December 18, 2011

Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!! :)

 I wish you all a wonderful very merry Christmas!! What a beautiful time of year! The best time of year!! Hope you all have been enjoying it very much and that you will continue to do so!! May we all remember Christ more fully in our lives and strive to rededicate ourselves more fully in following his loving footsteps.. I love you all very much and I hope you all know that!!!! :)

 Things have been absolutlely wonderful here!! Miracles have been poured out to us this Christmas season and also during Elder Spence's "overtime"! haha He past his 2 year mark a couple of weeks ago, this will be his third Christmas in the field! Crazy huh?! But we've been blessed greatly! We were able to witness the baptisms of Roimata Louder and also NarissaMay on Sunday morning!! Most stressful baptism ever though!! Because of circumstances I wasn't able to get pics I'm so sorry!!! These ones will have to be mental pics! But it turned out to be wonderful and we're so grateful that we were able to be a part of it and to witness it!! There's always such a beautiful spirit when life saving ordinances are being performed.. I love it!! Nothings better and it makes everything worth it!! :)

  So starting off with the beginning of the week!! Last pday was utterly destroyed!! I won't give you too much details but an elder in our zone got sent home early.. It is very sad, but because of whatever was going on we had to do all sorts of crazy stuff for President.  He kept calling us and also made sure that this elder was with us constantly! So we had this companionship with us ALL the time and it was pretty strange and creepy because we basically know everything that happened! So awkward as!! But that elder is gone now and we have his companion, the awesome Elder Singh, a Fijian stayin with us now! Goofy Fijian guy he's the man!! So now we're in a 3some til the end of the transfer.  So pday we didn't do anything, just had to hang out with them at their flat! Oh well!

 But monday night was fun! :) Saw all those we usually see on Monday nights, had some fun lessons, and got the man Brownie to do a Harmonica solo for us, he's incredible!! He's been a musician for like 40 years! It's way cool!! Anyways on Tuesday we had our Christmas Conference with the Zone.  Like I said before Elder Watson came up here.  It was WAY fun!!! :)  Massive feed it was insane!!! Elder Watson is awesome!! Learned so much and it really kicked it in for the Christmas spirit!!  So that was a lot of fun!! Everything else was going good just getting things organized for the weekend for the baptisms!

 On Wednesday something happened pretty funny! We had an appointment for our car to be serviced and this was the only time that they could do it.  It turned out to take a lot longer than we thought and we were stuck walking everywhere.  And not kidding we scaled like our entire area on foot for two appointments that fell through while it was raining! It was a trial that's for sure but we talked to heaps of people on the way and just had fun with it so it was all good!! It's all about our attitude! Felt like the days back with Baraniko where we walked all the time with his two broken arms!! haha So that was a good experience for us but it wiped us out cause Elder Spence and I are getting fat just being in a car constantly! So it was good to get some exercise!!

 We did a trade off with some of my favorite elders in a little farming community called Dargaville outside of Whangarei.  I was with Elder Bills who is a brand new missionary that I love! He reminds me so much of Jarin Lamph! So it's always fun being around this Elder!  On Friday we went to have a lesson with Brownie at the end of the night where we found him in very poor shape... He's still remaining faithful and has basically quit smoking overall.  But his exgirlfriend pulled a horrible move and ended up taking a lot of Brownie's money.  Brownie had only baked beans in the cupboard. We gave him a blessing and with the 3 of us we used our funds to go buy him food at the end of the night, miraculously before paknsave closed and got them their food and they were able to have dinner that night and have more food to help them out.  We got the ward on him now because they were struggling!  So things are good now! Brownie has to go to town and busk for money.. He uses his talents and makes quite a bit in town but things have been getting hard for him lately.  It's great to see the ward fulfill it's purposes and help those in need. Just like in Manurewa back in the day this happened quite a bit with our investigators.  So glad God uses us as instruments in his hands to help others, especially those who really need it.. So Brownies doing good now and he's still looking great for Christmas Eve!!

 I've been blessed greatly on my mission during this Christmas season it's beautiful!! :) So things have just been absolutely wonderful as of late!! So Saturday is when some chaos happened with the baptisms, and it's amazing how the Lord provided for us!!! Saturday night we go to see Roimata and it turns out she's staying the night at her \grandmas which freaks us out because she's getting baptized at 8 before church the next morning!! the dad won't tell us where the grandma lives because the family there hates missionaries or something.  So we go to see Brownie and we're like what are we gonna do! We pray for God to show us the way.  Than at Brownies there's this girl we've never met before and we just randomly ask her trying our luck.  Do you know Roimata? She's like ya she's my best friend!! Than we ask her if she knew where the nan lived and she did!! Haha we go there a bit hesitant cuz we have knocked this house before and they freaked out at us!! We knock and there's people home but noone would answer so we keep knocking and we did like 7 times forcing them to answer! Than this big Maori guy with heaps of tattoos comes out and looks angus as!  We're like uh oh!! Than we just politely ask for Roimata and he's like sure! oh yep! She comes out and she's all good so we just arrange for a member to pick her up in the morning from there.  Than we rush to finally find whites that fit! Stressful as! The next morning was worst! The fonts heater broke so it was freezing, white dress didn't fit one of them so they run to find something else! Roimata still needed an interview from bishop and they came late!! Sacrament was about to start and heaps of members we're coming in when we finally started! haha It was pure chaos!! But than it invited such a special spirit when it did happen because so many people were there, right before church started. 

 I had the privilege of baptizing NarissaMay.  Brother Bourne our ward mission leader did Roimata's.  Than we did the confirmations and of course Brother Ngawaka called on me again.  So I did NarissaMay, and Elder Spence did Roimata's.  More blessings hold on! Clayton the man got the priesthood that day as well and he asked me to bestow it upon him, that's the first priesthood ordination I have ever done! So more blessings of missionary work!! Than Elder Spence and I got to do 10 minute talks each!!! :) Than we teach our classes!!! Etc etc etc!!!! Just a super busy awesome Sunday!!! It was one of my favorites so far in the mission field it was so much fun!!!! Pure chaos though!! I swear we both lost all our hair!! haha but it was all totally worth it that's for sure!! So we've been blessed with 3 so far this month and we got Brownie next weekend on Xmas Eve!!! So Merry Christmas!!! Things have been wonderful!!!! :):):) Well I love you all so much and wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

 

Love Elder Devey