I love this week! :)

This has been a great week here in Kalgoorlie.

Tuesday I gave our District Meeting.  Elder Brown believes that we are all supposed to be uplifted and edified by each other so instead of him teaching District Meeting every week he assigns us a chance to give training and this was my lucky week.  It was really great though because just like every time you prepare a lesson the teacher learns more than the students.  We focused on diligence, our conversion, and opening our mouths to proclaim the gospel without fear.  It was really good.  I was grateful for the opportunity.  That night we also had a Relief Society activity.  It was a fun night to get to know more of the ward.  We made this little cookie sheets with chalk board paper on it.  Ours is used for our Christ-like attribute for the week. 

 

Wednesday night we held a mid-week correlation with Brother Timu to discuss the wonderful things that are happening in our ward.  We also discussed a plan to get the members excited to help find people to have the missionaries teach.  We came up with a whole fireside that will happen next month.  It will be a great thing for all of them.  The meeting was full of the spirit and we really feel like there are going to be good things happening in this ward.  We held that meeting because we have what President calls a "high-class problem" for this next weekend were we have 3 people being baptized but at different times so we had to sauce that all out.  The Elders have a baptism of Mark and his wife Ngaio on Saturday night at 4pm and we have Madyson Tipene's baptism Sunday morning at 7:30am.  We were worried that that would be a problem seeing as that is a lot of water to fill it up Saturday, drain it, and fill it back up Sunday morning.  We can't leave it full without someone to watch over it.  Water is really dear (precious) out here and we were worried that they wouldn't let us do it like that.  Brother Timu said that that would be no dramas.  

Thursday while we were doing our weekly planning we had our neighborhood cat come by the front window to say hi.  We've been trying to get a picture for him for a while.  He only has one eye.  I like this photo because he is winking at us. 

 

That night we decorated the Elder's flat with heart-shaped sticky notes with scriptures on them about the love of God.  Scriptures like, "For God so loved the world that he gave his Only Begotten Son." (John 3:16)  We had a lot of fun finding different scriptures to put on the post-its.  On their window the post-its spelled out Happy Valentines Day.  We did it at about 8:30pm and were scared that they would catch us since it was about 30 minutes until we were all supposed to be in our flats.  We were quick and had fun decorating.  That leads us to Valentines day!

This is the Elder Flat.  The window, the door and their fence :) 

 

  This was a sign that we stuck to their house as well.

Friday was a great day!  We started it off with a phone call from the mission office telling me that Henry was born!  They gave me permission to get on that day and see him. :)  We tried straight away but Ashley was feeding him.  It was good to see Brad holding Henry though for the few seconds that I saw them :)  Then we went to a non-members house for a service project.  Flashback a couple of weeks ago we tracted into this lady named Allie.  She wasn't interested in what we had to share and said that she already had a Book of Mormon that she received from a friend.  We asked who her friend was and she said, Noelle.  Noelle is the Bishop Rowe's wife!  We were pretty excited to talk to Sister Rowe about Allie.  Thursday Sister Rowe called us and said that Allie was moving and needed the Elders help to move some big furniture if they were available.  We said of course and all 4 of us went over Thursday morning to help.  She put the Elders straight to work but didn't think she needed us.  We offered to clean anything that needed to be cleaned and she looked like she was going to cry.  She said, "Are you sure you want to help like that?  I can't do that to you girls."  We told her that that is what we do and that we could help in every room if she needed us to.  We got to work.  We scrubbed walls, floorboards, closets, and windows for about an hour and then she asked us if we could come back in an hour and help some more.  She had some errands she needed to run. We went and got lunch, went and decorated the Timu's house just like we did the Elders, and then went back to the Library to try Henry again.  We pulled up the camera and there was a sign saying that the nurse was taking care of him, so we decided to wait until dinner and then try again.

This is just a couple of the many places that they had post-it notes.  Pia texted us a big thank you when she got home to see it.  She said that it really made them feel loved. 

 

  We finished service at Allie's house went home, cleaned up, changed and went to the Tipene's.  Madyson was having her interview with the Elders so we went a little early to go through the questions with her one more time so that she was ready to answer anything that was asked.  She is the most amazing little girl.  She wants to be baptized soo bad.  She had an ear to ear grin across her face as she finished her interview with Elder Brown.  She is be baptized Sunday the 23rd at 7:30am by her Grandpa.  They call him King George.    Then we went from them to dinner with the Kaa family.  Jack's mum is in town so we got to meet her.  We had a delicious dinner and shared President Monson's video called, What matters most.  https://www.lds.org/youth/video/what-matters-most?lang=eng It was very appropriate for Valentines day.  Of course as soon as we told Nykell about Henry she gave me full reign of the laptop.  She hooked it into her TV so we could see better.  That was a major highlight of our night.

 

 This is one I cropped to see if we looked alike.  I think he looks like Ashley :)

 

 

Then we went to a lesson with Ronnie.  We were going to teach him a little more about the Priesthood.  We took the Elders Quorum President Brother Wharemate and his wife Leonie with us.  They were awesome.  Brother Wharemate and Ronnie had a lot in common and just got a long like old friends.  It's amazing how God has prepared not only Ronnie but every person we've taken to meet him to help him along his path.  When we left Sister Wharemate said, "Thanks for letting us come with you to this for our Valentines date.  It was great to be able to meet him and help in the work."  That made me smile.  

Sunday was Ronnie's baptism!  We got to the chapel about a quarter past 7 in the morning and met up with the Elders, Ronnie, and Brother Timu.  By the time we had Elder Brown and Ronnie in their all whites, pictures taken and everyone back in the chapel for the start it was about 7:40am.  We had 5 families come to support!  The whole program was run by the members and it was such a special meeting.  It was amazing to see all of the little kids come that early and sit and be reverent during it all.  I love this ward.  They are so friendly and are always looking for ways to help, lift and support wherever and whenever they can.  It's a major blessing.  

Ronnie's baptism :)

Baptized by Elder Benjamin Brown

Confirmed by Brother Manu Timu

 This whole week has been amazing and the week ahead of us looks just as great!  I love Kalgoorlie.  I love being a missionary.  These experiences really only come once in a life time and I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to serve.  I love you all and pray for you always.  It was awesome to see all about David and Ben's basketball games, hear about Ben's birthday, going to see the Globetrotters, Josh beating everyone at the 5K and Sophie's relay doing so amazing at state.  Good things are happening everywhere!  Love and miss you all heaps!  

Much love, Sister Shayne

 

Alright so funny story for the week.  After Mady's interview that night the Elders texted us because they heard us refer to her Grandpa as King George.  The title that his wife and family call him.  He has no royal blood in him whatsoever.  That night we get this message from the elders, "Hey did you say that the man coming to baptize Mady is a king?"  Well we weren't going to pass up this opportunity to make them think that they are NZ royalty.  This is how our conversation went.

Us: Yeah!  Cool aye?

Elders: Yeah that's awesome! So is he like the king of New Zealand or just the king of the place where he is?

Us: Just his area.  NZ has a main ruler and then each different area has a king. It goes back to the original tribes of the Maori culture. 

Elders: Okay is King George a Tipene as well?

Us: Yes.  That is why Lemuel hates living here because he would be next in line.  The oldest in their family is Sister Tahatika and she married into a different tribe so she lost he "birthright" for lack of better term.  Lem is planning on moving back once his son finishes his apprenticeship. 

Elders: Wow okay what region is he king over?  

* This is when I thought we were going to lose it.  There was no way that they were actually believing any of this.  I ran to our area book and flipped to the teaching record of a recent convert who was born in New Zealand to find out an area that we could send them. *

Us: The Whangarei area on the North Island

Elders: Thanks for that!  We're going to invite a kiwi guy to the baptism just to meet him!

* I read that to Sister Kim and we both realized that we had taken it too far hahaha *

Us: Okay time to come clean, we made it all up.  Thanks for believing us though and making that fun for us :) 

Elders: . . . . . Sisters, this means war.

Us: To be fair, he is titled King George.  It's a title that his wife gave him, that is a legit place in New Zealand, and Lem does plan of moving back to NZ.  

Elders: Well in Moses 4:10-11 Satan told Eve 2 truths and a lie so, get thee hence!

Us: You have to give us some credit that that was pretty good.  

Elders: Yeah to definitely got us!

We figured we will wait to tell them that Lemuel has a big brother named Laman when we gain their trust again :) 

p.s.  I forgot this story.  This package was found on Valentines Day at lunch time in front of our door when we came home for lunch.  It was from Sister Kim's boyfriend.  He had the local florist deliver flowers to our flat.  Cute aye?