Mission Conference With Elder Cook

Hello, hello everyone!  It's good to hear from all of you.  I bet that you are all happy that it is now summer break!  It sure isn't summer break over here, it's cold as!!  Man, Kaden's birthday is coming up--the big 16 man!  That is awesome!  Well, we had a really good week, I would say.  I'm definitely happy.  We didn't get to spend too much time in our area though--we were busy as with heaps of things!

On Tuesday, we went down to Auckland for MLC the next morning.  We stopped in to Elder Finau's parent's on Tuesday evening.  His Dad was here from Tonga (he's back and forth for work) so it was really cool to talk with him.  They got us KFC so it was really nice to eat!

Man, I've lost 8 kgs since being in Whangarei so it's nice to visit some Tongans.  The following day we had our meeting.  It was really good.  President Balli is the man!  He is exactly what our mission needed.  We, as a council, were able to talk and come up with some ideas to help the missionaries continue to work hard.  Our focus of the training was to study how understanding the Atonement would help us have a greater desire to do missionary work.  Man, it was powerful and really helped have an increased desire even with the time that I have remaining.  It was great to see President and Sister Balli--they are so awesome.

So, those two days kept us out of our area for a bit and then we had a meeting in town on Thursday that also pulled us away from our area.  So, we pretty much had one full day in the area and that was Friday.  Elder De Kock and I are sitting having a lesson with one of our semi less active families and I got a phone call from the mission office saying that two of our missionaries had been involved in a car accident and they were in an area where they didn't have service.  Dargaville is like an hour and forty five minute drive so we really needed to go.  I was really worried because I'm really close with Elder Katoa who was involved in the accident.  I told my companion that we really needed to go but he insisted that we finished this lesson.  We didn't know how bad the accident was...thank goodness they were both alright.  It was a miracle because their car was TOTALED and they walked away with bruises and a sprained wrist, so we were happy with that.  We weren't happy about being at the hospital until midnight--ha ha!

Saturday was honestly awesome though.  We traveled as a Zone down to Auckland to hear from Elder Cook!  Papatoetoe was on the way so during our dinner break and since it was on the way, we stopped quickly to see the Pole family.  I got to see Sariah, man, I was so happy to see her.  She's so big I couldn't believe it.  It was so good to see that family.  The meeting that we had with Elder Cook was so awesome.  It was our mission as well as Hamilton.  It was so cool being able to shake hands with an apostle.  It was kinda sad though because that was the last time that I'm going to see a lot of those people....which is a very weird thought!  It was so good to see them though!

Elder McKeown and Elder Johnson 

Elder Johnson, Sariah and Sister Pole

Elder J and Sariah

Elder Peihopa, *, Elder Johnson

Things are going good here.  Time is going fast man, I can't even believe it.  I can't wait to see you guys.

Have a good week!

Love yous,
Elder Johnson