Boys will be boys.....

Yes, there was a big storm in New Zealand this week.  On Thursday, we got a call from our leaders saying get your 72 hour kits and have them ready and cancel all service projects for the weekend, and prepare to help people prepare for the storm.  We were kind of freaking out.  So, we started doing all that, and then no storm came.  We did get rain, but not really that much.  I think they maybe got more up in Auckland, not sure, we are going to ask around today.  So that was the storm...we are starting to think that the stores just wanted people to hurry out and buy up all the food.  

We were able to go ahead and do our service on the weekend after all.  Friday, we mowed lawns and Saturday, we helped clean a lady's house.  

Our service on Saturday took up the whole day.  It was a blast!  We helped this part member family and they had so much junk it was ridiculous. There was so much rubbish!  We divided it into metal, bottles, wood, and trash!  The metals and bottles are going to the recycling center, but you can see what we got to do with the wood.  I was lucky enough to be the one to start the fire!  Playing with fire.... All day!  We really did work hard though all day.  

When we were cleaning we found this frog.  We are giving it to one of our investigators for his birthday today.!  He is so cool.  We have been feeding him insects that we catch in our flat!  We have named him Fredo.  

I found these goggles and cap at a members house this week.  I just had to put them on and remember the good old days.  I miss swimming so much.  It was awesome! 

 I also found out that one of our members has llamas.  They said that the next time I can jump in the pen and try to cuddle with them.  This time, there was a mean billy goat in there so I had to stay outside.  

I had an awesome exchange with my district leader this week.  We made tacos the night we were on exchanges.  It was great, but not as good as my mothers!  It was fake wanna be Mexican food.   But they tried!  We cooked everything from scratch!  I can't believe that I remembered how my mother cooked the mince!  Exciting times!  

Love you all -- I mailed you a birthday present Mom!

Elder Tuckett

Temple Week in our Branch

Sounds like you had a great Stake Conference Mom!  Thank you for the quotes on Hastening the Work.  I love them.  We have been extending the commitment to the members here to pray for missionary experiences and have had a few really good reports already.  It is awesome!  I love how well prayer works!  Ask and ye will receive!  

And I am so happy to hear about Brother Hall in the Stake Presidency -- That's my Pa!!!  [his Pa from the Trek was put in our Stake Presidency today]  Please tell him congratulations for me.  "Many are called, but few are chosen" -- He is truly one of the chosen ones.  I love him.

Here are a few highlights of my week -- 

Monday, we spent in Masterton and I got to see Sister Rose!  Do you remember her?  I was in the MTC with her.  She is doing great and we got to catch up on things which was the highlight of my week.  It was like seeing a long lost friend, even though we only knew each other for 3 weeks in the MTC.  Tuesday, was the usual, but we found an awesome investigator, however she is a single sister, so we have to hand her over to the Sisters!  There are so many single sisters that love the gospel!  I want to know where to find the down to earth men!!!!  We had a great district meeting on Tuesday.  Saturday, we went to Martinborough and they were having a brew day fair.  Who knew there were so many beer fans!  We were getting nothing done there because everyone was drunk!  

Sunday was the greatest day of the week because everyone bore their testimony on the temple because it was the temple week.  So -- that made be very jealous!  I miss the temple so much now.

Well -- I am getting kicked off the computer -- AGAIN!  This will be all for today!

Love, 

Your son Ryan!

p.s. I am so glad that Tyler got to leave for Mexico, and I am happy Olivia is on her mission now!

Llama Boy!

I found some Llamas!!!!!

This week......

It was so fast at the beginning, then it slowed down a little, and ended with a big bang.  It always happens that way.  I love it.  

We found a new investigator this week.  And she is fun and bubbly, it's awesome.  She had always heard that Mormons put down their women a lot, so we found an awesome talk for her and she is now reading the Book of Mormon!  Sadly, we are passing her over to the sisters this week.  Mother, you should read this talk to your Relief Society, and let the sisters know how important they are.  It is called "I am a Mormon because I am feminist". No woman will ever think badly of herself after she reads this talk.  It is amazing.

At the end of the week we went to a massive community fair out in Marlborough.  It was so much fun!  We got to talk to a lot of people!  This picture is us having breakfast.  We got there early thank goodness, because when we left around 12, the line was like 8 k's long to get in.  It was a massive fair,  the biggest in New Zealand.  I was able to buy some souvenirs this time, and will send them home in the next package.  We got to talk to a lot of people there.  Probably not many of them were from our area though.  So we hopefully planted a lot of seeds for other people.  So things are going the best that they can here!  

This week is temple week for our branch.  So many of our members are going for the first time in a while which is fantastic.  I am so jealous of them though!  The temple is only 6 hours away!  I so wish that we could go there with them.   If only......

We got the movie this week!  [Ephriam's Rescue] Thank you so much. It made me cry!  Definitely the part where she tells him "I know that your mother is very proud of you and knows you are helping others wherever she is!" Or something like that.  That made me think of you, Mom, and how I hope I can make you proud of me and be a good son and not only think of myself like she accused him of always doing.  I loved that movie so much!  

One more pic..... That is our car at the bottom, we drove up there then hiked to the top of the hill where we got some great views of New Zealand! Being in this area.... I longed to have my truck for off-roading!

I love you guys!  
Elder Tuckett 

Helping hands and reunited with friends.

First of all -- to respond to everything in your letter Mom...

1 - Congrats on all the broken bones, Porter boys.

2 - I have missed seeing the Olympics.  One time this week, we were tracking, and they were too busy watching the Olympics.  I got a slight peek, but that was it!  

3 - Tell Laural, thanks for telling me she drove the truck. You let her and all the girls at the office know that I am brushing and flossing everyday.  I am trying to be the miracle missionary that comes home after not seeing the dentist for 2 years and still has perfect teeth.  

4 - I loved your scripture thought for me mom, it was perfect and such good insight!

The big thing that we did this week was Saturday!  We had Helping Hands at the Marae, which is very special to the church. The Marae is a sacred place that social, religious, and other activities are held in the Polynesian culture.  Anyway, I don't know if you remember me telling  you about it last year, but the Maori prophets made prophecies that the church would come to New Zealand.  The Marae that we did was actually the Chief's Marae.  His grave is here and everything.  The people that run it now still adhere to all the Maori customs and things though.  There is a lot of history on it and it is hard to make sense on what is true.  Anyway we had a best time giving service there.  We were cleaning and painting up the place.  My companion and I got stuck washing the nasty grease covered kitchen.  We cleaned the walls and the grease traps, I am sure that it would never pass a health code.  Others painted and weeded, and scrubbed bathrooms.  It was a great success!   

This picture is of the entire Hutt Zone!  See who I a standing with?  Elder Edwards!  I was so happy to be reunited with him!!!!  As you can see, missionaries can't sit still for a minute to get a picture!

This was almost my entire Southland District from Queenstown.  I love these guys!  

My current district and our zone leader, and some random kids that wanted in the picture.  

I guess I should of got some pictures of us doing the actual service.  My bad!  

After the service we went home and changed and went to a baptism of a young guy that the elders have been working with for about 2 months and we have gotten to know him well too!  The baptism was very spiritual and lasted like 2 hours, but it was so great.  

The guy we met from Arizona is so much fun!  We got to do do some service for him as well this week.  I got to drive with the trailer again.  I am loving the practice with the trailer I am getting on my mission.  We took branches and stuff to the dump for him.  Then afterwards, we had a deep and spiritual discussion with him.  

Another investigator is teaching us how to juggle!  I almost have it down!  The rest of the investigators are doing alright -- I was able to lead here in Carterton on splits this week, and we had a great time and we found a very interesting guy that we will follow up with this week.  

I have got to go -- we are going to Masterton today, and I have got to go catch a bus.  I love you guys!

Elder Tuckett

13 months!

Mom, thank you for sending me a copy of your talk.  I LOVED it!  It is good to look back and think about those things. I haven't really thought about all those things and everything that I have learned on my mission, thank you for sharing it with me.  It is hard to realize I have been gone for 13 months.  Wow!  

Some cool masks we found while shopping on p-day!

Last Monday we went shopping and I was able to get a hard drive and it works great!  I will use it to back up all of my photos so I don't lose them anymore.  Tuesday, was just another missionary day!  Wednesday, we had a district meeting then that night we had member splits and I took a member to an investigators house and had a wonderful reading session with them.  Thursday, we did some great finding.  I found a new investigator who is from Arizona!!!  He does not want to be baptized, but we are having fun sharing doctrine with him.  That was exciting!  Friday, we did weekly planning then went to Featherston and asked a guy that we have been giving service to if he wants to hear our message, and he said YES!  Saturday, nothing too exciting.  

Sunday, we got a new Branch Presidency.  However, they can't find anyone to call as counselors.  The new branch president wishes he could call us to help pump the members up an motivate the ward.  Really, there are really only old men available to call.  The branch president is going to pray about it. We also had a fun class of preach my gospel and prophets.    Sunday night, we had a little FHE/fireside and told people how to be better missionaries and helped them with their fear of missionary work.  Hopefully we will be getting  some more referrals now.   

This week we are doing exchanges again.... I will be leading  in Carterton.  This weekend there is a helping hands weekend clean up in Masterton, plus we might have some baptisms that we are going to invite some of our investigators to.  

Valentines day wasn't too exciting for us....  My companion took me to the Buckhorn Grill for lunch which was a wanna be steak house, but they did not know how to cook steaks.  Then for dinner we had one of our investigators took us to an Indian restaurant which was fantastic!  That was about it for valentines day.!  

People have been telling me of the extreme cold weather in the United States. They say that this has been the coldest summer here in New Zealand. It has been raining a lot which has been refreshing.  I would rather have the heat though.

We are already getting ready for General Conference!  It is a great way of finding investigators!  

Yesterday, there was a lot of talk at church about, how much time do we devote to serving The Lord, and how much time do we spend with our families.  (Mainly fathers speaking). Elder Nelson counseled, as much time for The Lord as possible, and as much time for your family as possible.   One of the reasons I am serving a mission is because of all the service I saw Dad give to The Lord.  He was always gone serving on Sundays, and in meetings.  I knew there had to be something of worth and value of the church for him to do this, which made it important to me.  I love dad for always being such a great example to me!  I love you all! 

Love, 

Elder Tuckett

P.S.  We need Ephriams rescue!  Can you send it to me this week?

A Tree, A Kite, and a Baptism

This is a picture of a historic tree.  The story has something to do about how it was stolen from England or something like that.  I thought that it was pretty cool.  

I am sad to report that the missionary work in our area is very slow right now.  The door knocking is not working for finding new investigators.  All the ones that we are working with are not showing much interest.  But, this week on Thursday, it was Waitaingi Day, and there was a big festival in the area, so we got to get out in the community and went to a carnival sort of thing.  My companion got onto the front page of the Facebook page.  They cut me out, I was not as important as him to get my picture in.  Anyways, we saw lots of less actives, as well as actives, and got to meet their friends and families and it was great.  So, we are just putting ourselves more in the community and making friends so people know we are human and not scary vultures that are trying to shove the gospel down their throats.  

Thank you so much for all of the things that you have sent me about the Gilbert Temple.  I feel like I know all about it now.  And thank your for the article about my new mission president.  I actually got to talk to his wife on the phone this week.  They sound so nice and are trying to get their feet planted so they will be ready to run when they get here.  

My iPod is about out of memory -- you never sent me that card back,  I think I am going to just buy a small hard drive that will last the rest of my mission that I can put my photos and videos on.  

I am so happy that you got to see Olivia in the temple. I am so happy for her.  I bet she was glad to have you there for only her second time.  I will have to email her her.  I told her I am going to come hunt her down on her mission in Idaho! 

I got a package from Sister Hamula this week.  She must have been guided by the spirit because she sent me pots and pans.  This flat really had nothing in it.  We only had one dish, and we would hurry and wash it so the next person could use it.  I was so happy to see the pans.  She also sent us some candies.  She is the best!  

I went to Masterton on exchanges this week with my district leader.  Afterwards, he bought this kite to send home, and we decided to try it out really fast. 

One great thing that happened this week was that we had the baptism of a member that was able to be re-baptized. Unfortunately, this doesn't count as a baptism for us as missionaries, but it was great to see the atonement work through their lives.   We had like 10 less actives there.  It was so great.  They all felt the spirit and it was so amazing.  The sisters had an investigator there who started bawling and just made me feel the spirit!  It was the best baptism I have ever attended.  I loved it so much, it was probably the strongest I have ever felt the spirit since I attended the temple for the first time!  I loved it so much.  

Mom, thanks for feeding the missionaries TWICE this week!  You will be blessed!

Love,
Elder Tuckett

Fire station fun and a trip to the beach!

Finally, I am able to upload some photos.  We had so much fun giving service at the fire station last week.... Here are the photos to finally prove it!!!

This week we have been working with a less active and found out that he is moving up to Palmy!  He has totally turned his life around since Elder Usalai'a has been here,  it has been so cool to see the changes in him, just in the short time that I have been here.  I wish so badly that he wasn't moving, but he is going to live with his sister, and I know that he will be able to help her as well and turn her life back around too.  I know that God has good things planned for him.  

We have also been working with an excommunicated member and he has just been cleared to be rebaptized.  A lot of our investigators have been dodging us so now it feels like we have been doing a lot of finding.  We are looking for new ways of finding, door knocking really is not a good way to find investigators.  

This weekend we had a branch activity.  We went to the beach and they went paua diving, a four wheeling, and had a barbecue. One of the investigators that we have been teaching went, so that is the reason we got to go.  They have come to church twice now!  That is so great!  Today is the first day of school and this was the last big branch party of the summer before everyone is back in school.  We also got to see a lot of sea lions.  We tried to pet one but they didn't like it.  There were a lot of paua shells on the ground so a grabbed the coolest one for you!  I will send it in the next package.  There is an entire store of paua shells in Carterton, and they are $20 for a good one and I found on on the beach for free.  Cool!  

And finally, this is a picture of my current district.  

Love,

Elder Tuckett