The Pacific Post

 Week 59 Pacific Island Church History and All Blacks 28 September 2025 It has been an interesting week.  To be honest, most weeks on a mission are interesting and you never know what they will bring.  The only constant on a mission is that you should expect it change. The person standing is Hatu Tiakia.  He is the director of our department in the Area. We all traveled to Hamilon, NZ this week to support a Asia/Pacific Church History seminar.  The director of church history and the archives in SLC came along with about 12 Area Managers to Hamilton and we went to help with a few presentations.  Our departments work together on a few products. It is about a 2 hour drive south of Auckland and in the Spring time it is such a beautiful drive. This is Chiara, she is one of our two interns for the next three months.  She is wonderful, talented and very helpful.  We connected that Braiden's first missionary area was in her ward. He had dinner that her ho...

 Week 58 YSAs and King of Tonga Plans Travel to SLC 21 September 2025 Hello everyone! We had another great and busy week. Our days are full at the office reporting to and attending to several overwhelmed employees, and now are nights are busy with YSAs. We have temple nights, RS activities, EQ activities, Ward Counsel, FHE every Monday, ward activities, and ministering visits. It's great! This was missionary FHE game night that we organized for our district in the Area Office.  Let's just say that being set apart as a missionary does not diminish the competitive spirit of some of the missionaries. Kelly and I manned a table of Password. One rotation was with 2 church legal couples. We were laughing so hard at their arguing of rules. "In Canada Fruit Loop is one word." "In Canada Fruit Loop isn't a proper name." I didn't know I couldn't use rhyming words, that word doesn't rhyme." There was a competition who could argue the best. It was h...

  Week 57 Spring Time and Goodbyes 14 September 2025 Hello Everyone! It's hard to put into words what we are doing right now. It's definitely a supportive role. We come to the office asking "What can we do to help?" and before you know it, it's time to go home. We have been helping the productions team get ready for Sister Johnson and Sister Runia's visit to the Pacific. They will be in Australia, Tonga, Vanuatu, and New Zealand during the next 2 weeks. There is a great deal of prep, scheduling and arranging for General Authority visits. We will help take pictures and get quotes in Hamilton and Auckland. Stay tuned. All the employees left for Australia on Thursday and this is what the office looked like on Friday. Believe it or not, we had a very busy day: training a leader on JustServe, posting on Facebook Newsroom, writing an article on a humanitarian project in the Cook Islands and sending it to correlation, making a Powerpoint proposal for 2 social media e...

 Week 56 Kelly the Investigator and Happy Father's Day Again 7 September 2025 Remember Teancum "Tank" in our institute class, who is my distant relative? I wasn't sure if he was actively interested in the Church?  Well he has a mission call to Papua New Guinea. It will rock his world. Below is a picture of some missionaries in PNG. They are baptizing like crazy, but very humble/basic conditions. Last month when 107 members were baptized before the Stake Conference. This is a picture of the missionaries involved. Elder and Sister Shumway. Wonderful missionaries. We minister in restaurants. What's wrong with that!?! It's great, you should try it. Kelly the Investigator. (This is such a good look.) "So I understand you Mormons don't believe we are saved by grace. Why not?" Our institute class was into the scenario on grace vs works.  Best part is that they gave some great answers. This is turning out to be our best class. I think I have said that ev...