This week...It's a boy

Kia ora whanua!

Elder Bwebwetaake and I got a call Tuesday morning telling me that we would be staying in Whakatane and Kawerau and that I would be training a new Missionary! We went up to Tauranga on Thursday to pick up the new Elder from the bus station and since they didn't tell us his name, we didn't know who we were looking for. The new guy is Elder Gajultos from the Philippines and he is a pretty crack up dude. He is from Manilla so he is kind of a city boy so on his second day we took him to an investigators house to split firewood which was really cool and afterwards, the lady that we split wood for gave us a mean as feed. 

We had a branch activity with the Kawerau branch on Saturday which was pretty crack up because it was Christmas-themed. We spent most of the afternoon on Saturday helping them cook the hangi (Maori way of cooking meet) for the party. A lot of people showed up to the activity which was really cool because a lot of them came to church the next day for the linger longer afterwards. 

The rest of the week we were just driving around and trying to show Elder Gajultos both of the areas which has gone really good. He is a very smart missionary and is picking up the work here just fine. He will need to learn the area fairly quick because in 17 days Elder Bwebwetaake finishes and 41 days later I finish. Hopefully I can pass my knowledge onto him before I leave...

I'll send you more next week!

Elder Mitchell

"Your favorite jersey is covered in lint..."

So I am sitting in our flat Thursday Night just waiting for a ride to go to our dinner appointment (our car had been in the Panelbeaters since Monday) and we got a call from our District Leader: Elder Olsen who is serving in the Kawerau Branch telling us that he would be coming to our flat to talk to us about something. He told us that they are shifting to Katikati so Elder Bwebwetaake and I would be covering both Kawerau and Whakatane until further notice and that I was the new District Leader. We went out with them that night to visit some people because we don't know their area very well and we were pretty well received by the members there in that area. We didn't get our car back until Friday afternoon so we couldn't go out to Kawerau for a couple of days so we spent most of the week walking around in Whakatane so both Elder Bwe and I have mean blisters on our feet. 

We went to church in Kawerau on Sunday and I just have to say that the members here are some of the nicest people I have met! Because we are covering the two branches they are doing all they can to support us and earlier today Sister Bray (wife of a member of the branch presidency) offered to do our grocery shopping for us. We had dinner with the Kawerau Branch President yesterday to discuss missionary work and to suss out some kind of schedule so that we know if we will be in Kawerau or in Whakatane throughout the week. After we saw the other member of the Branch Presidency later to talk about the referrals that he had given the elders that they had not contacted yet. 

We are both pretty excited to what is happening in both of our areas and are trying to get the members behind us so that we can keep both area progressing!

Gonna be a mean week!

Elder Mitchell

"Insert funny title here"

Kia Ora Fam and Friends!

So we have two sets here in Whakatane and so we needed to go and visit one of our sets for the week on Saturday before church. As we were driving up Elder Bwebwetaake saw Sierra (our set) through the window of her house so we went in to go see her. We talked to her boyfriend at the door and he said that she had gone to a birthday party so we thought that Elder Bwebwetaake had mistaken her for someone else but as we were leaving, we heard the guy yell out "Sierra they are gone! Sierra, they are gone, you can come back!".

That story basically describes the work here in Whakatane which is kind of sad. Other then that we didn't get to visit many of our Investigators but we did have Zone Meeting this week and one of the new sisters in the mission is Sister Mitchell so that's pretty cool haha:) 

I don't really have much else to say but thanks for your prayers and faith!

Elder Mitchell