3/28/16 Group Email

Kia Ora!

Well this week has been good! They start to all kind of seem the same though haha.

I had my first Hangi since i've been in New Zealand so that's cool! A Hangi is an Island way of cooking. They put lamb, pumpkin, chicken, pork and heaps of stuff in the ground with hot ash and coal and completely cover it with dirt and stuff and let it cook over like 14 to 24 hours or so. It was really good! A guy gave it to us for free when they're typically like 20 bucks! His name is pronounced like Irrroooo or something like that. It's weird but he is cool! Definitely a potential investigator!

We were also given a bag of like 20 Panikekes from the Samoan cart at the market for free! They are just scoops of pancake batter put into a deep fryer. YUM. They actually want us to teach them a lesson tomorrow! So that should be cool (:

Something else I bought at the market was this ollllld cigarette box full of old as stamps! The oldest one I found in there was an 1892 USA stamp!! Heaps of old ones from different countries and stuff so that's way cool.

stamp collection

We also went to the big museum in Wellington with the Youth for PDay! We had Companion study with them in the morning showing them some study habits and sharing and stuff then we shot over to the museum. Te Papa is the name of it. They had this awesome exhibit about New Zealand Kiwis that fought in wars and stuff and I guess Peter Jackson was in charge of it. He built these massive sculptures of soldiers and stuff. Like they were HUGE and SOOOO real looking. It was so cool. There was lots of cool photography of old Maori people and stuff as well which was really interesting.

Incredible detail on these statues

Bryson says these things have got to be close to 30 feet tall

And..

We taught a couple of teenagers a short 5 minute restoration lesson about the Book of Mormon so hopefully they read it! They are quite strange. They said they "gave their lives to Jesus like a week ago bro.." and it's pretty crackup actually. They talk about asking Jesus questions and stuff by writing down on paper and how he responds to them is this: they write the first word and then I guess the Savior writes down the rest through their hand.. Weird. Hopefully they are willing to learn the truth and how to receive real revelation.

I'm falling more and more in love with this gospel. It is so true! Our Brother Jesus Christ rose! He lives and leads this church. I'm so grateful for the scriptures and the way they answer our questions. Even questions we didn't know we had! I'm grateful for my whakapapa as well!

Thanks for all the support and emails! I'd love to hear from more of yous!



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Elder LaMunyon

Bryson's desk

Avi - one of the ym from the ward/branch

pday with the elders

Transferred!

saying goodbye to the Gore kids

saying goodbye to the Beckmans

This week has been awesome!! My second area Wainuiomata has lots of good opportunities. Members feed us here often and we also have lots of people even non members that let us in to their homes! Much different from Gore! 

The first day here was fun! My Zone Leaders actually forgot about me coming in at the airport so I was stranded for an hour and a half until they came and got me. When I got to Wainui I met my comps and we went out the door visiting! We walk everywhere which is awesome. Very tiring though. Especially when you walk 8 kilometers to set an appointment but no one is there and you have to go walk somewhere else haha. We saw some kids playing basketball and they called us out! "Mormons vs the Rebels let's go!!!" Annnnnd so we walked over to the courts and played some ball. They were amazed with how I can dribble well and I can easily get passed them and my flashy passes hahaha. They would fall over on the ground laughing if I got someone to trip up while they were guarding me! One of the kids was like "how are you so good??" Another one was like "he's from america cuz.. that is just how they are" So it was pretty funny. Toward the end I went to make a move and completely ripped my pants though. That was nice.. But the Elders Quorum President showed up and told me to hop in the car and he'd run us to our flat to change. So we did but I don't have any sport shoes so I played in my church shoes still! Turned from 6 of us playing into about 20! And it was lots of fun! My legs actually felt really good and I dunked it for my first time in a game! But my feet started to hurt really bad in my church shoes. The president, Brother Sau said he was gonna buy me shoes cuz he wants me to play all the time with him now. He said I remind him of Magic Johnson haha. Everyone here is so loving and nice!!

We had a dinner as well that night which was my first on my mission!! I loved it! It's so nice not having to stress about food or cook any..

I'm very excited about all the things I could learn from this area!! it'll be an awesome experience! 

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Elder LaMunyon

New Companions: Elder Withers (Washington) and Elder Walsh (Auckland)