"I'm not gonna wear a ladies wetsuit, I'm a man!"

This week in "Rags to Riches" we got a bunch of work done!

We spent the whole week just basically walking around our area and contacted all of our former investigators from Elders in the past and their were a few that were interested but the Elders just stopped showing up one day. We wondered why this would happen but after looking over some of the previous people who have served in Raglan, there was 2 Elders in particular who basically just went swimming and played basketball all day, needless to say they were sent home but they had been the cause of a lot of bad feelings towards the Elders. We have been able to repair some of the relationships but a few of the people here just don't want anything to do with us. I have been able to meet a lot of different people here in Raglan. For example in the past 3 weeks I have met people from...

Ireland 

Australia 

Denmark

Netherlands 

Scotland

Germany

England

Italy

Greece

Afghanistan

Iran

Canada

Papua New Guinea

Philippines

Saudi Arabia  

United States

Tonga

Samoa

Fiji

Cook Islands

India 

China

and many more!!!

So many different people make for some really interesting conversation which is always great for missionary work :) 

On Saturday we got to go to the Te Awamutu space center and check out some of the exhibits there! It was pretty cool and we got to learn a lot about space and space exploration. It has made me think that we need to get our space program back up and running so that we can get to Mars!!! I have attached some pictures but there are a lot more things that I couldn't fit in this email. We have transfers in 2 weeks but I am pretty sure Elder To'angutu and I will be staying here.

Lovin' it here in the NZ!

Elder Mitchell 

This week in Ragland!

I only have 30 minutes of email time because the computers at the chapel aren't working so I won't be able to send much this week. I spent the last 1 hour on hold with the LDS Global Service Center just to have them tell me that I need to call our stake tech. specialist on a number that doesn't even exist...

It sounds like you guys are doing awesome! It is so nice to have people back home asking about me because it feels like most of the emails I receive are ones from other missionaries and automatic ones from Countdown (one of the grocery stores here in New Zealand)  We have been killing it down here this past week and have been making huge progress with some of our investigators. Elder To'angutu and I are getting along really well and I think he is definitely in my top 3 companions on my mission haha ☺. I just realized that of the people that came into the mission at the same time as me, I have had more companions then any of them. They are.... Elder Lukens (Trainer), Elder Jensen for 2 transfers (Follow-up), Elder Otto, Elder Rochefort, Elder Gutierrez, Elder Hunt, Elder Landis and Patea, and Elder To'angutu. That's 9 companions in 7 transfers, but the last 3 happened in this last transfer. Its been nice to be able to meet all sorts of different people and to be able to work along side some of the greatest men I have ever met but it has also taught me that although I don't get to choose my companion I do get to choose my eternal companion and how important that choice is.

This week we went and helped the Gillards (one of our part-member families) put up a fence around their front gate, we got really dirty and I almost put a nail through my boots and got hit by a falling fence post but I have a guardian angel watching out over me so I am fine haha :) Although we don't get to teach much here in Raglan we do a lot of service projects for members and non-members which is really nice because before I got here they didn't really want anything to do with the Elders but now they give us referrals almost every time we go over and they are always dropping off food. I think this might be my favorite area I have served in so far. 

That's all of my time this week but I might be able to email a little bit more at our Branch presidents house tonight!

Later!

Elder Mitchell 

"Why does this phone have a camera glued to it?"

This week we......

Drove up to Auckland to see David Enchilada (Archuleta) and Brad Wilcox for a mission conference! It was actually pretty good and Brother Wilcox gave a really mean talk about the 12 Tribes of Israel and our responsibilities as Ephraim (My Tribe). He also talked about the priesthood and explained some of the parts of Genesis a little bit better that I have had questions about. Bro Enchilada talked about some of his experiences in the mission field and then he sang us some songs which was pretty cool. I tried to get a picture but they all came out too blurry but I did get to shake his hand!

On Saturday we went and helped out one of our part-member families with some farm work so I got to wrestle sheep and hold them while they cut the poop off their fur and put tags in their ears. It was really tiring work but I had a lot of fun and we got to bond with them pretty well so we will probably be going over next week to help them out again. They had the cutest little lamb and I got to feed it while they were making us lunch! 

I also got to give one of our recent converts the Melchizedek Priesthood yesterday which at first really scared me because I have never done it before. He is going to the temple in a couple of weeks for the first time to do endowments and he wants us to come with him! The Branch Members are taking really good care of us here and they just dropped off a fridge full of food which was really nice so we don't have to do shopping and we get fed more often then we did when I was in Hamilton and Raglan is a tiny branch! 

Been a great week and looking forward to whatever is coming next this week! 

Elder Mitchell

David Archuleta visiting the area.

Me holding down a sheep. See...it did happen!

"I'm making a lasagna, for one"

Kio Ora!!!

We had transfers this week and my new Companion is Elder Hunt. He is a big Samoan fella from Aussie, he loves beat boxing, Volleyball, and Rugby. He is finishing his mission next transfer and he is pretty funny sometimes...

We hit it hard this week after transfers and got heaps of work done in Raglan and met a couple of people that Elder Gutierrez and I never got around to see but we did contact heaps of new investigators. It has started to get a lot warmer down here so I have been able to go on more runs but I keep getting distracted during our runs and don't realize that we are way over our 30 mins for exercise but I have been feeling much better than when I wasn't exercising.

Elder Hunt got growled out yesterday by one of our Recent Converts moms. We were over at her house and he kept asking questions about how old her kids were and when there birthdays were and a lot of probing questions and she started to get uncomfortable but I guess he didn't notice. He was taking notes of everything she was saying even though they were not interested in the church and don't really care much about the son who was baptized. Finally she snapped and told him to leave and to leave the paper that he was writing about her family and after apologizing we left. He was sad the rest of the day but later that night he started to cheer up.

We had a pretty good week but not much notable stuff happened except for that one incident but hopefully we have a big week next week!

Elder Mitchell