Every day we have sweet miracles, and realize more all the time why we are here. We feel like we aren't doing enough, but what we do, we feel good about.
These little black lambs are so cute! They are all black when they are born, and then their wool grows and it is white, but their faces stay black. (That's not why we are here! They are just cute!)
A month ago, Kenny ask Elliott, at home, to find and mail the template for the Book of Mormon reading bookmark, where you mark off the chapters when you read them. It finally came last week, (thank you Elliott!) and we went and got copies made and cut. We took them to church and gave a few (and then a bunch) to the branch president and told him how they have helped us. He showed them at Sacrament meeting and passed them out to the whole branch and explained how to use them. That was a week ago. Tonight President Pongia called and said that he had just gotten an e-mail from the stake president and President Ormsby had ask him to ask the branch to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year! He called to say thank you for giving him the book marks last week, to prepare everyone for the stake presidents challenge. He said he knows we have been sent to help him. So sweet!
Today we went to see a sweet sister and take a little birthday treat, and had such a good visit with her and her husband. She cried and said that she had been praying and knew that Heavenly Father had sent us to New Zealand to help her with problems. When we visit with people and feel like we can help or make a difference in their activity, it makes us feel like the Spirit is guiding us. We walk away and are so thankful we went to see them.
Last week the elders called and said when they were tracting, a little girl said that her grandpa loved the missionaries, so they gave her their phone number. Later the dad called and ask the elders to bring the "older people" with name badges (that he had seen at McDonalds!) and come and give his father, who was dying, a blessing. So we went to this Maori family's home, where the 77 yr old grandfather, TeIwikau "Joe", was in the final stages of terminal bone cancer -he was waiting for his children to all get there, to die. We found out that he was a member of the church, and that they had been sealed in the temple, when the kids were little, and then the parents separated and all became inactive. Kenny and the elders gave him a blessing, and a couple of days later he did pass away. Kenny took President Pongia to meet the family and they ask him to come to their house and do a funeral. They had Joe in the living room, on the floor, in a casket, with mattresses on both sides, so people could kneel down by him and visit with him. Everyone came into the room, and then several people told about Joe, and what a hard worker he had been, and that he was an amazing sheep shearer, and had been known all over the world for how fast, and how many he could shear. His brother told how he had looked after him and taught him to work. It was very sweet. President Pongia gave a wonderful talk and talked about the Savior and how he left the 99 and went and found the lost sheep. Then Kenny gave a sweet prayer. They were leaving the next morning and driving about 17 hrs with his body, to have a big Maori funneral in Auckland and bury him there where he was from. When we got home, we looked his name up on the internet, and he was indeed a master sheep shearer!
Kenny has looked up about the Mormons and the Maori connection and it was so interesting! Joseph F. Smith, when he was the prophet, said that the Lord had directed their course away from the American continent to their island homes, that they might not be left to be preyed upon and destroyed by the more wicked people. And that the islanders have been more highly favored and blessed because of the worthiness of their forefathers who were led away and separated from their brethren on the American continent.
