Nearly Christmas....

Well it's just about Christmas. This year has gone by so fast. I can not believe it. It impresses on my mind how important our time here on the earth is and how extremely short it is also. I am so greatful to be here serving the Lord, especially during this season of the year. I'm so greatful for the Savior and for the life that He led. I'm forever in debt of what He did for us and will be always trying to serve as He would have me do. I hope that this season we'll all be able to remember the true meaning and the true spirit of CHRISTmas! I love my Savior and this wonderful gospel. Hope that all is going well and that you will be blessed this season. Thanks for everything! I love you all!


Love Elder Davenport

More from his letter:

Also we got to go to the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional last night. It was so good! I was blown away. I learned so much. I really liked how I think it was Pres. Uchtdorf said that His birth set forth the pattern of his life and that the most memorable Christmas's are the most humble then he related that to the most remembered and celebrated birth of the history of the world being the most humble.. It was a big point.. Idk I don't know how to explain it.. It just made so much sense to me..

Things in the area are going really well. We are still finding and still teaching. Although nearly all our investigators are going away for about 2 weeks. These next couple weeks will be interesting with transfers coming up and the holidays too. Hopefully it'll all go good.

I hope that all will be well with everyone! I love you all and I especially love the gospel and the things it's done for me lately!

Temple Trip

Hello to everyone that resides in the states! I've decided that I don't want to come home to hear all the American accents. We had a girl speak in our ward yesterday who believe it or not went to SUU and was in an institute class with Sheila. Crazy.. But she sounded just so American. It kind of really bothers me now hahaha...

It sounded like everyone had a great THANKSGIVING! I had a stir fry for dinner on rice.. It was good! I enjoyed it. But no turkey or pies. So oh well.

We got the opportunity to go to the temple on the 28th! It was the absolute best thing ever! President Porter called the day before . . . and I just said President, I feel sweet. So that was a very wonderful experience for me to go to the temple. It was a very good session. It was absolutely full. But I could feel the spirit so strong and I knew that I was in the best place I could ever be while here on this earth. I felt so calm, comfortable and safe. It was just the highlight of the mission for me. I've never felt that way in the temple before. I thought of Jeff while I was in there and how he said he had an interview. I knew he'd be a veil worker... But it was just wonderful. I'm never going 6 months without going to the temple once I go home. Never..

The rest of the week has been okay. Not much happened. Dani and Vicky are still doing good.

But anyways, Things are going sweet. Elder Bridge and I are doing well. Oh he was wondering if he could get the receipe for the peanut butter balls... hahahaha.. He loves food.... Oh and speaking of food. I noticed the other day that I've lost weight. haha. I can slide my belt around my waist pretty easily haha! It made me happy! But I'll look forward to everything that's coming up. And especially the package. I"m going to try really hard not to get homesick, I think it might be hard. But it'll be okay. haha..

(This part is to add to the missionary newsletter)

I'm so glad that we have all made the choice to serve our Heavenly Father and Savior, Jesus Christ. I remember when we were all still at school and it seemed that a mission was always there and in sight but at the same time still so far off. I can't believe that it's nearly over now. Time flies by. I hope that we can all go hard all the time and never forget how important our purpose is and never waste a minute. If we don't fulfill our purpose then the Gospel can't fulfill it's purpose. I'm so grateful for our Savior who sacrificed himself for sin so that we can all be forgiven of sin. I've never realized the importance of that principle more than I have in the past 10 months. Teach faith in Jesus Christ and the Atonement and we will be successful! Especially during the time we have now to celebrate His birth! I love you all and pray for your safety and success! Just remember.... RAMS right attitude means success! haha Love you all!

Well that's me.. tune in next week for more!
Love ya

Love Elder Davenport

Woo Hoo

Man it's so good to hear from you all! It's seriously the best thing in the world! Those pictures were awesome. I think my favorites were the one of all the kids and the one of Emily holding Easton and Hailey!

I got the letter with the pictures in it. Thanks so much. I really enjoyed it and them. Elder Bridge read the letter to me because we were driving to Opotiki. I couldnt' really read while driving. Well, to be fair, I can, but if we want to live, than it's best that he reads it. It was funny. We both just laughed when you talked about companions. But I really enjoyed the missionary newsletter as well. It's really neat to see and hear how everyone's doing.

Here in NZ the phone calls are so expensive so everyone just texts. A call from here to Henderson is more expensive then calling the states. Weird eh? I don't know why they do it. I had to speak in church again yesterday. I had a feeling on Saturday night and so I kind of prepared myself just in case. On Sunday the counselor asked if I could be his Minute Man in case a speaker didnt' show. So I said sure of course. Then while we were breaking the bread I saw the speaker come in so I thought ok cool I don't have to do it anymore. Turned out that I still spoke haha. I just spoke on faith being a principle of power. It was pretty good. I enjoyed it.

But other than that things have been going really well. A couple of our investigators are getting really close to baptism. Dani is praying for a date. She's Alisha's sister. She has a boyfriend that she lives with. She's only 16. So it's quite sad. Adam doesn't want to live the law of chastity so he's not being too supportive. So she's afraid he'll leave her. But we told her that if she wants to be baptised bad enough and asks Heavenly Father for help than He'll provide the way. And she seemed okay with that. So yea. As for the other investigators, not much happened with them this week. It was kind of a weird week. Like I said we went to Opotiki and that was an adventure. It's a nice little town. Really small and really quiet.

We are going to Tauranga today for some fun! We are most likely going to climb Mt. Manganui. It's got an awesome view from the top! Than we'll stay the night for district meeting tomorrow and then come back like normal from there. Transfers are this Thursday... Ahh... Crazy. It's gone by so fast. I can't believe it. I'm actually quite nervous for this one. I'm not sure why. I never have been this nervous for transfers. But I'm sure that nothing big will happen. Actually I really dont' know. I try not to think about it.

I can't really believe that it's Christmas soon. It doesn't feel like it to me. Partly because I'm brown. And I think my body feels like it should be getting ready for football too. It's so hot here. It's really nice though. And about me being brown, yea, I'm pretty dark. I'll send you a pic of my watch tan. haha.

But hopefully next week I won't have too much new information or much of any changes. Hopefully I'll be emailing from Whakatane still. But we'll see. Hope ya'lls week goes good!

Love Elder Davenport

On Service in Whakatane

Things are going great here in Whakatane! I love this place. It's a small town and the ward is small enough to be a branch. But it's just an awesome ward because everyone is so close with eachother. The town is only about 16,000 people in it. The ward has probably 200. Active members are probably in number of 50-60. On a good day. But those who do come and are active have the strongest testimonies I've ever heard. I heard some amazing testimonies yesterday. Most of the actives are either converts or they are lifetime members who went inactive. Some for nearly 30-40 years. It's amazing. They have an experience with the Lord and then they come back to church and haven't left since.

The work is going well. We are finding people to teach. I've come to find out that we don't teach near as many lessons in a week as I did in Auckland. But the lessons that we do get to teach are choice. People that you can definately tell have been prepared by the Lord. Yesterday we were on our way to a cottage evening and I went to talk to a guy on the street and before I could say anything he just told me that he's been looking for a church. He's been taught a little before but we are going to go this week and teach him again and see if we can help him. We talked to him for nearly an hour. He just kept talking and talking. He's really choice. His name is Rajkumar.

We've gotten a lot of opportunities to help people around here and the skills that I gained from helping and watching you have definatley been put to use out here. There was one guy we did some help for the other day. He had a massive backyard and about half of it was filled with rubbish. He had a junk pile and some wood. We seperated those and then got to work on all the weeds and over-grown grass. It was as tall as the fence. It looked tough. But I'm so glad that I was taught how to be a hard worker or else we would've been there all day. We got it done in about 1 1/2 hours. But in our companionship you can definatley tell who was the one that grew up doing things like I did. Elder Bridge is learning from me how to do stuff. Today I'll teach him how to do basic maintenance on his bike. He doesn't really know to much. It really makes me realize how greatfull I am for you in teaching me things. I decided as I was pulling out weeds and stuff that I'd learn how to do things that I dont know how to do so that when I have my kids I can teach them everything that they'll need. There's not much that I need to learn. But I just know that if I do than they'll be able to help their investigators when they are on there missions. The guy that we helped was nearly in tears when we finished. It was the best service I've done in my life I think. He kept on saying thank you and how can I re-pay you guys. We simply just said the water was nice and the thank you is all we need in return.

Elder Davenport in Whakatane

Well this week was fairly good! It sounds like everything back home is going sweet too! I got mom's letter package the other day at zone conference. Thanks for the letters and the cd! I Love the cd! It's so good! The letters were awesome too. It's cool to hear how everyone is doing in the field! ... I'm not sure that I was telling the truth about gaining 27 pounds. Because like 2 weeks later I weighed myself again and it said 202 which would only be about 8 pounds... So I don't know.
The week was good, we found some new investigators. We taught a really funny lesson the other day. We went to teach the Restoration and she had so many questions that we ended up staying there for almost 2 hours and now she could be baptized. She knows it all haha... But we taught the p.o.s. (plan of salvation) and then she asked about coffee and stuff. We told her about the w.o.w. (word of wisdom) and then she looked at her coffee and moved it across the table and said well if I want to go live with God again then I'm not going to touch this stuff anymore.. It was really neat!
...
I thought of some things for Christmas! haha Not much cuz I know I ask a lot already.
Reeses cups.
Reeses Pieces.
David sunflower seeds original and bbq
highland football shorts if you can muster
my black highland track t-shirt
garments
some hard copy pictures
no gum
those cds I asked for a while back, I knew you said it'd have to wait.. Im just reminding
journal paper, the wide kind.. jenn will know
and a pedigree chart with some more generations on it...
Maori's love whakapapas. (fakapapas) it means geneology
but that's really all i can think of... I don't really need money for anything. It's usually just random things. Like the other day we needed to fill up one of our members gas jugs and his mower.. we didn't have anymore money so I used like 10 dollars to do that. Just random things. But I"m trying really hard to not collect stuff. When I left Panmure I realized I still have a lot of stuff. I've gotten rid of things that I dont need.
You can mostly get anything you need here. Unless you want sunflower seeds or reeses candy hahaha
...
The pics of Hailey were awesome! She looks so good! I know I saw this almost every single e-mail but it's so good to hear when the whanau (family) is doing good! But anyways I gotta skidaddle
Love you all Heaps!

Elder Davenport

Long Time.....

Well I guess I got to give you a little update on what happened in my last week in Panmure. The baptism was sweet. It was small, just family and it was really spirit filled. It was a great joy to see him finally be baptized. But not much else happened.

I got the call Wednesday morning to be shifted down to Tauranga Stake. I'm now in the Southern Kingdom. I'm in the Whakatane and Opotiki wards. They are very small towns on the East coast of the country. Very beautiful. Reminds me heaps of home. My companion is Elder Bridge. He's from Queensland, Brisbane. He's been out only 1 transfer, I'm his follow up trainer and it's going well. I"m in a car again haha. But it's all good, we don't drive much. Only to get to Opotiki and to district meetings and stuff like that.

It was a 3 hour drive to Tauranga and then an aditional 1 1/2 hours to Whakatane. It' was very fun. NOT hahaha. I was sitting in the back and was very cramped. But it was all good because I drove from Tauranga to Whakatane. We got to watch the Sunday sessions of conf and priesthood but not the Saturday sessions. So of course I was pretty gutted about that. But it's all good. I"ll just read it all when we get the Ensign. Not too much has happened since I've been here. I got here on Friday evening because my z.l. had a meeting.

A New Area

Well transfers have come and gone, yes. I was very sad to leave. It felt as if I was leaving home again to go on another mission. It's amazing how close you can get to a ward and everyone involved. I'm truly going to miss that ward forever.

Well I'm in Panmure Stake. It's on the east coast. Where I'm follow-up training Elder Hunt who is in his 2nd transfer. We cover 2 wards. Howick and Waipuna. They are pretty good wards. Oh yea. I'm driving. It was nuts the first day or two but now I'm pretty used to it. I have been used to the way it all goes for awhile but just being the driver is a really new and neat experience.

I've learned alot about patience and it's something I've been working on as well. It's going to be my transfer theme.

The wards are really good. A lot of Maori people live here. But the Howick ward is rich as. But it's nice because the people aren't snooty or anything like that. We tracted a really rich street the other day. Shelley Beach. It was way nice and had an awesome view. But in general things are going very well.

We have a couple of people who we are going to be trying to set for baptism this week. There is going to be a couple of marriages this transfer! I feel that might be trend for me throughout the mission. Getting people married and then baptised! But that's sweet with me. We taught a lesson to our ward mission leader and ward missionaries on Sunday in the Howick ward. It was on the Plan of Salvation. I, of course, used Ian to explain my feelings on the Atonement. Man, I still can't talk about it with people without going crazy with tears. But that's good.