Elder Tyler Larson Wellington New Zealand Mission

Meri Kerihimete whanau! I hope you have all had a great week and an even better Christmas! Christmas out here in NZ was way different than I'm used to. But it was really good. It didn't really seem like Christmas because it's 75 degrees outside and there is palm trees and paradise. I basically forgot it was Christmas season until like a couple days before. They don't really celebrate it out here very much, there's no lights or anything really. The tradition out here is to just have a massive feed on Christmas day. That's about it really. So, on Christmas day we had 4 massive meals. We had a family bring us half the McDonald's breakfast menu in the morning. Then, we had a lunch/dinner at noon. It was basically a massive feast and some dessert. Then literally right after dessert, we had to go to another meal appointment, where we had an even bigger feast. At this point i looked like I was 8 months pregnant and I was sweating like I just played a basketball gam...

Kia ora everybody!! I hope you all had a great week this week. This week was a pretty good week. We were pretty busy and it flew by. I'll start with some awesome news that we got on Tuesday at MLC. So, our mission president told us that next transfer we will be having MLC in Hamilton! Honestly the best news I've heard in years. We will be going up to Hamilton for a few days and we will get to go to the temple and do heaps of other things. So hyped because I've missed going to the temple so much on the mission. Also, on exchanges we went and visited this family in our ward that I felt we needed to go visit. The dad is a returning member and he's pretty cool. Come to find out that he has 5 unbaptized kids and they all want to be baptized. They all want to be baptized because their cousin got baptized a couple weeks ago. Their cousin is Jonah (the kid we baptized a few weeks ago). So that is super exciting that we get to start teaching them and help them be baptized. It...

Malo e lelei!! How is everybody doing? I hope all is well back home. Let me know if there is something I can pray for please. Anyways, this week was good. We had transfers on Tuesday and me and my companion stayed the same. Nothing really changed for us, just feels like another week. We are ready and excited for another transfer. We also have a lot of potential baptisms this transfer which is awesome.  Here's a little update on the work. Our friend Dante is still being baptized on the 6th of January. He's doing awesome. Also, his grandma set up the whole baptism already. So, me and my companion barely have to do anything. She's awesome and has helped heaps. We are also still trying to work with Isaiah and get him to work towards a date. One thing that is awesome is that Jonahs baptism 2 weeks ago started up some hype around baptism for all of his nephews, nieces and cousins that aren't baptized. So, the sisters and us have a lot of potential people to teach now. I'm...

Kia ora everybody!! I hope you all had a great week. This week was very busy for us, but it was also an awesome week. Most of the week we spent just focusing on preparing for the baptism. Other than that, we had some pretty good days of work. We put another one of our friends on date for January 5th. His name is Dante and he's doing really good right now with the discussions. He has a ton of member support from his uncle and he's coming to church heaps. His mother, that is really inactive, came to church for the first time in a year or so. So, that has been really cool to see. I'm loving the area right now because everything is starting to click and we're starting to get things rolling. Anyways, we had Jonahs baptism on Saturday. That was an awesome experience. The spirit was so strong and heaps of people came to it as well. His entire family is either inactive or nonmembers, and they all came to the baptism. It was good for them to be there and I hope they were able to...