"Can I come to your party?" "No."

It was a pretty good week here in Paradise! 

On Wednesday we went on exchange with the Zone Leaders and I went down to the Hamilton East Area with Elder Rios and Elder Temanaha was in Te Aroha with Elder Butler. It was a pretty good exchange and I feel like we both learned quite a bit from our exchange. I love exchanges because it gives the area a change of pace even though it is only for a day and just in the one day that I was out of the area they found 2 potential investigators and talked with heaps of people on the streets (there are not usually people walking on the streets haha). After we exchanged back we spent the rest of the week contacting the potential investigators and setting up a family history class and a language study for one of the Hispanic families that just moved into the ward.\

I didn't get to milk the cows this week but they did invite us over for dinner on Tuesday to give us some good news.... Paul wants to stop smoking and get baptized!!!!!!!  He has had a Word of Wisdom problem for quite some time and has quit drinking but he just enjoyed his smokes so much that they have been so hard to give up. He is attending church regularly and has been reading and praying nightly with his wife who is a member! He is progressing so well but he says he wants to pick the date so we will have to follow up pretty soon. 

On Friday we went over to Paeroa branch (out of our area, but we had President's permission) for one of the branch activities with Paul and we were assigned to give a short presentation on a country that they choose and the country that they gave us was France. It was pretty easy for Elder Temanaha because he has been to France and is from French Polynesia. He just got up and spoke a bunch of French to the people there and taught them a French dance, I left my camera in the car so I didn't get any pics but it was pretty funny.

My week was algudz, hope that everyone on the homefront is doing well!

Elder Mitchell

Attached are pictures of me in front of the Lemon and Paeroa bottle, L&P is a soft drink here in NZ that is super popular and it was created in Paeroa.