I Add My Testimony of the Reality of our Heavenly Father and His Love for Us.

 

Kia ora my whanau! 

This has been quite the exciting week. For starters we had such an amazing baptism this Saturday for our investigator. Wow! Was it amazing! This young women and her husband Love the gospel and all that it has provided for them. But here is a true miracle that happened. While at her baptism her Father, Mother and Cousin came, and those 3 have not been so keen on having the missionaries over at all. We had no idea why! But we saw them and we had this prayer in our heart that this event would help change their hearts. The baptism was done and wow was it beautiful.  It came time for our Bishop ( WHO IS THE MAN) to get up and say a few concluding words. AND HE DOES IT ALL IN THE MAORI LANGUAGE!! What he was saying was beautiful. He related the gospel to family, and you could see this light grow in the mother, father, and cousins eyes. They are hard out Maori and so when they were spoken too in their language it just made the moment amazing! Afterwards all three of them come up, and ask if we can share what their Daughter and cousin learned! WHAT THE HECK?!!!!! The Bishop was such an answer to a prayer! 

I know and add my testimony of the reality of our Heavenly Father and his love for us. That prayer truly works and that we can go to Him in prayer for anything! And He always answers. The distance between a problem and a solution is the distance between our knees and the floor. I am so grateful for my parents and teaching me about how prayer can play a powerful role in our life. I have experienced too many mighty miracles though prayers to not believe in its power. I urge all to ask of God anything, and He will answer! I love you all very much 

Elder Gish.. 

Sorry no pics this week.. My camara in hiding from me today

Please Heed This Message and Read The Book of Mormon

ELLLLVIIISSSSS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING!!! 

Kia ora my whanau.

So i have been shifted out of Waitara up to a place called Frankton in Glenview. Its so crazy up here! I went from the womps all the way to a HUGE city, like Boston huge. It’s going to take a huge amount of adjusting, but this place is awesome! There are so many people we get to talk to everyday. My Companion is Elder Fili'mouliea. He is awesome he is from Tonga, making him my 3rd Tongan companion!

So we have seen some crazy miracles so far this week. Let me start with this one. Elder Fili and I were out and we decided to make a stop in McDonalds for lunch. With only like 6 bucks between the both of us. Btw here, we don’t have they 'Dollar menu," we have the "5 dollar menu' so everything here is paid with gold basically. So we are in there wondering what to get, and if we will be able to eat when all of a sudden this guy walks up and just hands us 20 dollars for lunch!!!! WHAT?! We turn back to say thank you.. and he’s gone.... not a joke…we were speechless…what a miracle 

We were seeing this family and they are just awesome. We are talking to them about repentance and all of sudden one of them says she wants to get baptized!!! She read the Book of Mormon and knows its true! The Book of Mormon is such a powerful book. and can truly get us closer to God then any other book. For anyone that is reading this, please heed this message and read the Book of Mormon if you are looking for direction in life!

Sorry that this is super short but Transfer’'s took up most of they week! I love you all!!!

-Elder Gish

No Accidents!

Kia ora Whanua! 

TRANSFERS ARE THIS WEEK!!! So not keen. This transfer has been going by so quick, its crazy.

SO here is a the funny story of the week.. This week Elder G and I decided that we would Do a "Car Fast" and walk and just talk to people, knock on some doors. So we come up to this house, and this old lady answered, but she was on the phone. She says to the person on the phone "I’ll call you back, I need to straighten these Mormons out" So we prepare for WAR! She ends up being the nicest lady ever, and what she was straightening out was why we hadn’t come by earlier to see her! She takes great interest in us. She turns to Elder G and asks how old he is. He says 18. And she is like 'WHOA NO WAY. YOU LOOK SO MUCH OLDER THEN THAT, I WOULD HAVE NEVER GUESSED". So I am thinking oh gosh... i wont tell her my age. She asks me and i say 20. And she goes.. " Oh... are you sure? " I would have thought you were younger then him.. WHAT!?!?!? DO YOU NOT SEE THESE GREY SPOTS OF WISDOM ON MY HEAD? So basically Elder G has been Elder Grandpa for the week.

This week has been pretty busy. We had a two day exchange with the Zone leaders. That was a ton of fun. We had a cyclone come through. It’s like a heavy rain wind storm. It was actually a miracle because we didn’t have water that day…so we were able to take all natural showers. hah jokes.

The other day while Elder G. and I were walking down the street and we get a feeling to just tract this street. Something that is fun. when your in the mood for it.  So we decide to follow the prompting…and knock some doors! Doors get slammed.. Outside voices are being used inside..WE get a tad discouraged. As we are walking away. Elder G. says, Hey one more? It was this old house, but we go for it. He gets nervous and is like .. “uhh you get it.”  So I knock and this lady answers and. SHE IS A INACTIVE MEMBER OF THE CHURCH!! She was overwhelmed with work, and had just pulled out the Book of Mormon when we knocked! NO ACCIDENTS!! 

The end of the transfer is upon us so we have been trying our best to get this area at its peak, in case one of us move. We told the branch president that we might be being shifted [Shannon here: Branch President = Leader of a very small LDS congregation.] and he says  "I’ll talk to president Rudd and see if we can keep you two.” It honestly brought tears. We never realize how much we can impact a person’s life while working! This area was said to be dead, but when the Lord touches it, it becomes alive and is better then Ever!! 

We were talking to this investigator the other day. He loves smoking…but he knows it’s bad for him. We were talking to him and we kept asking him why he does it? And all he could say was because it makes him feel good? We promised him that we can provide something that will make you feel 10 times better, and won’t harm you! And all he was saying was GIVE ME THAT! We are seeing him today so I hope and pray it comes into his heart. This message we share isn’t just basic.. it’s life changing. So it needs to be treated as such!

I cant wait to see what the Lord provides for us this week!! 

Ofa atu!

-Elder Gish

Pick up Your Cross and Follow Him.

Kia ora Whanau!!
What a crazy week this has been.  Well let me start of with some craziness. Mom, Dad if your standing up please sit down.

So we were helping a member move on Saturday.. And another member brings a trailer to help because no on here has ever heard of moving vans! ANYWAY The guy with the trailer has no idea how to back it up, so we have to drag it so he can back up to the trailer.  We finish filling up the trailer, and I am pulling in to him. No one wanted to help pull it so i am trying to show off my manliness by pulling it myself.. which didn’t work out in my favor cause I end up getting stuck. As I am giving it all my might, I get it unstuck then I feel this giant shove that throws me into the trailer. THE DUDE HIT ME WITH HIS CAR WHILE BACKING UP!!!  But I ended up denting the car. ANYWAY!!! That’s not what I want to talk about!

What I want to talk about it the amazing things that have been happening here!

This week we had such an amazing experience. We have this inactive family that loves having us over. But they tell us that they can make all the mistakes that they want, because that’s why Christ died. Which quite frankly made me want to explode on them. But we didn’t. Rather, we wanted to show them what He went through. SO we took them to beach and I took the family of 5 on a 3k run to get them really tired. The we brought them to a place where there was a bunch of water-locked logs. We asked them." Who is willing to bear their cross?" They all said they would, joyfully. So we had them pick up the water-locked logs. And if you dont know.. those weigh about 30kgs. So like 65 lbs. And told them, that Christ carried His cross what we believe to be about a mile. He did this after being beaten, bruised, and bleeding from every pore, just so we can find refuge from sin in this crazy world. They understood that.

So we started to walk a mile while they carried their crosses. You could see on their faces the struggle they were going though. Every 1/4 mile we stopped and let them breathe while gave them an object lesson. Then after the lesson, they carried their crosses again. Man how bad we wanted to help, but couldn’t, because Christ did it alone.

We got to the 3/4 mile spot and had them drop it. They were so sweaty and saying that they can't go any further. What Christ does for us is carries our cross for us when we can’t go any further. So we had them put all their crosses on Elder G. and I, and we carried their cross ‘till the end. WOW THAT was hard. But we get to the end. And waited for them to get to us before we dropped their cross, because we have to come to Christ before we can pick our cross up again.

After we had a testimony meeting about the atonement of Christ, they started to say things like "I could hardly do that and every time we sin we are making that trip harder." And things like "when you carried our cross we couldn’t help you.. and we wanted to so bad! It was so hard just watching!" So we reply. "Then stop watching. Pick up your cross and follow Him.”

Man it was amazing! They are doing great now!!!
I
 love this gospel!
‘till next time
ofa lahi atu
Elder Gish