E-mail dated 2/25/12

Kia Ora,

It was great to hear from all of you this last week. I have been doing great. This last week I had the blessing of going on trade-off with the Zone Leaders for a day. It was a great learning experience. Ever since that trade-off Elder Evans and I have been working our tails off and have seen miracles come from it. On trade-off, I was with Elder Jibas. He is from the Marshall Islands and he is amazing and pretty funny. Our Zone has set a goal for each companionship to have 50 prayers on the street each week. Before the trade-off, I found it hard to do this because sometimes its hard to avoid getting into a routine or a habit when talking to people, but Elder Jibas helped me to be more bold and have prayers with people on the street. Also, because I was on trade-off with the Zone Leaders I was able to go into their area with the car. In fact, I got to drive for some reason. It was a lot of fun though. I love driving in New Zealand, but any ways, because we had the car we got to take a member with us all day! We got to have so many walk in lessons and they were mean as! We set someone for baptism and it has just boosted my spirits in missionary work. This is Heavenly Fathers work and He is always preparing people to receive His gospel. Elder Evans and I were able to learn so much from this trade-off and we have been pushing ourselves so much! If there is any advice I could give to the people back home it would be to just put your trust in the Lord because He knows what is best for us and if he says to go on a mission then He knows that a mission is going to bless our lives eternally. If he says to go to church each week then he knows that if we don't go to church each week then our testimonies will quickly die. An experience I had this last week was that my companion and I were riding home on a Sunday night to go contact some potentials and do our nightly planning and on the way we saw two guys that had just finished playing a game of cricket. WE stopped to talk to them and they were miracles. They were so open! We shared pretty much the entire Restoration and they said that they would have to talk to some trusted people and pray about it. We got their contact information and as we were leaving they asked us if they could say a prayer with us. We were so blown away! If we can teach so clearly and simply for the Spirit to testify of the things that we share then they will have a desire to act on their own. One of the sayings we have here is If you give the person a big enough WHY they will do whatever WHAT or HOW. Its so true. If they understand the Doctrine enough then they will do anything to live the principles. Hope this was able to help someone. Have a great week!

Ofa Atu,
Elder Lee

P.S. The picture is of my companion taking a picture of his name tag in the rain because of the promise that the more rain drops that fall on his name tag the more beautiful his wife will be. Haha I thought it was funny.

E-mail dated 2/19/12

Kia Ora,

This week has been a great week. Elder Evans and I have been working our tails off and have been exactly obedient. We have seen so many blessings come from it. We had eight new investigators this last week and we were able to talk to over 250 people this week. We are having a good time because we are able to joke around really easy and because we already knew each other from the MTC. It makes getting to know him a lot easier. I'm excited for the next 5 weeks with him because I know we can save souls. WE are working on exercising our faith to find someone to teach and baptize in this week. We know the Lord can provide. I also got your package today Mom. Thanks for the lollies. They were delicious. Yes, they WERE. I ate all of it already. Haha. It's what happens when your a missionary. Don't worry though I shared with my companions and some other missionaries in my district. Oh, I've never told you this but the guy who owns this email shop that we do emails at is the man! He is a member but he is less active and he takes care of us when ever we come over here. He feeds us lunch or breakfast and he always gives us the member price. We are well looked after. In this area if we ever don't have any food the members will provide anything. One of the members this week bought us some fans (not electric one's) for the summer that we could carry around with us to lessons. I've always wanted one. I'm loving my mission right now. I only pray that it keeps getting better as well as my teaching skills.Hope everything is still going well back home.

Love you all,

Elder Lee

P.S. In the first picture is Elder Thompson on the left, then Elder Evans, then me, and then my MTC companion Elder Rawlinson. The last picture is just a picture I just quickly snapped as we were driving by. I turned on my camera and snapped the picture in a matter of about 3 seconds. It's pretty good though. That picture is of the Sky Tower which is near my area that I'm in right now. Soon I will have spent a quarter of my mission in West Auckland. I love it here!



E-mail dated 2/12/12

Kia Ora,

So this last Thursday was transfers and I did not move! But my companion did and my new companion was my district leader in the MTC. His name is Elder Evans. He is from Wallsburg, Utah. It's quite funny. I had a feeling we'd be serving together at some point. This week was really good with him though. We have been working really hard this week! We have been blessed to teach this 14 year old girl named L and she is choice as! She wants to learn more because her Dad passed away and she wants to be able to see him again. She is keen as! We are supposed to teach her again tonight. I also got to experience some new food this week. I tried lu and raw fish. They were both pretty good. I was a little hesitant at first just because it didn't look or sound very good but then I tried it and it was actually pretty good. The only thing I don't really like is anything that tastes anything like crab. So this has been my week. Hope everything is going well back home and on your cruise.

Ofa Atu,
Elder Lee

E-mail dated 2/5/12

So this week was a good week. We have been working hard to find more investigators and we have received a lot of referrals from the Tongan Elders. We have been blessed to meet people who are really keen to hear the message of the restored gospel. This week we are just planning to work with them to build up their testimonies. This last week we also made some t-shirts the same way we made them at the Memorial Day campout a few years back. I made all the ones in the pictures. they turned out really well and everyone wants to learn how to make them as well. There are no updates with me besides those. How is Grandpa doing? I haven't heard much about him. I fasted for him yesterday. Hope he is doing well. Just let everyone know that I'm doing well and that I love missionary work and I wish that everyone could see from the perspective of a missionary because then everyone would want to do missionary work. Hope everything is still going well at home.

Love you,
Elder Lee





E-mail dated 1/29/12

Kia Ora,

This last week was really good. We've been working really hard to find new investigators for one of the wards I'm in. It's been hard but we have found a couple that seem to be very promising. We were referred a 17 year old girl named J and her cousin the other day and we went and met them. She is pretty keen to learn more and her brother seemed good as well. Unfortunately we didn't get to meet her cousin but J said that she is interested as well. We're going to go and teach them either today or tomorrow. We also had a miracle this week. Yesterday at church we had a random guy come to church who said he was invited by a friend. We had a lesson with him and it was really interesting because we asked him to say the opening prayer and he said it exactly how we say ours (by addressing Heavenly Father and closing in the name of Jesus Christ) which I thought was really interesting. He also told us that he has been off of drugs and alcohol for 2 1/2 years and had quit coffee for a little bit but went back to it. We committed him to trying again along with quitting smoking. He said that he's been to church multiple times in another stake which is amazing because that means that he could get baptized as soon as he quits smoking and drinking coffee. It all seems too good to be true. He is going to read and pray about the Book of Mormon this week and come to church again next week. Hopefully he does because we can't call him or go to his house apparently. Either this is a sick practical joke by some other missionaries or it's the miracle we've been praying for. Transfers is coming up next week. I don't think that my companion or I will be going but you never know. It would be nice to stay in the are because I'm finally used to it and know my way around a bit now. Other than all of that nothing sticks out in my mind that I should tell you. Hope everything is still going well. Oh and I figured out how to take some 3D pictures on my camera! Oh and if any one wants an All-Blacks Jersey, I'm more than happy to get them one but they're going to have to send me the money because they are expensive as! $160 minimum.


Ofa Atu,
Elder Lee


E-mail dated 1/22/12

Kia Ora,

This week has been a gorgeous week. We had a baptism on Saturday and the confirmation yesterday. T is so cool. She wanted to be baptized so bad. She has been waiting since November to be baptized. The only reason she couldn't get baptized was because of her mom, but her heart has been softened. This next week we have another baptism coming up. The person who is getting baptized this week is named L and he is awesome. His sister just got baptized recently and now he wants to be baptized. Also, this week I got to go on trade-off with one of the Chinese missionaries and we went to two wards which is normal but then after the second ward we had a potluck dinner at the chapel. After that we went into the city where English missionaries aren't normally allowed to go to. It was pretty cool. I never realized how close we were to the Sky Tower. It's was within walking distance when we went to the city. It looks a lot smaller in person but it was cool. Oh and Brittany, this chinese missionary knows you because he is from Brigham City. His name is Elder Matthews. He is a bit of a dork but he's a good missionary. This last week has been a really good week just because of the weather and we've been able to go to a few baptisms and I got to participate in a confirmation. Also, the members in these wards that I cover take care of us. It's hard covering two wards but its fun at the same time. It's hard because one of the wards doesn't really have any investigators and its hard to find people to teach. It's a challenge but we're planning on working to find some investigators for that ward this week. Hope everything is going well back home. Love you all.

Ofa Atu,
Elder Lee