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 home. Small world again.

The other one is Trey. We will get a picture of him at some point. They both provide variety and youth to the office. We spend a portion of our day helping and mentoring them.

We fed the missionaries this week. They are all just great missionaries. Fun to be with them and learn from them. They are enjoying not having Kentucky Fried Chicken.  We have mentioned in prior posts that KFC is a fetish for many Polynesians and the missionaries get their fill of fried chicken.

This is Elder Suli. He is from Vanuatu.  He ordered the biggest burger they had.   He had never seen so much food before, he took a picture of his meal and sent it home to his family to see. I really love him!!

We said goodby to the MacLennan this week.  They are headed home to Canada. Odd to think that we are now 3rd in line to go home with the 19 couples in our Senior Missionary Zone.

We don't even know where to begin to explain the New Zealand All Black Rugby history.  We made it to a match last night and it was EPIC.  The best analogy I can make is that they are similar to US Olympic basketball team when the play other countries in the Olympics.  This match was between the New Zealand All Black and the Australian national team.   What an experience.  We now know many of the rules of the game and some of the strategy.  It is a brutally violent game that is graceful at the same time.   Rugby is the national sport in New Zealand and it is huge in many of the countries throughout the world.  We have a new appreciation for the sport.   We had many of the zone couples with us for this activity.  We didn't know this was a bucket list item but it turned out to be a bucket list event for many people. FYI, the middle picture is the team doing their famous pre-game Haka.  Google it. You will love it.  So cool.

Just another beautiful spot in New Zealand. We know we will regret saying this, but the weather has started to warm a little and spring is showing up every now and then. New Zealand is a beautiful place.

 

This is Jeremy and Melissa Higgins.  We love them.  Jeremy works with us in the Area Office and was just promoted to a significant position of Manager of Production and Publishing and this is their celebration dinner.  We have been rooting for them to get the job. They are both wonderful people with amazing spirits.

One of the blessings of our mission is the opportunity to associate with, mentor, and learn from so many great Church employees.  We watch in awe at the amount of wonderful content that is produced in our department.

Two quick stories.  First, we gave a blessing to our friend that lives above us, Gladys Cravetts. Just kidding. :)  Her name is Sharon. She experienced a fall and has been slowly recovering. I was so happy that she would be open to a blessing from Kelly. We asked her if she would attend the temple open house but she declined.  She is a member of the Baptist Church.  She has had a blessing once before in her life. Sometimes when people are in need, they turn to the Savior.  That should tell you something.  We all need a relationship with our Heavenly Father.  It brings peace and hope to the soul.

Second story.  We taught our institute class this week and we decided we needed to talk about working and qualifying to receive all the temple covenants in this life.  That meant talking about temple marriage.  It was an interesting class and we hope it came across well.   I don't believe we moved the needle much for most if not all of them.   This generation has challenges that we never faced and we really hope they can overcome the skillful tactics of the world. We all need the power that temple covenants provide.

Have a great week. We love you and miss you.

Elder and Sister Shaw