Hoagland Mission: This Week

Last week I talked about Sister Scott. This week she was sustained as the new Relief Society president. Sister Carpenter is moving to Hamilton. We will miss her.

As you know we have taken a lot of pictures on our mission. This week we had two separate occasions where two Tongan sisters came by to get copies of our pictures of their families on DVD's. I had the little video's I had taken and others the Elders had taken. They were particularly interested in the pacifica day activity at the Cobden School, but while we were at it we gave them everything we had of their families. I'm sure this will not be the end of it as all the Langi families will want their copies too. there are 4 Langi families and also the Taus.

While this is not the best picture, it is the only one I have of our two institute students together. Muffi on the left and Ofa on the right. They are resting here during our Good Friday activity. Ola Langi, our primary president is in the middle. They were watching Ola's three boys play rugby.

We had a wonderful general conference Sunday. We had pretty good attendance for the morning session and pretty good for the afternoon session. We had the priesthood session also at 4:00 pm. I was impressed with the talks by the brethren. I particularly loved Elder Hollands talk on the Saviors sacrifice which he had to perform "utterly alone." I always love to hear Elder Oaks, as he is the only apostle I have ever taught in Sunday School. Those in the Jan Ree Ward may remember when he came to our ward on his honeymoon.

Between session we had a few sandwiches to consume. They were gone in no time. Mele is in pink with the pigtails. She sat attentive to both sessions and filled out our conference activity packet better than anyone else. She made comments on each speaker, identified enough topics in the "bingo portion" to make bingo. A very impressive young lady. The activity packets were a big hit, but there was quite a bit of paper rustling during the first session and in the second session I noticed the adults also doing word finds, etc. instead of listening to the speakers. The brother on the right was a visitor from Dunedin.

On Monday we were called by the mission office and asked if we would be responsible to inspect all the missionary flats in our zone. Fortunately there are only four flats but unfortunately 3 of them are 3 1/2 to 4 hours one way away from us. Thursday we drove to Blenheim, which is supposed to be the sunnyest area of the country. It was sunny all the way until we got there. We found the Elder's flat in good shape except the small patch of lawn. There used to be a mission couple living in town and they took care of the lawn. They have no tools so we will have to see about that.

This is some of the country side on our way to Blenheim.

There is a small river gorge on the way called the Buller Gorge. In the gorge is this slide area which was caused by an earthquake about 30 years ago. The Buller river was featured in movie the Lord of theRings.

Murchison us a small town half way to Blenheim. These pictures are from the park where they also have a public toilet we use most every time we go to Nelson or Blenheim.