Elder Tyler Larson Wellington New Zealand Mission

Kia ora whanau! How is everyone doing? I hope all is well wherever you are reading this. This week was a good week. The work was very slow but it was a good week nonetheless, I cannot complain. There was a couple of interesting things that happened this week. I got to try the infamous vegemite and marmite. Let me just say I will never eat that stuff again. I don't know why on earth it is so popular here. If you know me, then you know that I eat almost anything that is put in front of me. But, you could not get me to eat vegemite or marmite ever again. That stuff is an abomination. Anyways, that was cool. I'll just give yall an update on some of the foods that i do love here. First is Coco Samoa, it's a hot drink made from a seed that is crushed up. It's really good. Then, there is otai which is a fruit drink that is made with crushed up fruit and milk. It's really good. Brother Taufe'ulungaki told us that you crush the fruit by squeezing in between your toes, an...

Kia ora whanau!! How is everybody doing?? I hope yall are doing good and enjoying the winter back there. It was a good week but it was really long. Had some good fun. We had an awesome lesson with a friend. We are teaching a couple named Calum and Victoria. They are super cool, and super interested in the gospel. We taught them the resto and then gave them a Book of Mormon. Calum said that he would read 100 pages of the book a day. So that is incredible. Respect to that man. We are excited to go back and teach them! We also have been working with Gila to get him ready for baptism. He really wants to be baptized and even had a dream about falling from a waterfall into water. Then, when he looked back at the waterfall, it opened and Jesus came to him in a red robe. This is why he wanted to be baptized. Such a cool story. But, we have some things to work through with him to get him ready. Please pray for him guys! Anyways, we were able to have some fun this week for the Relief Society 181...

Malo lelei! I hope you guys are doing all good! I hope everything back home is alright. Please if any of you ever need a prayer, just reach out. Anyways, this was a good week. Time has been flying out here. This transfer felt like a week long. Alrighty, this week was pretty busy and also a great week. I'll start it off with a miracle. Our friend Gila committed to being baptized this week. The date is set for April 1st! Please keep him in your prayers yall. He is doing great but I know it's hard for people to follow through with big commitments like this. We had a lesson with him on Friday, we planned on teaching about baptism and reading Moroni 18 and then inviting him to be baptized. But, after we read the chapter he said "I'd be pretty keen on being baptized". It was so hard trying to hold in my excitement haha. I think I held it together pretty well though. I'm so excited for him and I know he is making the best decision he could make. He's got some thi...

Malo lelei!! How are you guys doing today? I hope all is good and I hope you guys had a good week. This week was a good one. It flew by though. Times been flying lately. Anyways, this week was a good one. Nothing crazy happened. Some cool things that happened with our friend Gila which is pronounced Needa. He's from Tuvalu. We've been teaching him the whole time I've been here and we haven't been able to get him to church until this week. We took him on a chapel tour on Saturday and that was great. Then, he came to sacrament the next day and he loved it. It was fast and testimony meeting and one of our members named Sister Tafa got up to bear her testimony. She's from Tonga and doesn't speak English very well. But, she went up to bear her testimony in English. It was powerful and she started crying because it was scary for her to bear her testimony not in her native language. During that testimony I looked over at Gila and he was crying and wiping away his tears...

Malo lelei!! How is everybody? I hope everybody is doing good. I hear that Utah is getting dumped on by snow. Not to brag but it's 75 everyday here. Anyways, this week was pretty crappy mission work wise. But, that just happens. I don't have much much talk about but we'll see what I can scrap up. Alright, the absolute highlight of this week was Sam's Baptism. She was somebody that we found and taught while I was in Summer Hill (my last area). She was such a miracle to us. We had the most spiritual lessons with her. Anyways, it was so awesome seeing her again and also seeing her make her first covenant with God. Although, the baptismal service was a little rough haha. First of all, the Summerhill elders forgot to bring the white jumpsuit for baptism. So, it got delayed a little bit. Then, we got into the service, it was going good. I was asked to be the chorister. So, me and Sister Mavae were in charge of the hymns. She was on the piano. The first hymn, she didn't kn...

Malo lele! Good to see you guys. This week was a great week. It flew by for some reason. I'm not mad tho. It was kind of a crazy week here in NZ. Mother earth decided she wanted to try and wipe out new zealand this week. But she did not prevail. We had hurricane Gabrielle hitting us all week, so it was pouring rain Monday through Friday. Then, on Wednesday a 6.8 magnitude earthquake hit. Somehow, we are alright. The earthquake hit right of the coast of Levin so it did the most damage by us and Paraparaumu. There were roads that were flooded and closed off. But, other than that the work continued. I've got a crazy story about the earthquake. There's this lady that had us give her haunted house a blessing. So, that was a week ago and now this week we went back to visit her. Me and Elder Moli taught her and went to see how she was doing. Then at the end of the lesson elder Moli went to pray. He opens the prayer up with "Dear God" and right after he said that the eart...

Kia ora whanau! Don't worry I'll talk about the title in a little bit. Anyways, this was a good week. Not much happened but it was a good week nonetheless. It'll be short because I need to get to bed. Alright, New Zealand is about to get hit by Hurricane Gabrielle. I'm not sure how powerful it is or what category it is. But, it's supposed to do some damage especially to Auckland and Gisborne. It is expected for some areas to get 300 mm of rain. Idk how much that is converted to inches. Yall can do the math. But ya, where I'm at we won't get hit too hard. But we will see a ton of rain and wind for the rest of the week. Apparently it's the worst cyclone NZ has had this century. Pray for NZ yall. One highlight of the week was a little mini exchange we had with Elder Tucker. It wasn't really an exchange, Elder Tucker and his comp Elder Loveless just had to stay the night at our place because they were waiting to pick up their car. But ya, Elder Tucker al...