New Zealand Wellington Mission Blog JULY & AUGUST 2020
New
Zealand Wellington Mission Blog July and August 2020
Well,
it has been around two months since we last posted (26 JUL) on our Blog, and we
have heard that different people are asking when our next one will be coming
out. Well, here it is and we will give you our post for JUL through AUG version.
(Here it is early OCT so we will try and get SEP and OCT out closer to the end
of OCT). These are indeed exciting times that we are living in.
President & Sister Thomson
July
was a very interesting month as we had our new Mission President and his wife,
President and Sister Thomson, come into the mission and our previous Mission
President and his wife, President and Sister Soloai finish their mission and
head home. They did the exchange on Wednesday 01 JULY 2020. For those that
don’t know, Mission Presidents and their spouse serve for three years and they
always change on 01 JULY. Every mission President and his wife have their own
unique characteristics and it is nice to see the unique
strengths and abilities of each of them.
We
loved serving with President and Sister
Soloai, and we went through a lot together, especially with all the COVID-19
activity. We were sad to
see them go. They have been a wonderful mission president and companion and we
have been very blessed to serve with them. They have so much caring for the
missionaries and have worked so hard to be able to do things the way that Heavenly
Father would have them done. It seemed like they were always seeking for the
spirit to know what the right thing was to do. They have truly given their ALL
in this mission.
We
are now loving the opportunity that we have to serve with President and Sister
Thomson. It is wonderful to watch them shine with their own unique strengths
and abilities. The first day they arrived in the mission, they had a
meeting with the two office mission couples, Elder & Sister Mansfield and
us, Elder & Sister Hurdman along with the two Assistants to the President,
Elder Siale and Elder Robertson. We met for a couple of hours on Wednesday 01
JULY so that they could become acquainted with us and the processes that we go
through and to have us go over any issues with them that we felt they should be
brought up to speed on. Fortunately, we had had some emails and some phone
calls with them during the two weeks leading up to 01 JULY.
They
wanted to do a mission tour throughout the whole mission during their first 10
days in the mission, so we had organized for each of the Zones to have a Zone meeting
and individual interviews with President Thomson. They definitely hit the road
running.
Since
they arrived, they have had the mission tour, one round of Zone Conferences and
then planned and prepared for one special Country wide Mission Conference with Elder
Gary E. Stevenson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. (This conference was
later postponed until SEP because of a COVID-19 outbreak in Auckland and
explained later).
Fred has also been very busy these
past two months working on the finances for the mission. One of his big jobs is
to make sure that each of the missionaries has a Missionary Support Funds card
(or MSF card) which is like a debit card. A missionary and their family make
deposits each month for their support and part of that money goes onto their
MSF Card for their day to day maintenance. The remainder goes to the church to
help cover the cost of their housing and transportation. When the missionaries
need to purchase things like food, toiletries etc., they use their MSF card.
When the 74 additional missionaries came into our mission in June, some of them
brought their MSF cards with them while many others did not. Fred spent June
and these two months trying to make sure that each missionary has an MSF card
and that it is being properly funded. For the approximately 40 missionaries
without their MSF Cards, Fred needed to fund their companion’s cards separately
and somewhat manually. There were also two instances where missionaries had their
MSF Cards compromised where some merchant skimmed their MSF cards and there
were some online transactions from UK, Auckland or other far away places. Fred
then had to cancel their MSF cards and get replacements which takes at least
two weeks or more, so then it would take extra time and attention to make sure
that those missionaries were able to receive their funding through their
companions MSF cards.
He’s also busy doing the finances for opening and closing
flats (apartments) or houses, paying rents, and doing other payables. There has
been a lot of work to do and it has kept him busy and out of trouble.
On August 10 Fred got the last
replacement MSF Card for one of the missionaries who lost their card and then
every single missionary had their own MSF card. That was an amazing
accomplishment and a day of celebration. That makes it so much easier to fund
the missionaries twice a month!
One of the challenging things that Kathy has
been working on is to try to get missionaries who are not from New Zealand back
to their home countries when they are finished their missions. During these two
months, we were able to get Elder Chen back to Taiwan and three of our
missionary Elders back to Samoa. The Area Travel Office in Auckland books their
flights and then we do everything that is required to get them safely onto
their plane. All of these Elders required COVID tests and Elder Chen came down
with a bit of a cold just before he left to go home. His COVID test was
negative, for which we were grateful, because this was the only flight
available in July to Taiwan. But he was still coughing a little when he left.
There were a lot of missionaries praying for him including the Mission
President and his wife and all of us office couples. His missionary companions
also gave him a beautiful Priesthood blessing stating that he would be able to
make it all the way home and our prayers were heard, and he did get home
safely. We were a little bit worried about his stopover in Australia, and
whether they would let him get on the plane again with his cough, but they did
and he was reunited with his family. We appreciated the answer to our prayers
and that we had gotten our miracle!
We were also able to get our three Samoan Elders
home. There was one Elder who had been waiting quite a long time past his
release date (which is 24 months after they start their mission) and two elders
who were supposed to be released on September 1. They all had to have COVID
tests as well as physicals to say that they were fit to fly before they could
get on the airplane. And then they would have to quarantine for two weeks when
they arrived in Samoa. We were grateful that they were able to get home as
well.
Takarau Gorge Road (Two way with no centre line)
Another one of our preparation days, Saturday, July 25, we went for a hike at Makara Beach which is just west of Wellington. We drove down a road called Takarau Gorge Road and it was a skinny little road through a beautiful gorge. In fact, it was so skinny in some places that it didn’t even have a centreline because it was too skinny to have one! It was a very interesting drive but fortunately, we had left early in the morning and there was not a lot of traffic. One of the interesting things is that there were signs along the way showing that people were selling horse poop for one dollar per bag. There were quite a few people selling it, so maybe it makes good fertilizer. We never got any, even though it was such a good deal!
Makara Beach
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| Henry with his Spear Gun |
When we arrived at Makara Beach, we were amazed at the beauty of the ocean as it went on forever and was a beautiful blue colour. We saw some people swimming in wetsuits and they had spearguns with them. Fred met a young man named Henry and he showed him the speargun and told him all about his process for going hunting for fish and also for getting Paua (a shell fish that lives on the side of a rock. If you google Paua shell, you will see what a beautiful shell it is) with his special knife, which he showed him. He said that a person can live off the land quite easily in a lot of ways. Fred really enjoyed his chat with Henry. When Fred was on his first mission at age 20 he went out and got some Paua with some local Maori people and he experienced first hand how they get them, prepare them and eat them.
Elder & Sister Hurdman with the South Island in the Background
We walked on the beach and then went inland
along a hiking path that led through the hills. We climbed one hill right to
the top and we could see the South Island from there. It was so amazing and
beautiful. It was an amazing hike with lots of gorgeous scenery, especially
looking out over the ocean!
On our hike back to the car, we met a man named Peter when we had been taking pictures of some flowers. He asked us what we were looking at and then he started asking about the church and about our mission. He said that he was interested in learning more about God and we invited him to come to the Mission office and talk with some of our missionaries. We had a really neat discussion with him, and he seemed to be a really nice person. We hope to see him at the mission office sometime.
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| View in 2020 from approximate location of the 1973 Mission Home. |
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| View in 1973 when Fred first arrived in NZ for his first Mission. Notice the same church Steeple. |
Near the end of August (August
25-27), we had a Senior Missionary Couples conference. All of the senior
missionaries in our mission gathered in Wellington and we spent those three
days together getting to know each other and having some instruction by the
Mission President and his wife and also activities and fun together. We had
originally planned for this to be at the end of a missionary conference with
all of the young missionaries. New Zealand had been at Level 1 lockdown since
June 8 when we began planning the conference. That meant that everything could
go on as normal except that the borders to New Zealand were closed to everyone
except New Zealand citizens. There had been no cases of COVID in the country,
so we were able to meet together as we pleased. One of the 12 Apostles of the
church, Elder Gary E. Stevenson, was going to speak to all the missionaries in
New Zealand via a ZOOM Meeting from Salt Lake City. We have three missions in
New Zealand and each mission were to have all their missionaries meet together
in one group for their mission. We were going to have all our missionaries fly or drive by bus into Wellington and stay either at
accommodations which we had booked or with other missionaries. We were all
looking forward to getting together and having this wonderful spiritual
conference as a mission. However, on August 11 four cases of COVID-19 from an
unknown source were reported in Auckland and at noon on August 12 Auckland was
return to Level 3 lockdown and the rest of the country to level 2. Gatherings
were then limited to 10 people at level 3 and 100 people at level 2 and we had
to postpone the conference. We were disappointed that we could not have it, but
the senior missionaries were grateful that we were still able to have the senior
missionary conference as it was a much smaller group.
Elder & Sister Hurdman at Karori Reserve
The next day we all met for brunch at a cute little restaurant
called the Peppermill Café. Because there were 23 of us, we had made
reservations and put in our orders a couple of days beforehand so that they
would be prepared for us. It was a great little restaurant.
Afterwards everyone did different activities for the afternoon. We went with one of the other couples to the Weta workshop which is a place where they have done a lot of special effects for movies such as The Lord of the Rings, Avatar and many other movies. It was really fun to see how it all comes together! That night we got together for dinner and watched a really great movie called “The Fighting Preacher”. We had watched it before personally and thought that everyone else would enjoy it, and they did.
The last day of the conference we went into the
Mission office and had a devotional with some instruction by President and
Sister Thomson. We had lunch together and then the other couples from the South
Island and the north part of the North Island traveled home. It was a great
conference!
We have a new theme for our mission of Love Joy and Work. When we work hard and love others, it brings joy into our lives. President and Sister Thomson want us to feel that joy by working hard on our missions and loving others, including our companions, other church members, and people who are not members of the church.
During the month of August, Fred felt a little under the weather when he got a cold and cough. We spent most of the week and a half working from home while he recuperated. It wasn’t fun for him to be sick, but he did appreciate the outpouring of love that he felt from the other missionaries. President and Sister Thomson came over one night with some lozenges with Manuka honey in them, and a nice plate of dinner. President Thomson gave Fred a beautiful Priesthood blessing, blessing him to be able to use wisdom and understanding so that he could be healed. He also mentioned Fred‘s devotion to the work and Kathy agreed that Fred works so hard and tries to do everything just as our Heavenly Father would want it to be done. We feel very blessed to have him in the mission.
Some of the other missionaries sent him some medicine and they and one of his sisters back home gave him some home remedies to help him to feel better. And one Sunday afternoon, the whole Mission had a Prayer for Fred and after that he recovered quickly. We are grateful to be on this mission and to feel so loved!
In
closing off this Blog, we do want you to know how much we love and appreciate
you and our relationship with you, our friends and family. We also have such an
immense love of the Lord and love serving Him as we serve this mission. We are
truly learning things from the experiences that we are having that we would
learn in no other way. We are grateful that we have been called on this mission
and can consecrate our lives to the Lord and to our Father in Heavens children
in this part of the world. We are being greatly blessed through this service.
May
the Lord bless you and your families, especially during these uncertain times
as we prepare for the second coming of our Lord and Savior.
Love,
Elder
Fred Hurdman
Sister
Kathy Hurdman
