Week 60

Missed Family Reunion and Channels Committee

6 October 2025

Dear Family and Friends. Do you want the good news or the bad news first? Ok, bad news is Elder Shaw and I missed my sibling reunion in Bear Lake. It was hard to miss their fun activities, great conversations, and watching the BYU game together. They even took a picture together but you can see that we were not forgotten. Even though there are many things we miss out on,  the good news is we know we need to be here and we are happy. It's an interesting to have such conflicting emotions.

This is my new favorite breakfast, pancakes with chocolate protein sauce and blueberries. 

The "Tunnel of Love". :)  After sitting all day, every night we walk Takapuna town. It's such a cute town. I've said it before but it reminds me of an small California costal town. We walk to the market, to the beach, to the office, and to the restaurants. We drive on weekend to see sights.

It looks like we are working on a road construction crew, but not the case. For our P-day, we toured the sugar factory that is just south of our town on the Auckland port.  You would have thought we were in great danger.  It was very interesting to see how they make sugar for most of New Zealand.  Fun day out  with the other missionaries.

I love these colors together. Always matching someone.

You probably look at his picture and say, "so what."  But to us, it marks 14 months of work.  Our department has been in need of a Channel Committee/Manager.  Channels in Church lingo means all of the distributions method the Church uses to communicate their message.  In the Pacific Area channels include Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Newsroom Website, Communication Directors, and Priesthood Ecclesiastical Emails.  Prior to this meeting Church messaging was not coordinated across all the channels. We have been involved in many hours of analysis, presentations, and mentoring to encourage the establishment of a Channel Committee.  Great news, this week it happened.  We have great hope this will be the beginning of improved success in spreading the message of the Gospel in the Pacific.

During the Saturday night session you may have heard the international choir perform an English version of a famous Tongan hymn, "Jesus is the Way."  The Tongan version of the song is sung all the time here in the Pacific and it has great meaning.  It was meaningful to hear it performed in a session of conference. (We think it would have been a little better sung in Tongan. Don't tell.) Elder Shaw and I sang this song with our ukuleles at our last FHE. We are all learning it in Tongan.

We absolutely loved conference today. Wasn't it great? One of my favorite talks was by Sister Dennis. It was about the 100 year old runner and I was inspired to be a better cheerleader. She said "This is a gospel of become- becoming as He is and loving as He does."

It was an interesting feeling during conference with the absence of a presiding president. I don't know why I felt that. I know we have 14 prophets. I just missed the complete organization. We still have a few big news items coming up this week/month to write and post about. It will be a busy week.

We love you and miss you.

Elder and Sister Shaw