How We Spend Our Days

Where does the time go?! It’s so interesting how it can seem like the days of the week are passing slowly, then all of a sudden, we notice that we haven’t written on our blog for a month and we wonder what we have been doing!! What happened to the past month?!

So, let’s see…as always, we write the stories that go up on MormonNewsroom.org.nz. We just do those as they come in…as we hear of or see events, people, dates that may be of interest to our intended audience…anyone in the world, but especially those who live in our Pacific Area. We write our articles with non-members in mind, so we avoid using Mormon-speak or, if we can’t avoid them we define them, such as “stake,” or provide links to Mormon Topics—little blurbs prepared by the Church on all sorts of topics Mormon. So, we hope you read them and “like” them!

Our latest articles are the ones I posted on Tonga’s Prince Ata’s visit to Utah (http://www.mormonnewsroom.org.nz/article/tongan-prince-visits-mormon-church-headquarters-in-salt-lake-city )  and saving the Samoan school from closure (http://www.mormonnewsroom.org.nz/8270852020232636541) and Barry’s article on our Samoa trip  (http://www.mormonnewsroom.org.nz/article/church-representatives-meet-with-samoan-and-us-officials-to-discuss-religious-freedom-family-and-faith )

We also go to meetings…we have a “stand-up” meeting most mornings with our Aussie “boss,” Rich Hunter, and our “senior missionary public affairs companion couple,” Jeff and Linda Champlin from Cache Valley, Utah.

The meetings last anywhere from ten minutes to two hours (we sit down), but usually not more than ½ hour. We discuss current projects and upcoming events, receive assignments and training. We laugh and sometimes cry. We have fun working together with such great people. You can see that we take our work very seriously…

We also have monthly meetings (sometimes more) with the Area Communications Committee which we chair, but are presided over by Elder Gifford Nielsen of the Area Presidency. The committee is made up of Area Directors: Brent Buckner, Temporal Affairs;  Hatu Tsiakia, Publishing Services Department; Rich Hunter, Public Affairs; and Paul Bennallack, Information Computer Systems (ICS); also Tessa Dewsbury, Media and Translations; and Matt Murray, Social Media. It’s a pretty high-powered group, but faithful, fun, funny, and brilliant. They are also great people and we love working with them to determine how best to deliver the messages of the Church and the Area Presidency to the people of the Pacific Area, specifically to help build faith and trust in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

We feel we have made some good progress with looking forward, projecting, planning, calendaring and supporting those who produce the messages (which we do for PA). So, the fun part is discussing and previewing the great materials and videos PSD produces. They have recently created Tithing http://pacific.lds.org/increase-self-reliance-video-library?video=prove-me-now-herewith---tithing ; Fast Offerings http://pacific.lds.org/increase-self-reliance-video-library?video=caring-for-the-poor-and-the-needy---fast-offering;  and Sabbath Day (soon to be released). I hope you will watch these and use them in your Family Home Evenings and Sunday classes. (I think they’re awesome!) They will give you a good look at not only the principles taught, but also the peoples and cultures of the Pacific Area.  

We get to feed people…no good Mormon meeting (outside of the Sunday regulars) can happen without food! So we buy and serve lots of chips, cookies, trail mix, fruit, etc. (sometimes full meals) for PA trainings and events planning. Everyone is just recovering from hosting the BYU Living Legends, but coming up next is our “Young Adults to Parliament” taking place the end of August. We will be making travel arrangements and FOOD for 40 or so participants going to Wellington for two days. More on that later.

Then, of course, we have to do financial reports once a month, showing where the money’s going. That takes the better part of a day or two, depending on how much we’ve had going on that month.

Those darn finance reports!

And, we attend temple, church, devotionals, firesides, conferences, and events. This past month we had fun getting acquainted with a beautiful and sweet returned missionary sister, Ariel Pearse, who was a contestant in the Miss World New Zealand competition. We had a fast-food lunch together while she was at the office for interviews.

Lunch with Ariel

Then we attended our first ever “beauty pageant” to cheer her on. She was a wonderful representative of the church throughout the many-months competition, with “modesty” as her theme. She made certain that her costumes were appropriate for a returned missionary. (We were pleased to see that in New Zealand, they have replaced the swimsuit competition with a more modest “resort wear” section and the girls are dressed in swimsuits with cute cover-ups, etc.)

Pageant resort wear

At the pageant with my boyfriend

And she did a series of videos that are now online on service, education, happiness, modesty, missionary work, etc. She is a great role model for our Young Women and you can see them on Youtube.

We also were assigned to travel to Wellington to help host and cover a luncheon, presided over by Elder Pearson, but accompanied by Sister Linda S. Reeves, counselor in the General Relief Society and Sister Carol F. McConkie, counselor in the General Young Women and all their spouses. They are touring the Area doing trainings, devotionals, home visits, etc. It was great to meet them (wonderful people) and the event went very well after some earlier concerns and hiccups (like arriving at the stake center we had reserved only to discover a sea of missionaries filling the building for zone conference!) It all worked out and you can read the article here: http://www.mormonnewsroom.org.nz/8974261644375667819

I take mad notes and recordings at these functions and Barry snaps photographs like crazy and then we work together to put the article up on newsroom. The really dumb thing is…we didn’t put ourselves in a single photo with them. We didn’t even think of it until later. Oh, well.

We drove down so we could take “stuff,” which took us about nine or ten hours to get there. But we like road trips and Barry stopped here and there to capture another beautiful photograph of something New Zealand. We marvel that three isn’t an “ugly” place here. You just drive for hours and hours and hours through beautiful scenery. On our way back we took some long scenic detours so it took us much longer to return on the weekend.

We love going to our Glen Innes ward, meeting with the faithful, loving saints there. They are mostly islanders of one sort or another, Kiwi, Maori, Tongan, Samoan, for the most part. So we are “pakehas,” basically anything other than those. But we do our best to fit in and do our part and they put up with us. We were the sacrament meeting speakers a few weeks ago, and we have been teaching the temple prep classes the last few months and enjoying that very much. We have finished the course and our students are making preparations to attend. 

Our Glen Innes Ward Gospel Doctrine class and teacher.

Our beautiful ward relief society teacher, Moana, and her mother. We have our Relief Society meetings in the choir seats of our chapel.

My beautiful Relief Society sisters

Most of our evenings and many Saturdays we are free to do whatever. (Yes, Senior Missionaries have different rules.) We grocery shop, clean house, bake, do laundry, phone loved ones, do family history, read books and write (me), or take and edit photographs (Barry). We go out to eat, take little excursions to a beach we haven’t seen (they have hundreds!), a farmer’s market, a waterfall, a new mall, the “American store,” where senior missionary couples buy products that we can’t get in Kiwi grocery stores (at 3x the prices), etc. We are allowed to wear our jeans and sneakers in our “off hours” and pretty much do what we want.

One of our favorite lunch stops just a few blocks from the Area Office where we work...a real live French bakery!

Us and our PA companion couple, Jeff and Linda Champlin at the Pakuranga night market.

But Barry and I always wear our name tags wherever we go. We are full-time missionaries, even if we are “off-duty” sometimes. Our name tags provide lots of opportunities for meeting people—members recognize and come to talk, non-members inquire or just look at us funny and we open up on them! We share the gospel every chance we get and are excited when someone will accept a Book of Mormon we try to always have on hand.

We went to Samoa last week, to make some visits there with “opinion leaders,”—government, media, and interfaith leaders. We’ll give details on that in our next post.

So, that’s how we fill our time. We miss home, family, friends, special events, familiar places and stores and foods. But, we wouldn’t want to be anyplace else right now and are so grateful for the opportunity to be here. We love serving the Lord, working with and loving the people (they are SO nice here), experiencing all that we are experiencing and learning.

God bless you all. With our love, Elder and Sister, Barry and Susan, Mom and Dad, Grampa and Grammy  

PS--I wanted to share a few extra photos with special meaning to us while on our mission:

Celebrating our 47th wedding anniversary!

At the Auckland Zoo

Our darling granddaughter, Natasha, graduated from American Fork High School with more honors than she can carry!

Our awesome grandson, Riley Preator, entering the Provo Missionary Training Center, learning to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ in French! Soon to head to Lyon, France.