Cool tree we found out in the middle of Loburn!

My companion and I really wanted a milkshake... turns out milkshakes here are milk and thickener with syrup mixed in it like you would have for a snow cone... welll that didn't stop us from buying ice cream and adding milk for an american milkshake

Otai-- a really yummy tongan drink made of fruit and milk

My life is like my shoes to be worn out in service-- President Spencer W. Kimball

Dear Whanua,

   Good morning! And hello hello :) It is a beuatiful Sunny day in Rangiora, and I am loving not wearing my coat! :) This definitely won't last long, winter is here, and it should start to get colder by the day :)

    Some news from Rangiora, President and Sister Kezerian have gone home and our new mission president and his Wife President and Sister Hudson have come into the mission. I am excited to have them here and I cannot wait to meet them!

   This week we saw Tarquin Stone again on Sunday. Ahh she is doing so well! She is beginning to recognize the Spirit in her life and how He speaks to her. Now we just have to help regain her testimony, easy as pie with HEavenly Father fully in charge of this. I am so grateful I don't have to teach people, the Lord teaches people and I am mearly the vessel in which he works.

   Question of the day: Have miracles ceased? Nay they have not! I was reading about miracles in the Bible DIctionary and it was cool to see and realize that miracles merely cease to exist when we cease to pray for them and have faith that they will occur.

    My companion and I taught primary and Young Womens yesterday it was really good! :)

   Something I loved from conference I was reading one of the talks and I loved the talk given by Elder HalesScott "I have ginve you an exam[ple"  I loved what he said about  our lives "sometimes we get so wrapped up in things that we find fascinating or become so consumed by mundane responsibilities that we lose sight of God's objcitves. As you concistnently focus your life ion te most basic princples, you will gfain an understanding of what you are to do, and you will produce more fruit for the lord and more happiness for yourself."

   I have realized this is so true, and when we truly remeber the Plan of Salvation and those improtant princples it becomes easy to choose the right and do that which is right.

I love you all!

Have a great week!

Sister Sudweeks

Introductions, Family History, and isn't life great :)

Dear Whanua,

    Some thoughts this week: We were talking about the Savior and His life in Relief Society and my companion said something I really loved. The question was brought up or at least the thought, what are all the things the Savior has shown us to do. SIster Farr then said, I suppose the question really should be what hasn't the Savior done that we shouldn't do. He showed us more those things we should do through His example and loving kindness to us His brothers and sisters.

   Sister Farr and I had a really neat experience using family history. I had my mom send me some stories of my ancestors so I could continue filling out the My family Booklet. We went to an lesson with one of our investigators, Angela, and just visited with her for a minute before starting our lesson we were going to do (we were going to read a chapter out of the Book of Mormon). She then proceeded to tell us all about her work and how she is making pedigree charts and how her daughter and her self have been doing family history. I felt we needed to change the Lesson plan right then so we talked about Temples and family history and she mentioned how she had never thought about the dead needing to be baptized too. We are excited to go back next week with one of our members and really help her see the connections of the Restoration and God's plan of happiness for each and everyone of us. Angela pointed something out to us that I hadn't realized, that the Book of Mormon is a giant Pedigree chart but with the stories of our ancestors. Truly it ius a record of our brothers and sisters and if we will learn from their stories we can avoid many of the same pit falls they experienced in life.
    We also had another miracle this week. We were teaching one of our in-actives Tarquin. We have been having really good lessons with her and last lesson we talked about how we needed to be sure to introduce the Holy Ghost when we were feeling His presence so Tarquin could meet him. During our lesson yesterday Tarquin really opened up to us about a concern of hers of coming to know God and as my companion shared something I felt now we need to introduce the Holy Ghost. So when it was my turn I said "I just want to take a minute and introduce a very important person who is here with us today He is a member of the God Head and He is the Holy Ghost." After I said this we all felt The Holy Ghost's presence in the room as He bore testimony of His presence.  I have a testimony of the power of the Holy ghost in the conversion of those we teach. I know if we will let Him the Holy Ghost can help us know and bear testimony of those things we teach our children and loved ones about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
 

If anyone wants to go President and Sister Kezerian will be giving their home coming talk at
1050 South 800 East Orem Utah July 13th at 1pm.

I love you all so much! I know this is Jesus Christ's church "once again established upon the earth preparatory to the coming of the Messiah." It is better to give our lifetime in service to our God than is anything else, that one day we may be partakers of that Eternal Life He would give us.

I love you

Aroha,

Sister Sudweeks

Don't forget your Alligator at the Supermarket

Dear Family,

   I hope you all had a wonderful week :) It has been an exciting week for us! We had an amazing rain storm this week on tuesday, so much that people started getting flooded! Crazy! We didn't have any problems though. the Elders told us how they biked in rain up to their knees, sounded like a fun adventure to me :)

   Happy fathers day Dad! I hope you have a great day! :)

   One of our investigators Jasmine has been reading the Book of Mormon and [raying a lot. She is really getting comfortable with the idea of A prophet being on the earth and that we have another book of Scritpure from God. It is really neat to see the Lord helping her accept the message that would bring so much joy to her in her life.

  This week we met Eddie he is a little boy who has cancer. His parents Roxi and Gary are so postive depsite the hardships they have been facing right now in their life. We talked to them for a bit and they are letting us come back on thursday! I hope that we are able to help them more than just temporally. Hopefully we will be able to share with them how they can know with out a shadow of a doubt that their families can be together forever.Eddie shared that really fun phrase as the topic of my email "Don't forget your alligator at the supermarket"

    This months edition of the Ensign is so good. I would highly encourage you all to read it! :)

I read this neat talk in there that talked about how this rich busniess lady recieved a mysterious letter and it was written by her 7year old self years before. It talked about the things she had envisioned herself being like when she grew up and she realized that she had not become anything she had dreamed or imagined herself being. The article then asked the question, what would our letter say if we recieved a letter from our pre-mortal selves living with HEavenly Father what would it say?  Have we done the vision that we made for oursevles then?

   Something my companion shared that I also loved concerning having faith in Jesus Christ To have faith means that we are loyal to something or someone. Do we have faith in Jesus Christ enough that we are loyal to Him and His teachings?

   I love you all so much! I hope you have a great week!

Much love,
Sister Sudweeks

And are willing to take His name upon us

Dear Whanua,

   Hello and good morning :)
    I hope you have all had a wonderful week. I have had a great one! Pretty busy as usual but that is always so good. My companion and I are going on a health kick, which I am pretty excited about. We are trying to get down their roasted vegetables, in particular Kumara and pumpkin, mm-mm good :)
   This week we had Zone Conference. Which was fantastic! It was so sad though because it was Sister Kezerian and President Kezerian's last zone conference. On June 30th we will have the new mission President come in, and that will be exciting. I am excited to meet President Hudson and Sister Hudson. They will do great things here in the New Zealand Wellington Mission.
 Some things that stood out to me this week" Agency is the power to become" I read this quote and I really liked it. Truly this is such a powerful phrase. How we use our agency will determine who become in life and where we go. What a blessing it can be when we use our agency to become more like our Heavenly Father.

    At zone conference we talked about what the word alignment means. It means to be obedient to something., When we are in alignment with President Thomas S. Monson and his councelors council, we are then in alignment with the Lord and His Son Jesus Christ. What a blessing it will be when we are continually in alignment with the Lord and what he asks us to do.

   I was reading about our baptismal covenant and I really liked the reminder about what it was we promised when we were baptized. Someone shared an acronym I really liked that is we promised to

Take His name upon ourselves That means we are willing to "put Him first and His work first in our         lives. That we will seek what He wants rather that our own desires or what the world teaches            us we should want"

Always remember Him

Keep His Commandments

Endure to the end. Which means we continue to always do those thing the Lord has commanded us to do, go to church, pray, read the scriptures, obey our parents, keep the ten commandments, love one another, etc.

    And as we do this the promise is so wonderful, we will have His spirit to always be with us and we receive a remission of our sins, or our sins are forgiven us. Wow, what a promise. I know I am grateful to know the Lord will always forgive us our sins when we do this, and make this commandment. But unfortunately we all mistakes and break God's commandments and that is why it is so important to go to church each week so we can renew the covenant we made with God when we are baptized and that we can again be forgiven of our sins and retain our remission of sins or forgiveness of sins each week as we humbly repent and remember what the Savior did for us as we partake of the Sacrament each week. And the same promise is given us as we do this when we are baptized, we receive a remission of sins and retain this and we are given His Spirit to be with us always. What a valiant promise, and then we will always know what to do and what to say to those around us because the Spirit will  be guiding our life and pointing us to the place we should go.

I love you all. Have a great week!

Love,
Sister Sudweeks

  

Elder Taufa in our district always tells us to point to Sister Turvey one of the Sisters in my District. She wasn't there so it was my turn... "point to Sister Sudweeks"

With a whispered wish and a little bit of magic the day became golden...

Dear Whanua,

   Hello! Don't worry I didn't fall of into the vast void of the ocean, I made it back safely! ;) Yesterday was the Queen's birthday, so the Library and everything else was closed. We had a fun p-day though, and I am sure you will see in the pictures I will be sending. One of the members took us to Waikuku Beach where we met all the other Elders from our district. Sister Farr and I took heaps of photos! YAY :) It was really fun. I even learned how to do the pukana(it's supposed to be a really angry face)

   This week has been a week of miracles. My companion and I have been struggling with finding new investigators and so we have been thinking, and praying about how we can find more people to teach. And on Tuesday we were blessed with two new investigators that day. Truly there is power in fasting and praying. In Preach my Gospel it says "when we fast and pray we are more receptive to receiving answers to our prayers." I know this is true and I know it happened to us this Tuesday past. And since I have been here in Rangiora we had our first investigator come to church! Miracles is all I have to say :)

    Something else that stuck out to me this week was what was shared at church on Sunday by our Branch Missionary Leader. He was sharing about the Plan of Salvation, and one of our less actives who's daughter didn't want to go to class asked the teacher "so even if your adopted do you still get to choose your parents?" (We were talking about how you get to choose certain things and challenges that you'll face in life before you are born) and then he said to her "Kyra there are no plan B's in Heavenly Father's pan for you individually." This really stuck out to me. Truly there are no plan B's for us. Sometimes we just make up our own plan Bs, C's, and D's all the while thinking they are HEavenly Father's plan A for us. I know Heavenly Father is in charge and will help us see the PLan A he has in store of us. I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Much love,
Sister Sudweeks