21! - the weekly letter

So, here in the mission our goal is that every sector teaches 20 lessons every week. That isn't easy, but that makes it a good goal that makes us really stretch, and this past week we had 21 lessons! We were pretty stoked that we were able to do that, among all the office stuff we've been doing as well, so we celebrated with alfredo and brownies. The credit for this acheivement really goes to the Lord. Elder Kessler and I have been setting goals before we plan out our day, and by so doing excercising more faith, and the Lord has been blessing us by just throwing people into our path who are ready and willing to hear our message. 

I also need to explain why this email is early. We have our zone conference coming up this weekon Wednesday and Thursday, so P-day got moved to Monday this week. For those who don't know, Zone Conference is when our mission President comes and we have a big meeting with all the missionaries in our zone, here the 20 or so missionaries through Noumea down to Mont Dore, and we get training and eat together and have some activities and it's just a good time.

So, the fact that we've had 21 lessons is an indication that the work is picking up here. Our investigator Sebastian is really beginning to progress. We taught him how to pray and he's doing better and likes that he is able to use his own words to talk with our Heavenly Father. We also showed him the Restoration video and he said he'll start reading the Book of Mormon and may start coming to church soon. I'm super excited about him. We also have an investigator named Anna who speaks both English and French since she's from Fiji but has lived here for around 16 years. She really hasn't been satisfied with any Christian churches here, but really wants her kids to be raised in a good gospel setting and wants a church for herself as well. She might be what we missionaries call "golden." We'll see what happens. 

The weather right now here is basically what I would call "perfect." Sunny, 70's, ocean breeze, it's wonderful right now. Winter here rocks!

Miss you all back home, have wonderful summers!

Love,

Elder Miner

Night time at Tours de Magenta

Old Sector, New Sector!

The word of God is tougher than windows. ;)

The city did a lantern festival that we could see from our window, on our celebratory night of 21 lessons. 

Victory alfredo! Parmesean cheese basically doesn't exist here, but French Emmental cheese worked out pretty darn well. 

"Do you have the time?" "Yeah, it's 11:30..." "Ok thanks!" (Gets up and walks away) - the weekly email

So that was probably one of the more creative rejections I've ever experienced. We were out at the beach trying to contact, and that's how the first one went. Yup. I just kind of laughed though, what else can you do?

Hello all you beautiful people back home! I've heard Utah has been pretty hot recently. I feel bad, because it's pretty much perfectly beautiful here. Jealous yet? 

So, first week in Magenta is down, and it's been pretty awesome. In terms of office duties, we took two departing sister missionaries to the airport on Friday. They're probably home in Tahiti by now, and they were a great addition to our mission. 

Now, in terms of proselyting, do I have some stories to tell... In our mission, the goal is for every companionship to teach 20 lessons per week. Because of our office duties, this has been a real challenge and last Friday night, we were only at 6 lessons for the week, so Elder Kessler and I decided to do things a little different. We set our goal for the day at 4 lessons for Saturday, the last day of that week and then planned out our day. Elder Kessler felt that we should try tracting at an apartment building near ours. While tracting, we found and talked to an old investigator from Ducos who both of us knew and we had a good conversation, but that's not the cool part. As we were talking, we watched his neighboor go into his apartment, and thought nothing of it, other than, "Oh, now if we knock on his door it'll be weird," but after doing the rest of the doors, Elder Kessler felt impressed to talk to him anyway, since his door was open, and we had an amazing discussion about what happens after death. We've since had another appointment which went fairly well. His name is Sebastian, and I think he has good potential to progress well. From there, the rest of our day was nothing short of miraculous. We went to one of our main areas for proselyting, the Tours de Magenta and had a lesson, and then as we started contacting we walked by a group of young people and said hi, and one of them stopped us and asked "are you the preachers?" (That's a literal translation, it makes more sense in French.) Apparently she had been looking for us for a while and we had an amazing discussion about the Restoration and she just drank it all in, she just wanted to know what church is true, just like Joseph Smith, and after we finished we asked if she had any questions, and she asked if we had any good prophet stories, so we told her the story of Enoch. We have another appointment on Saturday, we'll see how it goes. We had another couple of lessons through tracting and contacting, and by the end of the day, we had passed our goal of four. This is truly all thanks to the hand of the Lord acting to put people in our path as we did our best and exercised faith in Him. It was honestly probably one of the best days of my mission. 

I hope everyone back home is having a wonderful summer. I know that I am absoutely loving it here in New Caledonia, and though I miss home, I really have begun to fall in love with this beautifully diverse country and people.

See you all real soon,

Elder Miner

The missionary table at the wedding of a recent convert in our ward and another member.


 

What is that gorgeous Porsche doing in our sector?

Look, I can see my old sector from here!

Suprise Transfers, Lucy, and TECHNOLOGY! - the weekly email

Hi everyone! 

So remember how I said that transfers would come this Friday and the changes would happen next week? Well, not so much. Like President Granger is fond of saying "in this mission, be ready for anything." So, last Wednesday night we got a call from the Zone Leaders about transfers, and the transfer actually happened Friday. It's partially because a couple of American missionaries finished and went home last week, but President just went ahead and made all of the changes for next transfer. So, now the big news, I got transfered, as did Elder Estall. He's now in Yahoue, a different sector of Mont Dore that used to be sisters, and I'm now in the sector of Ouemo in the Magenta Ward. The Ouemo Elders are also the office Elders, which mean I'm helping out more now with some of the administrative things that help keep the mission running, things like baptismal records, getting mail, setting up and taking down and running audio/visual needs for zone conferences and other large mettings, along with transporting and taking care of President and Sister Granger when they come and transporting arriving and departing missionaries. My new companion is Elder Kessler from Florida. He played and marched clarinet and played piano in jazz band in high school, and he's a total gamer and Doctor Who nerd and everything. We get along well. He's been here in the office since I got to New Caledonia, so we think he's training me up to replace him, but you never know. I'm sad to have left Elder Estall and Mont Dore, but I like getting to see more and more of this beautiful country. I'm back in towards the center of Noumea now, but we can see the beach and ocean from the office, so there's ups and downs. The Magenta ward is good, seems strong, and hopefully I can help implement some of the things that Mont Dore did that helped so much with missionary work. The Ouemo sector has some great investigators and areas to work in, I'm still learning my way around, but I know it'll come. 

This past week has been a little crazy, saying goodbye to members and investigators in Mont Dore as much as possible to get them ready for the new missionaries, making sure that the new Elders coming in would have everything they needed, packing, moving, it's been a little crazy. I'm definitey a lot busier here in Ouemo, trying to balance office duties with normal proselyting, but it's enjoyable. Already this week I've met some of the main investigators here (I'll talk more about them next week), picked up and returned President and Sister Granger and the AP's to the airport, learned how the computers and supply closets here in the office are set up and work, moved in, and helped with the North Zone Conference. 

But along with all of this change, I'm still a missionary, and I love being a missionary. I want to testify to all of you that God loves each one of us, that he knows each one of us, and he wants each one of us to acheive our full potential, and he will change our circumstances and give us challenges and oppurtunities and responsibilities so that we can become the best we can be.

I love you all, see you soon!

Love,

Elder Miner

Last Soiree in Mont Dore at the Vergoz family's house along with Frere and Soeur Hauata.
(We "met" the couple on the right when we skyped with Elder Miner on Mother's Day.)

Me and Elder Kessler

When you have to cook for yourself now, might as well have some fun.

The new ride, the mission's Hyundai H1. Also known as "the Bus" or "Lucy." And I'm the driver.

Saying goodbye to "Mom" - the weekly email

So, in a mission there's a genealogy that we like to do. At it's simplest level, your "Dad" is your trainer, and your "Mom" is the sister in your first district that's been out the longest. Well, in my case, since my first district was only Elders, my "Mom" is Elder Stubbs, who goes home this week. In all seriousness, he's been a great example to me and has taught me a lot through the conversations we've had. 

This past week was a little rough in terms of statistics, we had a lot of trouble getting together with our investigators, and we've been doing a lot of service. Why have we been doing a lot of service? Because one of our investigators is getting married next week, and her husband-to-be is the Bishop's son. For those of you who don't know, traditional Melanesian weddings are week-long, massive affairs that require lots of preparation, and these are two fairly traditional Melanesian families. So we've been building cooking areas and clearing trees and brush at our Bishop's house. I don't really have any good pictures, but I'll see if I can take some at some point. But we definitely have that to look forward to.
We also had the baptism of someone we've taught named Yolan, but since his mom is a member and he just turned 8 it didn't count as a convert baptism. He's a super awesome kid and we're way proud of him anyway. 

Nothing really new in terms of new investigators; Transfers are coming up soon, next Fridayofficially with some small movements this Friday to account for the Americans flying out who have finished. This is going to be an interesting transfer, New Caledonia is positively buzzing with speculation. Will see what happens. 

See you all soon, keep praying for me, it makes a big difference,

Thanks all,

Elder Miner

Our mission vehicle #lajukeitude

Are you ready for the Eurocup? Everyone here is, even us missionaries. #allezfrance

A beautiful rainy ocean morning

Happy America week!!! - the weekly email

So right now the local supermarket is having an America week. They have all kinds of America-inspired decorations, but more importantly, real American food. We're talking Reese's, Pepperidge farm cookies, Sour Patch, Licorice, AMERICAN MUSTARD, Heinz EVERYTHING, and even Lucky Charms. Sadly, the Lucky Charms were close to $20 a box, so I won't be getting those, but still, some awesome stuff. 

To counter all this American-ness, I finally got to eat bat. That's right, BAT. I won't send much in the way of pictures, since they're kind of gross looking, but it was actually really good. Hard to get a lot of meat, but still really good. 

Today for P-day we went as a district to the Parc Rivière bleue, or the Blue River Park. It's a huge endemic reserve, and it's technically in our area. It was absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately the shuttle into the main part of the park was closed, so they only way to get in was by walking over 10 km (no thanks) or by mountain bike (which we don't have), so we had to content ourselves with the smaller, drivable portion of the park. It was still beautiful, and it was wonderful to just relax in nature with other missionaries. 

Now with all the fun stuff out of the way, let's talk about missionary work a little. This week has been pretty normal, our investigators continue to progress, especially Nicolas. I'm pretty sure I've talked about him before, if not I'm sure my parents will tell me and I'll talk about him more next week. We also worked this week on trying to find a guy who had apparently been taught by the missionaries around 5 or 6 years ago, and found the missionaries here in December and said he wanted to get baptized. It's been a real struggle to get in touch with him, and we only recently found his house. He doesn't really answer his phone, but we've stopped by his house a couple times to try and see him, but he hasn't been there, but we've been able to talk to his family some. We also had a soirée with a member family,the Fat family, who invited some of their nonmember relatives. We had a great discussion and they asked a lot of great questions, so I think they have good potential to become new investigators. 

Hope you all have had a wonderful Memorial Day! Keep being wonderful people!

Love,

Elder Miner

                                          America week haul. :)

To bat or not to bat?

Yes, I did indeed steal my pose from Destiny. ;)

The district at the entrance to the Blue River Park