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.

This Week Has Been a Good One

This week has been a good one. It was really long thinking back on it! We did so many things that seemed days apart but really were only a day apart and by the end of the week the things we did on thursday felt like last week. I got a bit homesick this week because for transfers we had to take a sister to the airport. It was time for her to go home. She stayed with us and worked with us for two days before she left. Her name is sister Pea and she is from tahiti. She is an amazing sister and i learned so much from her. the main things i learned is to teach with the spirit. Seriously this sister was filled with the spirit. It was amazing. Ever since being  around her i want to be like that. i want people to see the spirit in me when they look at me. so that has been my goal this week. it started with actually teaching with the spirit. i haven't been so good at that but i have definitely seen the progress since i've been focused on it. As i was studying another sister's preach my gospel this week it said "how can i know if the investigator felt the spirit in the lesson... ? did i feel inspired and uplifted from the lesson?" i have been using this question in every lesson i go into. it truly makes a difference when the spirit is there. Before i would say things because no one was talking but now i wait until the spirit helps me know what to say and it has made all the difference. i am not perfect at it, nor will i probably ever be but i love feeling the way i do when the spirit was in the lesson because it motivates the person to want to change and repent on their own.

Something i actually studied this morning was the temple. There was a talk in the october 2013 ensign called 'making time for the temple'. it really opened my eyes of how much i miss going so frequently. My desire to go to the temple increased and also my desire to share with others the blessings of the temple. Please go to the temple. it is there for a reason, the Lord has it to bless us and the lives of others. I come closer to the Savior as i attend the temple and we all need that bond with him. i'm  not saying that it's the only way to bond with him but it's a great way. The prophets have instructed us to attend to please "make time for the temple" in your lives. 

Our investigators are progressing, slowly, but they are progressing. Something that we are going to strive to do this week is daily contact with our investigators. As we do this then they will progress faster because we are seeing them more and they are remembering the commitments that we asked them to do. And as they keep their commitments they will come closer to heavenly father and desire to repent. Please pray that this will work or that i can think of something else that will work. 

John and Gina wanted to stick with their moari religion that the moari kings started. We taught John yesterday on his porch because he kept blowing us off. We asked him if he would rather follow his moari king or Jesus Christ. We taught him the restoration right there and he said Jesus Christ. We invited him to pray about it. i hope he does! i hope he sincerely wants to know and follow Jesus Christ because it will make all the difference in his life. 

This week we had to prepare ourselves for a cyclone, or tornado, that his vanuatu and came to New Zealand. It didn't hit us directly but we got the edges of the storm. It wasn't bad for us at all but it was kind of scary thinking that it was close or could get us. We were out in the rainy weather getting soaked. we came for lunch and i through my clothes and coat in the dryer, finished lunch and put them back on. it was kind of exciting!!!:) 

ok so for transfers, i am still in Tuakau with sister samamtaua! But the best news is that sister prince and her trainee replaced the other sisters in our WARD! my best friend is in the same ward as me and i am so excited!!!! :) i couldn't be more happy than to have her so close. i learn so much from her still. she is such a good example of hard work and obedience. love her! so blessed. i feel that president made a mistake in putting us so close! it's amazing! :) not a mistake as in it will be a bad thing, i actually think it'll make me work harder.

Well, i'm not sure what else to say...

we had a great lesson with kaitz this week. He's coming around. Kaitz is like 26 i think and he is moari. this is where i started practicing teaching with the spirit, so much that i didn't really let my companion speak because i was so excited at how it felt.... :( i feel bad for that. But a cool part of the lesson happened when we pulled out the cards and did a card trick. He lost the deal and agreed to taking lessons and praying about what we taught him. He was actually excited and keen to try it. He said everything we said  we made sound so good and he wants a change in his life. He excited yet nervous for the change. but i am so excited to teach him! 

anyway. great things are happening! i am always happy:)

this week we are studying the atonement, join us:)

The little bit i've already studied my testimony of Jesus Christ has grown so much. I love Jesus Christ, i know he is my savior. I know he made it possible for me to receive a forgiveness of my sins, for me to be free of guilt from my mistakes and for me to live again. What a glorious blessing. Truly Jesus Christ has given us all. i am so thankful! What is your testimony of Jesus Christ? please share it!:)

love ya 

sister Bird

Trasnfers are This Week.

My goal this week is to be more consistent with people, to show them that i love them and build there testimony so that they have the desire to be baptized and ask us to be baptized because they love God rather than us asking them and dragging them to the font. Any ideas?

Although those are the negative things going through my mind, i want you to know that God still shows  his love for us by putting little miracles in our every day life. Just to have to opportunity to talk with someone and have a good conversation is a blessing or rather tender mercy of the Lord. Meeting someone else that lives in a house that someone on the street told you that that is where they lived. I'm trying to always think in my head that there are no coincidences. God places each person in our lives for a reason. 

A really neat experience that i want to share this week is with Turia Thompson. We met her when we were just leaving a house and we saw her getting in her car in the back car park ( parking lot) of a shop (store). i wasn't going to go talk to her because of fear and inconvenience but i decided to anyway. She said that her uncle was a member and had been talking to her about it and that we could come around and teach her more about the book of mormon and meet her uncle. so we did! All of our appointments with her would always fall through or get cancelled and it was disappointing. But when we did catch her a few times we would share a scripture and we have had one official lesson with her about the book of mormon. The other day we stopped by and she said that she's been reading it here and there. i invited to her to pray to know if it's true and shared my testimony of how the spirit can speak to us and that she will receive her answer. she called us that night around 10 pm and she was so excited. She said that she received an answer when she prayed. She had this overwhelming feeling of joy come over her and with out a doubt she knew that the book of mormon was true. Ever since that moment she hasn't let the book out of her sight. she is always reading it and actually this week her faith in it and in God was put to the test. She got a call from her landlord saying that her rent hadn't been paid for 3 weeks and that if they didn't pay that day that they would be kicked out of the house by 5. she read that book, prayed and called people all morning. She had faith that God would help her through it. In the end she was able to get the  money and everything worked out. I know that her faith is so strong. She maintained a positive attitude through it all . she is now struggling with her partner... hope things go well. she has a lo of faith. please pray for her, i see this going somewhere.:)

John and Gina have back away a bit. We need to have more daily contact with them so we don't lose them. There uncle told them to go to a moari church and be baptized in their roots. That's the direction they are going but i'm hoping that you putting their name in the temple helps, i have faith that it will, it already had.

Transfers is this week. We should find out today or tomorrow if we get moved. not sure what will happen. i feel a change coming, sadly.. i really love my area and i love my companion! But i will always do whatever the Lord asks.

I am so grateful that i decided to serve a mission. It is definitely the best choice i've ever made. I am not perfect and still have heaps to learn but i feel that i've come a long way.

 i love you all:)

I love this gospel! Share it! Everyone needs it!

So things have been going alright. The sad part i've noticed is that i am declining in my expectations of myself and that the Lord expects of me especially as a leader. But thank goodness there is repentance and always improvement opportunities. I am grateful i can recognize, reevaluate and change. 

This week was actually a very fun week! I'm going to point out some fun things that happened...

so there is this guy that we've been trying to find time to teach. The other day we got a random call of someone who found his wallet and found our card and number in it. They called us because it said sister on it with out number! ha so we got it from that man and were able to give it to zion, the guy we are trying to teach! He was so excited he hugged us, i was not okay with that! ha But it was cool to see someone so happy! 

Another cool thing that happened this week is that we found a family who wants to be baptized! They want a change in their lives and they are so keen to learn! We invited them to be baptized and they agreed but then we talked to them this morning and their uncle convinced them of going back to their roots and getting baptized in that church, a mauri church. they are still keen to learn. Please pray for them and pray that they will be able to feel the spirit when we teach and that they will be able to give up their addictions. They want to but it's so hard! this is john and gina and their daughter callais (callay). I love them so much! They are great!

this week we also taught the youth boys again! i love stopping by when they are in the streets training and teaching them randomly. We did an object lesson on prayer and had them try to tie a knot without letting go of the rope. One knew how to do it but everyone else tried and they couldn't. The way to do it is to fold your arms, hold onto the rope with each hand and unfold your arms and then it ties it. It was cool. We related it to how we all go through struggles but the way to do it is through prayer. the only way you could tie this rope was in the prayer stance! ha it was cool! i love those boys! 

Arohaina is doing well. We've invited her to be baptized many times now and she is so nervous. She came to a baptism the other day with us to see what it was like and it calmed a lot of her fears but i think there is still something deep down thats bothering her and i think she doesn't know how to put it into words. she wants to be baptized but not soon. 

Exchanges with the sisters have been really great! i've been learning how to be a better leader and such and i've also been learning good skills from them. 

this sunday i bore my testimony...i didn't say much but this is what i had been thinking about.

I am so grateful that i chose to get baptized in this church. It was probably the best decision i've ever made. and the second best decision i've ever made is to go on a mission. I am so grateful that i chose to serve a mission. i love it! i love my savior Jesus Christ, i know he lives! i love to follow him:)

This is my testimony! i also know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet and i'm so grateful to have this knowledge. I know the true teachings of Jesus christ have been restored to the earth through Joseph Smith under the direction of Jesus Christ. i love this gospel!

share it! everyone needs it!

love you all!

Sister Bird