Week 63

Giving Machine Filming & Mission Breakfasts

26 October 2025

It was a great week. Once again we experienced a plethora of different activities. This place is always hopping. The Hanceys, our counter parts, were out of town this week so we covered it all and kept the interns busy. 

We started the week by preparing talking points and a Powerpoint presentation for Elder Wakolo. He is traveling to India and has been invited to speak for an hour about our religion and the connection between Fiji and India (they have a long history together).  It was interesting to do all the research and prepare the bones of the talk/presentation for Elder Wakolo. I am sure he will do a great job despite our contribution.

Sister Shaw works hard at managing the Church Newsroom Facebook page. It's like feeding a animal, constant!!! After creating the post, because it is a Church sponsored channel, every message need to go through the channels committee and then Church correlation. She tries to post 3-4 times a week.

We have 3 new couple missionaries coming this next week. We are preparing welcome dinners, apartments "flats", and airport trips.

We write a monthly newsletter to our national CDs with new initiatives and training. They are such great help. We love and appreciate them.

Next up was Giving machines. On Tuesday we helped with the coordination and filming of a 30 second commercial. We have arranged for a 30 second commercial to be shown before every movie shown at a local mall movie theater. When people leave the movie theater and go down the escalator the first thing they will see will be the Giving Machines. This meant arranging for the Giving Machines to be delivered out of storage to the mall at 6:00am. The mall would only let us film for 2 hours in the morning before the mall opened. Arranging for the acting talent (YSA's from our ward) and coordinating with the filming crew. We were up at 4:00am to get everything ready and were done by about 9:30am. The commercial (to the music of This Little Light of Mine) will be done in the next week or so and then will play starting November 22nd through Christmas. Fun activity and a lot of work to get it all coordinated.   

This is our prop manager. Severely under paid.

Our movie stars and supporting actress. They are all from our YSA ward or our BYU interns.

They are trying to look excited in their cool YSA way. It look about 15 minutes for them to get into and then he had them do it over and over for 45 minutes from different angles. They were good sports and really enjoyed it. I think a couple of dates may come out of this experience.

This is Veronica, our social media manager. She was all into this video shoot.

Elder Shaw rearranging the rubbish cans to make room.  Just want to point out it was heavy.

This master piece is in our breakfast rotation. Pumpkin shuffle. It has egg, oats, and protien powder with syrup on top.

We call this the messy omelette. It follows the pumpkin shuffle in the rotation.

Most Saturdays, for our p-day we walk downtown Takapuna to get sushi and then walk to the city lake. (Takapuna has a lake and an ocean.) We were entertained by canoeing races. They start at opposite buoys and race in a circle, going around the buoys 4 times. It looks like a work out. I guess that is the point.

This is Takapuna beach at dusk. We walk most night from 8-9pm. (We sit all day!) On Friday we watched swimming races. This isn't a very good picture, but there were about 30 swimmers swimming the length of the beach both directions, maybe 1 mile long beach. As they were climbing out of the water, we noticed most of them were older than us. Impressive!!

We were invited to Sunday dinner by the Shumways and the Couchs!  It was so nice of them. They serviced Hawaiian Haystacks. I haven't had that in 10 years. It tasted like home.  Kelly might not be smiling because it is hard to take a selfie.

We love what we are doing. Sometimes it is frustrating. Sometimes we feel uncomfortable. Sometimes we say or do the wrong thing, but we are giving it our best. We are trying to get our moneys worth. :) We know the Lord is pleased with our efforts. We will go home happy and grateful. Happy for the many wonderful relationships and grateful for the hundreds of transforming experiences. I am also grateful for the love I feel from Heavenly Father. He wants all of His children to know about the Savior. We all have a big responsibility.

We love and miss you,

Elder and Sister Shaw