The time is really just shooting by! Good gracious! It's awesome over in in Aeoteroa!
How is everyone in America? I have no idea because I still haven't received any letters from anyone! So, *hint hint* send me letters. :-) */hint hint*
Nani's baptism was on Tuesday, and it went splendidly! I sang a few songs as interlude: Consider the Lillies, When I am Baptized, and I am a Child of God. It was good! Nani is really arthritic, and so she can't really hold onto anything or anyone, so she basically just knelt down and that was how she got baptized. It was good. :-) She was confirmed yesterday in church, and now she is a member. :-) Woot! I have a picture of her to attach. :-) I really need to make my pictures lower quality so that I can send more than 3 in an email...
I did a trade-off with the Elders in Chartwell (they name their suburbs in Proper Hamilton). It wasn't too bad.
Supposedly, once summer really arrives, you burn so quickly without sunscreen because the Ozone layer is really thin here. So, I'm gonna come back as brown as a Maori! ;-) Or, just red as a strawberry.
April and Wero are doing good. They have talked about how they both just attack each others feelings and just patronize each other. They really will be trying to get married, which is fantastic!
We got a new set this week. His name is Rahiri. He and his brother John were both taught sometime before I came. John wasn't interested, but Rahiri was. Well, as time passed on, John gained interest, and Rahiri lost interest. John was baptized a few month ago or so. He baptized Taylor (my first baptism in NZ). Anyways, we paid a visit to Ra and he is keen once again. We set a plan for him to overcome his WoW (Word of Wisdom, not World of Warcraft) problems. He is set for the same day as Wero, April, and Tyesha. I know that none of you probably have a clue who these people are, but I do! :-)
I sang Consider the Lillies in Sacrament meeting. It came as quite a surprise. Bishop had asked me to do prelude before church, but it fell through. So, when they announced the speakers, they said, and then we'll have a musical interlude by the Elders. I was explaining something about the sacrament to Wero, and all of the sudden, I realized that I had just been called out to sing a song. Oh. What a surprise! So, with about 10 minutes notice, we sang consider the lillies. It went really well, I think, and I hope it brought the spirit. Heaps of people came and told me that I sang really well. :-) So, I think it went well. :-)
There's this thing in NZ called National Trash Day, but I'm specifically talking about a certain day called In-organics day. Well, what happens is that for one day of a year, people can just toss their trash out on the side of the street, and the city will pick it up for free. Here's the good part. A lot of the time, the inorganics never have to be picked up by the city because people just walk around and pick up things that they want. The other day, we saw this man driving a truck that had sofas and beds heaped onto it. It was funny. People just take whatever they thing could be valuable, they fix it up, and they go onto Facebook to a group for their area and surrounding areas and they sell it via Facebook. It's really interesting, I think. :-) Wero has already made around $200 in profit from just fixing things up, cleaning them, and selling them. Supposedly, it's a humongous deal in Proper Hamilton and in Auckland. There are only just a few big piles in Nga (Ngaruawahia), but supposedly there's rubbish everywhere in big cities. I think it's really interesting to see heaps of people just sorting through the rubbish to find something that they can sell. I guess that the saying, "One man's trash is another man's treasure" is true. To a lot of these people, the things that people throw away are things that they can use. Many people are below the poverty line, and they have to resort to methods like those heretofore mentioned to make money. April is actually making cream puffs and selling them for $20 for a dozen. Pretty good plan, I think. Her cream puffs are fantastic. :-) E. Ngalu has the recipe. :-)
There's this girl named Julie in the Nawton suburb in Hamilton that, when she tried to get married by the bishop, they discovered that her church records had been lost. So, after trying hard to look for witnesses or programs or a certificate, they had to re-baptize her.
We took Ra to the VC, and he loved it. "It was mean," he said. He liked listening to Thomas S. Monson relate an experience that he had where he visited a dying man, and upon the dying man's question: Where does my spirit go after I die? T.S. Monson flipped through the triple combo, and from no thought of his own, flipped to Alma 40, in which Alma explains to his son Corianton what happens after death. He was able to give the man some peace before he died.
A daughter of an investigator decided to fly a kite. Ok, so what? Well, she attached it to a fishing pole so that she could easily let string out and bring it back in. I thought that was a genius idea, and I have to try it. :-)
One thing that I was reading in the scriptures was in Luke. Jesus tells people to "Turn the other Cheek." What I didn't realize was that there was a JST footnote to the Appendix that says that Turn the other cheek so that you don't fight back, essentially. So, I was thinking. As missionaries, we are trying to be like Christ. As it says in Isaiah, he turned his back to the smiters. He didn't fight back. As missionaries, we are instructed to avoid all physical confrontation, even in self defense. We should run away instead of fighting because, unlike Christ, we won't be able to take the abuse that he took. We would fight back. So, as missionaries, we need to love everyone. That is why there is a mission rule in place that says that if you ever hit another missionary, or if you hit someone more than self defense would require, you are sent home. God only wants missionaries that can be Christlike, because they are the most humble and the most successful. So, we should all try to be like Christ. Avoid physical confrontation. Avoid arguing. Try to emulate the Savior in all that you do. As the song goes, "Love one another as I have loved you, try to show kindness in all that you do. Be gentle and loving in deed and in thought, for this is the way Jesus taught..."
So, with heaps of Love and stuff like that,
E. C.F. Staheli
Explanation of the Pictures
1. Picture before Nani's baptism. From left: Me, Nani, Bro Hill (Son-in-law. She is living in Bro. and Sis. Hill's house.), E. Ngalu.
2. This is Wero and April's youngest girl holding a sparkler for Guyfox! Wero set off some Roman candles to celebrate. The neighbors smoked them though. They had something like 50 roman candles. Guyfox is a weird holiday...
P.P.S. I am very terrible at retaining Tongan. I know that Monite (with a line above the o) is Monday. Etc. I know the days of the week. I know that Sisu (with lines above the U's) Kalasi is Jesus Christ, and I know a handful of other things, but other than that, I don't know too much.
P.P.P.S. Someone give me some deets on the Storm in New York! I have no idea what's going on there.
P.P.P.P.S Obama... Oh well. I won't have to deal with him for two years. :-)
P.P.P.P.P.S. Read the first P.S. :-D :-)
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