Fire Alarms and New Friends
Week 6
21 September 2024
This woman made 6 amazingly beautiful arrangements for the celebration. I asked her to show me how.:)
Hello All,
Our days are getting busier and that is such a blessing. Neither of us do well without a check list to feel productive. This week we hosted a training with out of town visitors and we traveled north to cover an event.
The three pictures above are from an event we covered. It is the 170th year anniversary of the Church in New Zealand. It is also Maori language week. The church produced a children's history book of the Church history in New Zealand and the pictures above are from the event. It was held in the only Maori speaking ward in the Church. We went with a production team, Elder Jaggi of the Area Presidency and his wife, to video and report on the event. It was an inspiring and impressive event. Also a very beautiful Maori closing prayer was given. We didn't understand a word of the prayer but could feel his love and testimony. Here is a link to a short video of the event and the second is to the news article we wrote for the Newsroom.
Click here for video Click here for news article
What happens when you evacuate your hotel at 5am? You see views like this!
I am a bad influence on Kelly sometimes.
The history book event was 3 hours North of where we live It is also only about 20 minutes from the Bay of Islands. It is one of the most beautiful locations in New Zealand so we stayed the night there. At 5:00am the hotel fire alarm went off with a repeating announcement, "please evacuate the building." So about a 100 of us stood outside while they cleared the building. Since we were up, we walked to the Bay which is about 50 yards from our hotel and watched the most beautiful sunrise over a postcard picture setting. It was stunning.
This week we had President Pace and President Webb of the Sunday School General Presidency and also Elder Jackson who works in the missionary department. Elder Jackson agreed to come to a pot-luck dinner and then do an hour fireside for the 25 senior couples in the Area Office and Auckland NZ mission. To summarize he stressed two things. Missions for young people change their lives for eternity. The other things was he all but pleaded for us to encourage other seniors to go on missions. He gave some amazing stats and stories about the impact that senior missionaries have in the world. Don't be surprised if you don't hear more about the needs and the request for more senior missionaries from the church. Being out here, we have become major believers in how much a senior mission can impact lives.
Taco Bell in New Zealand tastes nothing like Taco Bell in American (which is a blessing). The downside is that it wasn't cheap either but we had to try it.
Auckland Sky Tower to the right of the picture.
Auckland has a sky tower (space needle). On the last day of training and meetings with our team, a few of us went to the sky tower to look out over the city. Well, as some of you may know, Launette has a phobia of heights. It was highly entertaining to try and get her to walk across the window sections of the walkway.
This is the Communication and Public Affairs team for all of the Pacific Area. This group covers New Zealand, Australia, Papau New Guinea, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Cook Islands, Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, Vanuatu, Tahiti, and various other small islands in the Pacific. No bias here but these people are some of the best people in the church. This week 5 people from SLC from the Presiding Bishops office, Correlation, Communication, and Public Affairs came to the Pacific area to combine three seperate divisions of church operations under one Communication/Production Division. It involved a number of meetings and trainings. Our small team above is just one of the teams that were involved in the process. One of the blessing of working in the Area Office is that you really understand how global the church is and inspired the Prophet and Apostles are as they work to touch the hearts of every member and non-member.
During our training this week, each communication directors gave a brief presentation about what they are working on and the needs in their area. I had to take a picture of these 2 sweet girls. They are from Papua New Guinea. Aren't they adorable and so happy even though they have so little. Very little electricity and clean water, yet they have the gospel. This reminded me of a quote from President Nelson who said, "The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives." I am so grateful for the focus we have in our lives right now to share the gospel in very unique ways. It's the Lord's work.
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