Week 62

YSA Activity, Barking Dog Festival, and Mutton

19 October 2025

Hello everyone. Great week this week. It's beautiful outside!

If you have every wondered what a YSA FHE looks like in NZ, now you know.  Great people having a good time.  We love the fact that they do such a good job of including everyone and they really work at making everyone feel included.  Now if we can just get them married.

Minute to win it.

This ward is unusual. There are more guys that attend the activities than girls.

Amy Jaggi, is the wife of Elder Jeremy Jaggi who spoke in conference a few weeks ago.  Such a wonderful person full of energy and the spirit. 

We love our city, Takapuna. You never know what is going to be going on in the city center. This week it was Dog Mania. Why not have Santa Clause at Dog Mania?  Oddly enough, we are so surprised at how low-key NZ is about holidays and especially Christmas.  It is rather refreshing to have it be much less commercial. We are within walking distance of most of the shops and the city plaza. They often have events in the city plaza and it is fun to walk around and people watch. This was a typical Saturday.

We have two senior couples in our Pacific Public Affairs group that are not stationed in the Area Office.  One couple is in Australia and the other is in Papua New Guinea. This is a Zoom good-bye party for the Huston's in Papua New Guinea. They have done a great job under very trying and difficult living circumstances. So much is happening in that country with thousands joining the Church each month and our Church does so much humanitarian work in the country. The country is full of civil and tribal strife and the poverty is such a struggle. Despite all the challenges or maybe because of all the challenges the Church is flourishing and the Huston's did a great job.

On our beach walk we came across of a group of Christians youth singing Christian songs on the beach.  They were loud and energetic and we loved seeing them be so outward and open about their faith.  Launette wanted to join in the singing. Not sure which denomination it was but it was inspiring.

The person is the red jacket is Duane. He joined the Church about 4 months ago and K.C. and Judy Shaw were very influential in his conversion. He is on fire with the gospel and a wonderful person. We took him to lunch with our intern from BYU. They hit it off. Rich, our manager joined us.

One picture facing the temple. The other picture facing away from the temple. Look at this view. Both view are beautiful.

We love the Auckland temple. It is a beautiful setting and it is so nice to have a temple so close. The other couple is the Warwoods. He is the mission financial secretary and he does mission bikes. She is the mission nurse. They are both very busy and great people. Great to be with them at the temple.   

Activities this week:

1. This week we spent time on the Giving Machines. We delivered pass-along cards and banners to the charities involved in Giving Machines this year. It took us 3 hours to drive the greater Auckland area on our delivery run.

 2. We also had our first Channels designation meeting this week and we are seeing progress on the management and all Church communications across all the social media platforms.  

3. We gathered questions from youth throughout the Pacific at the request of the media team for President Oaks for an upcoming Q&A he is intending to do. They came up with great questions!  

4. The senior missionary zone kept us busy this week with arriving and departing missionaries and planning for upcoming FHE and zone activities.  

5. We spent time working on a presentation for Elder Wakolo who is going to India to do a one hour presentation on the Church.  It is a 100 day celebration in India celebrating the grand opening of a special hospital. Interesting, we are not allowed to talk about or mention the temple that is being built in India.  

6. This upcoming week we are staffing, casting, and helping with the production of a Giving Machine commercial that will be shown in movie theater prior to each movie.  

One thing we can say about our mission is that there is a huge variety and diversity of tasks and activities.  

We were invited for Sunday dinner to the home of a few YSA in our ward. It was a surprising treat. (You never know) Bekkah made mutton and bulgar wheat with a mint salad and tzatziki sauce. Tom made pizza in his homemade pizza oven on the back porch. The conversation was equally delightful.

I was very inspired by our young adults this week. I am impressed with the leadership skills, education, assignment follow-though, kindness, and testimonies. I'm proud of them. I believe our church is in good hands. They understand so much more than I did at their age. God bless our young people.

We love you and miss you.

Elder and Sister Shaw