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 Week 23

Open House Committee & Sheep World

18 January 2025

Hello All! Things are hopping down here in Kiwi Land. Since the holiday our assignments have doubled and it is going to get busier next week. Here are some of our assignment and responsibilities:

1. We just joined the open house committee for the Auckland Temple. We have been assigns to come up with displays for the overflow room where the guests enter before they watch the movie and start the tour. This has been a little tricky gelling committee ideas with approved material from the temple department. Decisions still need to be made. The clock is ticking.

2.Most of our time goes to planning our annual area communication seminar on March 6-9. It is timed so the island visitors can go to the open house. We have about 40 guests coming for 3 days. This involves classes, panels, entertainment, displays, swag, training, and scheduling flights and hotel accommodations. Come to find out, I actually enjoy the planning part. We will see about the actual event.

3. We welcome 3 new people to our office. Tomorrow we have an intern from BYU coming and next Monday we have the Hancey's from Layton coming. They are the new missionary couple assigned to communication. We are excited to have them all. This involves setting everything up for them, finding a place for the intern to live, and ORIENTATIONS. We don't know where to start with that. I still feel like we are in training.

4.The BYU women's soccer team is coming! Does anyone know anyone on the team this year? They come April 28 and we get to travel with them. They have soccer camps and clinics, devotionals, firesides, seminary, service projects, and FUN. I think we are in charge of the fun. (Imagine that) I emailed Tasha with all of the links to the places our family went a couple of weeks ago.  Should be a great time getting to know them.

5. Let's not forget our normal responsibilities of writing articles, managing one of the Church Facebook pages, editorial committees, JustServe, a few reports to SLC, area authority bi-monthly leadership letter, scheduling travel, and MEETINGS. 

It's all interesting and new for me. This isn't as new for Elder Shaw so he keeps us on schedule and our schedule keeps us both hopping.


This is what it looks like when you get a room full of senior sister missionaries together for what we call "Power Hour". Weekly we study a conference talk together. It is a treasured hour of my week.



Counting and mailing temple open house pass along cards. We laughed at our counting methods. Did you know the hand can feel the correct number in a pile? 😉



This is what the Giving Machines look like when they are not being used at Christmas time.




I know this looks like a picture right out of a Norman Rockwell painting.   This is about an 45 min. north of our flat and is called Sheep World. This ranch teaches you all about sheep, sheep shearing, sheep dogs, etc.   Sounds a bit hokey but it was actually pretty interesting.



This is the group of senior missionaries that went to Sheep World.   These are amazing people that love their work in the Lord's kingdom.  And yes, we are the youngest couple in the senior missionary zone but these people can work circles around almost everyone.



One of the many beautiful beaches in New Zealand, Piha Beach.




This picture makes us smile.  These fine people are the Tanners and we love them and miss them.   They served next to us in the office and did our same assignment.   They went home on Christmas Eve.  We were sad to see them go.  This picture is awesome because we took about 30 of the same picture until they got the perfect picture.   Ben was not very happy about wearing his lei. They were so fun.



Sister missionaries being sister missionaries.   They have a glow about them.  Sister Hurdman and Sister Burke serve in our Tongan ward with us. Sister Hurdman is from Middleton. Anyone know her? She knows the Walkers.

This week's lesson learned in the mission field is that every interaction matters.   Because we wear our mission tags wherever we go, we are often looked at with some confusion.   They wonder why we have on a tag and they try to read it without making eye contact.   The only two things you can really read on the tag as you walk by is our name and Jesus Christ.   At that moment, people know you are doing something religious and they look at you differently.   Either they avoid eye contact, or they smile and recognize we are trying to honor our Savior.   Wearing the tag reminds us, how we act, what we do, and even the smallest interactions matter as we represent the Savior in all that we do.   When we were home and were out and about no one really knew if we were representatives of Jesus Christ.  On a mission you can never get away from that privilege and responsibility.   We love being a representative of the Savior 24 hours a day.

We love you and miss you.

Elder and Sister Shaw






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