We have a lot of progressing investigators, just can't seem to get them to church!!! ha BUT we  have a baptism coming up. His name is Jordon Longhurst! He is a great kid. Not sure if i told you how we found him in last weeks emails but i'll share it with you again. 

We were running out of time before church. We had gone to our investigators trying to find someone that would come to church. We went to arohaina's house, and she wasn't home. But we found her brother, tokowhiti(toe koe fitee, he is 16) (here in NZ the letters wh make an f sound) and his friend Jordon (18). They were just chilling in the living room playing x box. We started talking to them about the plan of salvation and then invited them to church, surprisingly they agreed and came along.  ha the boys started playing rock paper scissors in sacrament! ha Well church was over and i'm not too sure how much they enjoyed it but we set an appointment for the next day with Jordon. We've been teaching Jordon for a week now and he just loves everything that we give him. He is going to be baptized on the 26th of April and he's excited as well. The sad thing about Jordon is that he has some mental disabilities, but honestly you wouldn't be able to really tell. It's just that his mom treats him like he's less. But honestly he understands the lessons so clearly and perfectly, it's amazing! Please pray for Jordon, he is on a good road. 

Ok so for John and Gina. They are coming along slowly. Their hearts have definitely been softened and they have come to love us. We just need to find a way for them to open up to others. They love what they are learning and they notice that it makes them happier and feel good inside. I love this family. I hope i can see them baptized. If not i hope that they are baptized:) i believe that they will be. Please pray for them as well.

Sister Samamtaua and i are getting along so well. We laughed so much this week and it was so much fun! i so enjoyed it!

Sister Samamtaua has told me recently that i have changed her life as a missionary. She is obedient and she is happy. She works hard now because she wants to, not because i  do it and take her with me. When we go on exchanges, she is making the changes in the sisters as well.  It makes me so happy to know that i, with the Lords help, have shaped one of his children in to an even better person/missionary. I cried when she told me that i've changed her life and she loves who she is. 

All the people and kids on the street that we meet can really only remember my name, so when they see us they either call out "hey sister bird" or better yet, lately it's been "hey sister birds!" ha it's so funny! and when people glance at her name badge they think that it says "sister samantha" instead of samataua. So she gets called Samantha alot! it's crack up!

This week we got great news.... i've been praying for this to happen! We are going to the temple again!!! yaya!! our zone goes on Thursday, which will be Wednesday your time! i am so excited. I was in Hamilton in the mission leadership council that i attend now that i am a sister training leader, and president announced it and i started crying. i need the temple. it's my strength! What a blessing that they Lords has given me:) 

This week remember the Savior. Remember how he was humble and modest. Everything that he did in deed, word or action was very modest and always glorified our father in heaven. He never drew attention to himself but always gave the credit to heavenly father adn always relied on him. Let us join the Savior in that example this week of glorifying our father in heaven with our uplifting words, our kind deeds and our modest appearance:) love you all

Sister Bird

A Few Reasons Why I Got Called to the VC

Hello family, can you believe how fast time flies. It's already April... tomorrow.
So this week was pretty crazy! a lot of amazing things happened! ha First off we'll start with Kabuadaak(she is kiribus) we've been trying to teach her english but the only  way we know how is through using the gospel. I kind of felt like we were just forcing the gospel on her. I felt bad. We had an appointment with her on Wednesday morning and we invited a kiribus RM girl from the other ward in our building(she's actually in our ward but goes to the other one). She went and met her before the lesson and Kabuadaak (kah-boo-uh-dak) was going to ditch us and leave the appointment because of three reasons. 1) she didn't really understand what we were teaching her. 2) her husband hates mormons and told her to ditch us and 3) she felt that we were forcing it on her and she's already catholic. So these are reasons why she was going to leave. Ruta, the member, was able to convince her to stay because she was coming to the lesson. She agreed and stayed. The lesson went so great. i just explained to her that we were going to teach her the lesson, becuase i didn't want to trick her by any means. She agreed. I didn't understand comletly of what was said but the spirit was really strong. It was an amazing lesson and such a miracle. The sad part is that Ruta moved this week, so she won't be able to come to anymore of our lessons, so i'm not sure what we are going to do there. Alot of prayers!
The next miracle is that we set Breeze for a baptismal date... dont' get too excited though because we already dropped her date, for now. I think she does want to be baptized but she's letting things easily get in the way. Especially because her parents don't like us. Well her dad doesn't, he always tells us to leave because they are busy, but really they're not dong anything.l maybe we'll just have to serve them hard out and then they'll love us! ha But breeze is amazing. She got into a car accident the end of last year. Part of her skull is missing right now and so she's just recently been diagnosed with epilepsy so her parents won't let her leave with out them. (until she went to lunch this morning with her friends. can't come to church but can go out with her friends... i see how it it;)) ha excuses excuses! She really loves everything that we teach her and she really recognizes the spirit.
The other miracle is that all of our plans fell through for investigators coming to church. We wanted to give up but we decided to go to arohaina's house and see if she wanted to come. We got there and she wasn't home BUT  her younger brother tokowhiti(16) (toko fiti) that we've never met, and his friend jordan(18) were there. We were able to teach them plan of salvation. They had a lot of good questions and they liked it. It was all new to them though. cool experience and also they wanted to come to church (they had nothing else to do). So they came to church! ha honestly worst day to bring young boys to church! ha the topic was family history and the speakers honestly just spilled out all their family that they had researched. It was nothing spiritual whatsoever! and the last speaker went 15 minutes over! i was going to die! sister samataua and i just laughed because we were frustrated. but it was great! ha crack up! can't complain, the Lord blessed us with finding investigators to come to church!
also an inactive that we found a while ago, Mereana Kupa, came to church too! It was so great to have her there. She honestly fit right in. She has some relatives and friends that go to our ward. She is the sweetest maori lady ever. She stopped coming to church because of this big long story of trust issues with this lady telling her husband lies about her and then the bishop got involved and threatened to take her kids out of church college.... it's longer and makes more sense with all the details obviously. But now here she is, after 25 years, she came to church! it was amazing! i love his lady! She connects so well with family history, so i'm convinced that they talks were for her! ha
well, it's been a great week! :)

There is a family that i met at the VC while i was there... the olsens. They have a daughter that is a little person. Do you remember me talking about her? Well we became good friends and the mom is actually my ward mission leaders daughter. i got to see her and one of her daughters this week. It was really exciting to catch up. i just love their family. It was great to see how well we actually click to be able to catch up like we did. What  a great family. i think it's those families i was supposed to meet as to a few reasons that i got called to the VC. i had to meet them. Because they are not in my mission! ha i would never have been able to meet them otherwise! 

 

                                                 This is a picture of mereana

                                     Angla olsen and kayla. WML daughter and granddaughter.

MIRACLES!!!

Let's see what can i tell you this week?
MIRACLES!!! the Lord has absolutely blessed us to much this week. We went from 4 progressing investigators to 9 progressing. Progressing means that they are keeping their commitments. And we got 2 people at church this sunday!! which is a huge blessing because we haven't been able to get people to church very much!! ha
So this week is the first time since being in a fulltime proselyting area that the day dragged on.. ha i was tired, my companion was tired. we really didn't plan many activities and our appointments all fell through, however God still blessed us with a great rest of the week.
We had interviews with the president this week, he is such and awesome man. But the best part was the interview meeting that we had with the district. i learned so many good things about teaching with the spirit, especially because we role played. then i took that and worked it really well in my area that day. so far in this area we can really only count on 1 hand the number of powerful lessons we've had. that is not ok. we can have powerful lessons each time if we allow it to happen and prepare sufficiently. so later that day we had two great lessons with our investigators and now they are progressing so well. i'm so excited to see them proegress. their names are john, gina and their daughter callias (callay). John needs to give up drinking and gina weed ha . but they have the desire. please pray for them.
i want to share with you something funny that john said. We were talking to him about not drinking anymore and he was afraid to offend the people he was with by saying no. so he came up with just telling them that he wants water. His niece then comes in and asks for money to buy a beer and he said " go drink some water instead" "you can have water and i'm allowed to have the beer!!!" ha he was joking but it was so funny`! ha you would love them:) after we were teaching them we went to their next door neighbors, which is another one of their nieces, and we were teaching her. john came into his back yard and saw us outside teaching her on her porch and he gives us a thumbs up, smiles and backs away:) ha he's great!!
it's been a great week!!
The cool thing about john and gina is that in the past email i've been telling you about how they didn't want us to really come around and teach them anymore. They were pretty set on the maori church because that is what their family said they should do. But i was pretty set on teaching them the first discussion about Joseph Smith and then allowing them to make the decision. Last week i told you we taught John and this week we were able to teach it to Gina on her doorstep. I asked if we could come in for a minute and she denied. So i decided that it's now or never and just started teaching her right their even though she just said she wanted john to be there when we were teaching her. Suddenly her ears opened, she became intereted and she loved what we were telling her. She said that she didn't feel like having her kids baptized at the marae was right. She felt that what we taught her was true. The spirit had touched her heart and she began to feel bad and confess to us that she had been avoiding us. We committed her to pray and when we say them again which is in the above lesson about the beer comments they told us that they had received their answer. They said when they prayed they felt happy inside. They felt that a weight had been lifted off of their shoulder and also said they felt relieved. The best part is that when they told us they weren't sitting together, Gina was in the house and john outside. But they basically said the exact same thing! seriously, talk about unity. There are so many times when they say the same things and describe experiences that they had separately the same way. They are amazing! please pray for them. i love them heaps! Also callais and john prayed together and she said the prayer. They both felt the answer, it was amazing! She said that the happy feeling made her want to obey her parents for once! ha so cute! She also had bible study in school and she said that she had to pray for everyone. She said her teacher says dear God but she said dear heavenly father because that's how we taught her!! yay it's sticking!
Another miracle we had this week was that we got a new investigator that is ready for baptism. She just moved in with her sister, a family in our ward, because her husband beat her because he didnt' want her to join the church. She was set for baptism on the 29 of this month, by the missionaries up in auckland. She still wants to be baptized really bad and so i'm excited for things with her. Her name is mary and she is so sweet. She has a little boy named shawn! love them!
please pray for
arohaina, dorothy, breeze, deadre, john, gina, whitney, mary, foliga, and trisina. All of these are our progressing investigators! They need your prayers! Thank you so much! i hope you enjoyed the letter! my faith was certainly increased this week.
Moroni 7 "how can we lay hold upon every good thing?" only through Jesus Christ. Having faith and hope in his atonement, for through his atonement we can overcome death and sin! He is amazing and truly has given us all:)
love you heaps! please pray for me and my companion as well! AND the sisters that i'm over.