6/7 November 2011

Elder Rowe and Elder Tukuafu modeling their love for Palmerston North

Well hello there! It's been a good one alright. It started off with a bang (a good bang) and ended quite nicely.

To answer your question, New Zealand does have daylight savings time, but it's of course, opposite. It was a couple of weeks ago, and it gets brighter and brighter every night. And that makes missionary work so much easier! It doesn't get dark until 8 and eventually won't get dark until 9:30 later in the summer. Or at least that how it was in Christchurch, but that's a lot farther south. It's pretty funny because in the winter, people start getting mad at you for knocking on their door at like 5 because it's "too late," but in the summer we can knock until 9 and no one says anything about it.

Last Monday (Halloween) we had a wonderful night after our P-day, but not because it was Halloween. Elder Tukuafu went down to Wellington with one of the Assistants and the other one, Elder Lekias (whose Dad is actually the Mission President in Auckland) came up here with me. That night we went over to the Taukapo's, our amazing Tongan family, and taught them a bit about the first half of the Plan of Salvation, leading up to Our Life on Earth and it turned into the importance of baptism. It was a pretty powerful lesson and were able to set a date for baptism with the mom, the two daughters (13 &11) and the son (9)! They committed to setting a date for November 29th, which is the birthday that two of them share. So it's great!

We then saw them again on Friday and had a Family Home Evening with them. We sang an opening and closing song, which we made copies of from our Tongan hymn book (which I've been diligently savoring). However, the closing hymn, Love at Home, was two pages long, but we failed to copy both pages...But it was ok! For the lesson we taught the rest of the beautiful Plan of Salvation that Heavenly Father has for us. They really enjoyed it, to say the least. Afterwards we played a really fun game, which I'll have to be sure and teach you all when I get home, if you don't know it already. It's called Musical Instruments, though I don't know if it will be as fun without any Islanders there. They get really into FHE games, and I just think I might waste you guys at it. We'll see.

Anyway, the Gibbs are also doing great. Anthony and Kitirangi both came to church with the Brother and Sister Gibb, but we weren't quite able to talk with them afterwards, but I'm sure they loved it of course. We've had a really good week with them. We taught them the Atonement, answered some personal questions they had, and then taught the Plan of Salvation on Saturday with beautiful simplicity. They both really want to do the right thing and just need to work on getting married so that they can get baptized. We're aiming for December.

Elder Tukuafu is great. We get along really well and have a lot of laughs. Mainly because of my dorkiness, but that's expected. It's funny because 4 of the missionaries in my district of 8 speak Tongan. 3 are Tongans and the other Elder Kim from South Korea who is almost trilingual.

Well I gotta go! But thanks for everything you do!

Just remember:
"True happiness comes only by making others happy"---David O. McKay
Keep doing what is right, and praying day and night!
Have a wonderful week!
I love you all so very much!

Love,  

Elder David John Rowe