Always Find Happiness at the End of the Day.

What is up my Whanua!

I hope you  all have had a wonderful week, because I know that I have been so blessed this week!

First off. Taranaki is the flipping promised land. It is beautiful beyond comparison! I’ll be attaching pictures of how beautiful this place is. The culture is awesome! Its very heavily Maori influenced, so we get to have a great taste of original Aotearoa culture.

To begin.. our flat has more fleas then I think should be legal.. and they must be hungry because they pay $9.95 for an Elder Gish feast... and then we have to boil our water to drink it because its not the cleanest, and our shower has two heats: "Mount Mordor hot", or "I'm not hoping in that cold". !! HOW COOL IS THAT!! Talk about feeling rugged! It really is such a blessing to live in an area where we have a roof over our head. And this place is so amazing.

To begin.. our flat has more fleas then I think should be legal.. and they must be hungry because they pay $9.95 for an Elder Gish feast... and then we have to boil our water to drink it because its not the cleanest, and our shower has two heats: "Mount Mordor hot", or "I'm not hoping in that cold". !! HOW COOL IS THAT!! Talk about feeling rugged! It really is such a blessing to live in an area where we have a roof over our head. And this place is so amazing.

So this week was AWESOME!!! This Saturday the 6th we are having a baptism for a young girl we are teaching Rene. She is awesome! So keen on the gospel. And she will be a great addition in this branch. Then this amazing thing happened. We have found 3 young men that are keen az to be learning more about the gospel. Just randomly talking to them and they want to learn more! WHO SAID THAT THIS AREA IS DEAD!! cause it aint... it is kicking like crazy!! Its great to find success in this area! The work can be hard at times, but when things get hard, that means something great will happen soon! That is how God works... we don't stay in misery, we always find happiness at the end of the day. This Gospel is amazing and has blessed my life like crazy!

So a few more cool things!! The 7th of this month the church is doing a "youtube take over" for the entire day the church will be the only advertisements being used. So tell your friends to go onto youtube! It’s a great finding tool to help this work hasten! Please do that!

I love you all !

Have an awesome week!

ofa lahi atu

-Elder Gish

Everyone Can Be Influenced By the Holy Ghost

DUN DUN DUN!!!!! BIG NEWS !!!! ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING!!! I was transferred this week!! Gisborne was so awesome! I am really going to miss that place, it was home away from home! But now I am in Taranaki! I have gone coast to coast for the slam dunk! Gisborne was the farthest East in the mission, Taranaki is the farthest South West. Needless to say this week I spent a great amount of time driving.  Taranaki is the promised land! Just in in case --Taranaki is pronounced ( Te-da-nah-key) I swear there is whole different language here! But anywho! this place is awesome! My companion is the bomb! Elder Otto, he is from Vanuatu. He’s so cool and carries the best spirit with him!

…Actually funny story about that. So most of this week was spent sitting and driving, and that’s nothing fun or exciting. Just getting numb legs and then stepping out of the car, and having gravity fight against you, and suddenly you’re on the ground...

Taranaki has a new zone Leader Elder Mitchell, who was my first Zone Leader when i entered the mission field so he and I are really close. So we were about 3 hours into our drive and Elder M's legs go numb so we pulled over to do a little sight seeing. Elder M steps out, and we all know how it feels when our legs go numb we need something to support us -- he uses the car. Little does he know Elder Gish is on the prowl ready to attack! SO I try to jump him. Elder M is about 6'5 so i have to get a good spring to tackle him and so i make my move.. And right as i go to Jump on him.. You can probably guess what happens.. He DUCKS!!! I completely miss him and go take a dirt bath.

ANYWAY!! ONTO THE GOOD STUFF!

Taranaki is the bomb. Unfortunately, it is still all branches, no wards. So the entire area is a district not a Stake. (and if your wondering what that is, Come to church one day!! :) )  So my new companion was saying how the work out here is pretty hard, and that there’s not much to do.  WHICH IS A LOAD OF JUNK Because a huge miracle happened! WE have a new set baptism set for the 6th of Dec. HOW AWESOME IS THAT!! The spirit was so strong in the lesson. And when the spirit says ask about baptism, I ask, with no questions. After Elder O was just blown away !! He asked how did i do that? I didn’t do anything, the spirit just asks and we do:) As we all should. All of us have that voice in us telling us to do the right, we just have to be willing to act upon those impressions! The scriptures say the Holy Ghost speaks to us in a still small voice! So if we are being drowned by other things we won’t hear it! All of us have that capability! Its not just missionaries! Everyone can be influenced by the Holy Ghost! 

I Love this work it is so awesome:)

LOVE AND MISS YOU ALL

ofa lahi' atu!

-Elder Gish

Where our Heart is, is Where our Treasures Lies.

Kia ora Whanua!!! 

WOW WHAT A WEEK THIS HAS BEEN!!! First off let me congrats my big bro Sam for Returning from his mission!! RETURNING WITH HONOR MY BRO!! You’re The man and I love you like crazy. NOW GO GET MARRIED hah jokes:) But seriously... you’re awesome and a skux fella times 20. 

NEXT, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY DAD!!! Dad i love you like crazy!!! You’re the reason i still believe in super heroes! I do not know where i would be without my Dad. He has been my best friend through out my life! I was actually telling some members out here what one of my favorite moments are in life and i told them about the Time my Dad came into my room at 6 in the morning on a school break to go shovel off a roof. and how it stunk at first but then we got to sit on the roof and just talk. I wish you the happiest birthday!! You’re not a day past... whatever year Noah built the the ark... hah :) 

The week has been glorious and hott az! I don’t know who felt like turning the heat up here.. but he turned it up way to much..  When your pants stick to your leg becasue of sweat.. either i am super out of shape.. or i need to sweat way to much.. due to being out of shape.

We had another earthquake this week.. Again its not too bad but it does shake some people up, But its all good because no one was hurt!

This week my district and I came up with the goal for between all of us we need to find 23 new people to teach. We all felt good about this number and so we hit the beat.. The end of the week come and we hadn’t reached our goal of 23. But here is what crazy – even though we set this goal and didn’t reach it, i feel that we reached something even better, and that is we all had this burning desire to do our best and serve the Lord, which is what counts at the end of the day which is, where is our heart is at? Where our heart is, is where our treasures lies. This week blessed my life so much! I love this work!! I love you all!

ofa lahi atu!

-ElderGish

Game Changer

Kia ora Whanau!! Thank you all for your birthday wishes!! 

I am so sorry for missing a longer letter last week! Our computers here have been around since the creation of the wheel, so they were getting updated all last week.  SO our computers now are pretty flash... But nothing too high tech... Still can’t put pictures on here! It’s all good though!

SO wow where do I even start... Let me start with last week,

Last week was a game changer. I have two very experienced missionaries in my district which is a bit scary at times but i realize, and they realize, that as a District Leader, I am Just that, their leader. So I love calling on them to help out in meetings! ANYWAY. The entire week i was wondering what the heck will i do a training on! Nothing was coming to me at all…which doesn’t really happen that often! Something was telling me wait, and in the very hour it will be given to you what to do. So just to clarify waiting until the last hour to train in a District Meeting is not something you want to do. I had the feeling to let Elder Brann one of my experienced missionaries do a spiritual thought. Wow! He really brought it in. And while you read this I hope you try this, because honestly it changed my life and it will for you if you just try. 

Elder Brann had us all stand up and hold our arms out like we were holding our cross. And he began to read to us about what Jesus Christ has done for us. And first holding our arms up was easy, thinking that what he was reading to us would only take a few minutes.. It went on for longer, and holding our arms out was starting to hurt. I opened my eyes to see all of my Elders and Sisters with the face of pain. There arms dropping. It finally came to a conclusion we sat down. The spirit says “have a testimony meeting on the atonement.” That’s exactly what we did. As i got up the words formed in my mouth " how many of you felt that cross in your arms, and how many of us when we were going to give up, felt hands hold your arms up?" Tears formed and lives where changed. 

That is the Gospel. Christ suffered for us. He has done so much for us, and i think, for a brief second we as missionaries where placed in his shoes. 

The meeting continued and not an eye was dry. It was a game changer. Never before have i seen my District work so hard. They have been touched by the love of Christ as have i.

From then on the weeks were flawless. Nothing was stopping us. 

Then we continue on to this week. This week was awesome. My Zone Leaders challenged me to talk to 100 people on the streets this week. I love talking to people! but im not even sure if there are 100 people in this town.. But we moved forward. It was such a blessing to see so many people on the streets because it was Guy Fox (british version of fourth of july) so talking to people began to sky rocket. My companion is still not confident in his english so this was going to be fun. I loved talking to someone, then pausing…which in the missionary world, is a signal for "its your time to speak" so it really pushed him! and he did so well! we fell short of our challenge and achieved 86, which was still awesome! What a great blessing the Lord gave to us!

I love this Gospel!

I hope you all have a great week:) LOVE you all!
Ofa lahi atu!

-Elder Gish

Happy Birthday to Roo!

{Shannon here: Chase had very little time on the computer this week, so this is all we got. Short, but so sweet.}

Hey mom! When you can, will you please wish Gage a happy birthday for me!! I wish i could be there! I really have no time to email. our computers are getting updated at our chapel so i had to come to the library where we get internet for free for ten minutes. But please please wish Roo the best of birthdays for me please!

{Shannon here: For what it’s worth; Roo is our nick name for Gage. It comes from Gageroo.}