Life in the Big City

I can't believe that there are no pictures on my memory card!  I wonder if it could have gotten deleted in the mail?  I am so sad about losing all of my pictures from the last 9 months. [he mailed a memory card home this week and it was blank]. I had thought about backing it up, but I didn't have time, I thought, what could go wrong?  Oh well.

Here is a picture of my new city.  I am loving it here!  It is so fantastic.  Queenstown is beautiful, but the missionary work stinks, lots of finding.  But here the ward is huge. And we got 7 new investigators this week.  So, man the work here is great, and I am loving the people here!  I can't tell you how excited I am to be working here.  I love it!  District leader is really fun as well.  I feel like I get to know more of what is going on.  My district has really cool people who are all hard workers!  I love them and I love this place!  

Here is a picture of my family.... I trained Elder Richardson (my son), and now he is going to be training his new companion (my grandson).  I left Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after Elder Richardson's companion arrived.  This is taken outside our flat!  I flew to Christchurch and I went on the same plane to Palmerston North, so I didn't get to set my foot in Christchurch this time.  The flight was really windy into and out of Christchurch, so we had to take off and land sideways.  It was a bit scary.  All and all, it has been a fun week!

We do have a car here in my area but we share it with the sisters each week.  We don't get as many kilometers as we did in Queenstown, because we have a smaller area.  It is all good, we mostly just use it to drive to district meetings.  Elder Foremater is the bomb!  He has been out for only 6 weeks and has just finished his training, so I will be completing his training as well. We like the same types of things.... CARS!  And he is going into mechanical engineering too.  He is just great and is a hard worker so we are going to have some baptisms sometime soon!  We have 4 baptismal dates already set with people.  I am so excited to be here.  This week or next week we will be settings dates with those 7 new people that we found.  We are going to be really busy here!  I love it!  

Thank you guys for all your love and support!  I love you all so much!  

Elder Tuckett

Heading up North!

On our way to the Internet shop.... It's beautiful, a little cold, but I have shorts on today!  

It feels great!

Sadly, I am leaving Queenstown.   I am going to miss this place!  I took videos all the way to the Internet shop today.  No more living on the side of a mountain with a beautiful view, it's back to boring city life for me.  I am going back up to the north island to Palmerston North, and I'll be in Fielding.  Elder Richardson got a call from the AP's that he is staying in Queenstown and will be training.  I am not worried about him with the spiritual stuff.... It's just the physical stuff that worries me.  He did buy a GPS, so he can get around, but I don't know how that will be working out on the bike, and I hope he remembers to clean the shower, and do all the things that he needs to do.  I know that The Lord will strengthen him and all things will be great!  

I have been called to be a District Leader.  So, hopefully The Lord will strengthen me spiritually and I will be able to look over the district and know the things that we need to do.  We are called to these positions to make our weaknesses our strengths, right Mom?  So, next week, I will be writing you about being a district leader.  I will interview people to see if they are worthy to enter the waters of baptism.  Or if a missionary stays out too late, then I will be busted too.  Fun times!

I leave on Thursday.  I mailed a package home this week.  It has a lot of goodies in it, so don't throw anything away.   I am sending things that I can't be carrying around.  

Love you,

Elder Tuckett

This is a miniature horse!  It is even smaller than a pony!  We do service for a blind lady every week and this is her horse.  We walk it once a week.  The lady is great and I am going to try to get a picture with her this week.  

I am going to miss the sunrises and sunsets here.  The views are so pretty.  

Everything is so green now, we went to Dunedin again this week. 

 Lots of beautiful scenery.  

Peace out Queenstown, I will miss you... I'm headed back up North!

I LOVED General Conference

 

The flowers are every where here!!!!  Monday we went to the Queenstown Gardens.  It was just unbelievable!  I could not of asked for a better place to serve my mission.  The people are fantastic and there are so many cultures here, and the land is just unbelievable!  I am definitely planning a trip back to Queenstown!  This week I ran into an Elder who served in Queenstown, and he is now back there visiting with his wife!!!  He just went home in March too!  It is just so beautiful here!

It is really starting to warm up down here!  However, we are still in between seasons as one day it will be warm and everyone will be out on the lake, and then the next day, it is freezing and there is snow on the mountain.  

Elder Richardson got his drivers license this week so he has been driving me around a bit.  We have almost died a couple of times.  I am sorry to Mary for telling her she was a bad driver... She is not...  I now know what bad is.  We were driving to Gore on Tuesday, and he was still getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road, so he got too close to the edge a couple times and went in the dirt.  It was so scary!  All is well though, no car flipping or anything like that.  He has gotten heaps better just this week, so we are okay now. 

This week was amazing.  I loved General Conference!  I am pretty sure it was the best General Conference of my life.    I loved Elder Dube's talk so much.  It was great to hear him speak with such enthusiasm.  Saturday conference was my all time favorite.  We got two of our investigators to come to both sessions.  They are so into the bible and love reading it and they read it with the spirit which is the most important!  They have found so much through the bible, it is just crazy!  Since following the spirit and reading the bible, they have learned about the godhead, and they totally understand the plan of salvation and use bible verses to back it up.  They already live the word of wisdom, and they told us that if they had talked to us a year ago, they would of said that we were crazy,  but since they have found out truths for themselves, through the spirit, they believe the things we teach them are true.  It is really cool to see how The Lord prepares people to come unto his fold.  This couple have definitely been prepared to meet us on the path about a month ago.  After all of this, we asked them if they would be baptized, and they said "Let us learn more about your church and we will decide".  They came to the first session of conference and learned about tithing, and heard from our prophet welcoming them to the meeting, then learned about the Holy Ghost, and then the last talk from Elder Uchtdorf put the cherry on top!  He said, come and join the Church of Jesus Christ and help with the work.  It was so amazing!  They were so impressed by what they saw that they were now asking when they could be baptized!  They said "this is the best organization that I have ever seen!, and the last talk made us feel so welcome and wasn't pushy at all!  We really enjoyed it".   

I am so grateful for General Conference and it  opened my eyes of how powerful and beautiful the church is.  I am so grateful for the apostles and prophet and that we get to hear from them every 6 months!  This was seriously one of the best weekends of my entire mission!  I can hardly explain it!  I am so grateful to be part of this church and know that Jesus Christ has restored it to the earth today so we can all be a part of it in the latter days.  We are here to help one another and to endure to the end until the Savior, himself comes again!  

I love you guys so much!

Elder Tuckett

Hanging out by the lake -- the weather has been so nice!

My companion and I. [they take these photos and then they print them up as thanks you notes]

Spring Has Sprung!

Everything is turning green, and flowers are popping up everywhere!  The pictures just can't take in the beauty. Today, we are going to go walking through the city gardens.  It is staying light longer too,  which is nice.  It doesn't get dark until around 8 pm.  I love Queenstown so much.  I don't know how much longer I will stay here though, I have been here four months.  Transfers are on the 24th.  

After 4 months of being here, I finally got to meet the branch president!  He came back from vacation!  Today we are having a welcome home party for him down at the water front.  It will also be a good bye party for our winter visitors.  Yesterday we spent all day inviting less actives and investigators.  Hopefully people show up.  

Not much happened really this week.  However, it did fly by like no other.  We did our district meeting differently.  Instead of driving for three hours each way, we did a conference call.  It saved a lot of time, but I didn't get as much out of the meeting, but it was good, just the same.  It was a fantastic meeting!

A lot of our investigators are struggling right now.  Hopefully they can just jump over these hurdles in the road.  Salvation is and never will be easy.  So, everyone that is a member, just keep enduring to the end, it will be just a small blip in the eternal life!  Thank goodness!  

Thanks so much mom for putting my letters on the blog.  I love you so much, you are the best mom ever!

Love, 

Elder Tuckett

There are flowers popping up everywhere!

Here we are at the water front.