Week 65

Kia Ora Whanau

This week was interesting because I only spent 4 days in mg area with my companions. Some highlights of the week include:

On Wednesday we spent the majority of the day gardening this massive secret garden style flower garden for an old lady named Tilly. She was so sweet and made us lunch and gave us each a beautiful bouquet of flowers to say thank you and then we re gifted them to different people. Wednesday night we drove 2 hours to Invercargil for ministering night and then spent the night at a members house. 

Thursday we had district council and did weekly planning because we were doing exchanges with the Dunedin Sisters on Friday.

Exchanges were good. I was with Sister Dunford (who was Madi Lee's roommate in uni) and we were in Queenstown. We started off in this little town in our area 2 hours away from Queenstown door knocking and trying to track down a family who used to meet with the missionaries. We found their house but the parents weren't home. Then we drove to Alexandra to try and contact some less active members but none of them were home. Then we drove to Queenstown and got dinner at Fergburger which is apparently the place to eat in Queenstown but to be honest it was just and over priced below average burger. On Saturday we were going to go to a Farmers market for finding before we exchanged back but there was a major accident on the main motor way and so we got rerouted and it took us 3 hours to drive and normally one hour drive so we missed it. 

The rest of Saturday included visiting a less active members. One of them is from Fiji and gave me a beautiful Pule Tasi. It was so kind of her. We also had our first meal appointment of the week on Saturday with some brazillian members and they made us yummy brazillian food. 

Sunday was really cool. We always have heaps of visitors in the branch and this week the woman who co-wrote Girls Who Choose God was visiting. She is so cool. She told us about a book that she's helped write called "A girls guide to Heavenly Mother" which will be available on Amazon on Mothers day. She showed us the PDF and it looks amazing. We also had 3 less active families that we are working with so that was so exciting! 

We also had a second meal appointment on Sunday night which was a tender mercy because we have no food in the house lol. 

Bernardo is still doing well. We had another lesson with him this week about specific prayers. He has prayed and asked Heavenly Father is he is real and I'm so excited for him to receive his answer because knowing that Heavenly Father is there is the most powerful knowledge to have.

Also this week I received a direct answer to prayers. We have mission tour in a week in Christchurchand so I prayed that I would get to sleep at Sister Siale's flat while I was there. Then we found out this week that I we are sleeping at her flat! Honestly this is just evidence to me that Heavenly Father doesn't just want to bless us spiritually but also temporally. You can ask Him for anything you want and He will give it to you if it's His will just because He love you and wants you to be happy. 

My spiritual though this week is from Elder Holland about Mormon chapter 7. He says "To ‘believe in Christ,’ especially when measured against such tragic but avoidable consequences, was Mormon’s last plea and his only hope. It is the ultimate purpose of the entire book that would come to the latter-day world bearing his name." I hope everyone knows that the purpose of the Book of Mormon is to help people come to Christ. Please read it so that you can receive your own testimony of it. It's he most powerful book.

Ofa Atu 

Sister Olson