Of hens and faith . . . .

Sister Howes tells the new missionaries that each of them is a miracle.  That each came to this place in their lives traveling their own unique journey and each journey is a miracle.  Her words are not just fluff - they are true.  It is a huge commitment to serve a mission and each missionary finds his or her way to the mission field along their own path.  There is always faith involved, and sacrifice, and conversion.  We love to hear the stories of the missionaries.  They build our own faith. 

Sister Zhu (pronounced like a cross between zoo and chew)

myself and Sister Zhu

Sister Zhu is our lone senior missionary this intake.  She will be serving in Samoa.  Sister Zhu is a convert who met the missionaries and joined the church while living in Australia but she is originally from China.  Her family are all communists and her father was high up in the communist government and a devout party member.  She told us he held high position in the government and then fell into disfavor and had some hard times being treated poorly by those he had served with.  Still he was devout to what he believed.  She said she believes very differently than her father but thinks she got his personality.  He taught her that when you choose your way then you are faithful to that.  She feels that way about the church.  She is faithful no matter who tries to discourage her allegiance to the Restored Church or how difficult living the life of a member becomes.   We don't know anything about her husband, who we suppose is dead, but she has one son and one son only due to the one child rule of China. 

She left China when it opened up and let people out  (I can't remember when that was but she has been a member of the church for 15 years so it would have been before then).  When she met the missionaries she knew nothing of God, remember she was raised a communist.  The missionaries took her to the church and when she walked inside she felt something she had never felt before.  She can't speak of it even now - 15 years from that time without the tears forming in her eyes.  She is bright and capable.  She owns her own business which her son is running while she is gone.   She worries about her mother who lives in China still, but whom she has visited many times the last two years because of health concerns.  Her mother told her to go on this mission and not worry about her, 'Your God will watch over me' her mother told her.  

She has prepared for two years to serve and many miracles happened during that time to allow her to come on this mission.  She is excited to go to Samoa, a place she has never been.  She loves an Elder Smedley who was the missionary who taught her the gospel.  When she told him about her mission call he was very excited.  His great grandparents had served a mission in Samoa.  When Sister Zhu bore her testimony in Sacrament meeting yesterday, she told a story from that mission that Elder Smedley had sent her.  He shared it to let her know that the Lord would be aware of her on her mission and would provide what she needed.  She shared the story with me and I am sharing it with you.  I will also share it with Rangi Parker for her historic collection.  Following is the email from Sister Zhu.

Below is the story Elder Smedley sent me when he knew I would be full time missionary in Samoa:

Clarence Waite Smedley and Cinda Mae Thurgood were married in the early 1900's and called as newlyweds to be a missionary couple in the Samoan Islands of the Pacific.  They landed in Pago Pago Harbor on the island of Tutuila, American Samoa.  They were school teachers there during their mission.  On their first Christmas there, Cinda Mae was asked to make cookies for the Christmas celebration for the children.  But the recipe she knew required eggs, which were rare and scarce on the island.  She was praying/pondering what to do when a hen she'd never seen before walked through the yard, into the hut, and laid an egg.  Just as quickly, it left.  She was so excited, because even one egg would help the cookies taste better.  To her amazement, the hen came back each day for 2 weeks and laid an egg for her.  By the time the party came along, she had exactly the number of eggs she needed to be able to cook the cookies for all of the children.  Once those eggs were laid, the chicken was never seen again throughout the village.  It was a miracle of faith that let them know Heavenly Father was watching over all aspects of their lives. 

I just love this story about the hen and thought the grandchildren would love it too.  Isn't it interesting that it came right into the hut and didn't just lay the egg in the yard?  Animals seem to be obedient to the Lord - exactly obedient - 14 eggs worth.  I wonder if it was a little red hen.  Sweet story!

Elder Daunasiga

Presidents Thatcher and Briggs and Elder Daunasiga

We have had a wonderful miracle at the MTC.  Elder Daunasiga is from Fiji.  President Howes received word that he would not be coming on his mission because his visa had not come but then the night before intake his visa suddenly arrived and he was on the plane.  He slept well that first night at the MTC but the next day told Sister Howes that his back was hurting him.  I'll let Sister Howes tell the story.  She wrote it up in an email she sends to their former missionaries.

"God is in the details of our lives. I have had and witnessed too many examples of that to ever have any doubts. Just this week we witnessed a miracle in the life of one of our missionaries. He arrived on Wednesday night at the MTC. On Thursday morning he complained that he had a sore area in his back. I have no medical training. I asked the question that I always ask first: how much water have you been drinking? He admitted that he had drink very little over the previous 48 hours. So I gave him a couple of panadol and told him to drink lots.

I was thinking at worst he may have had a kidney stone or a urinary tract infection. Thursday night he didn't want to eat and said he was feeling sick but the pain was gone. He had a blessing that night and went to bed.

Friday morning he said he still felt sick but had no pain. I decided to have him see a doctor, which really isn't my normal course of action! I think I was thinking that it was Friday and I didn't want to deal with a kidney stone over the weekend!

Anyway he went to the doctor. They could find nothing except a slightly raised temperature and decided to send him to the hospital for blood tests. We really didn't want to do that but I figure if I send someone to the doctor I should be prepared to follow their counsel! So off to the hospital by which time he was feeling fine and hungry and wanted to go home!

They took some blood tests so we were just waiting for the results before having him come home. But the doctor didn't come back so the nurse wouldn't let him go.

Saturday morning we didn't hear from the hospital so finally we called. We were pretty blown away: the blood tests showed that he has staphylococcal bacteria throughout his body. Apparently he had cut his foot some time ago which got infected, eventually healed but the bacteria was still inside him.

We asked the elder what he would have done if he'd been at home and he said he probably would have just gone to bed to sleep it off until he felt better. The doctor said if he had done that he would have died.

The other part of this miracle reinforces my knowledge that Heavenly Father is in the details of all of our lives. That elder was not meant to come for another 6 weeks. His visa had not come and so he was cancelled from this intake. Then suddenly, at 4pm Monday his visa was granted so the travel people rang and asked if we were still prepared to have him come at such late notice ( normally everything is finalised the previous Friday morning). We said yes. How grateful I am that we did. [He still is having periods of pain in his back - the doctor says that has nothing to do with anything and is probably a result of sleeping on a different bed! Heavenly Father knows how I think, he knows that without the back pain I would not have thought of sending him to the doctor!]

Please never doubt that heavenly father knows who you and where you are.

#Light the World

Hopefully you are all enjoying participating in #Light the World.  The missionaries are actively participating.  Two of the sister missionaries in our District went to a park and made this chalk drawing.  There was a big activity happening there and they had many comments and we hope many will log on to lds.org and view the videos and enjoy lighting the world themselves.  As you can see the weather is beautiful here and so we can do things that you can't do at home.  You could light snowmen maybe while we make chalk pictures.  

#Light The World 

Tracting Highlights

Elder Thatcher has a little notebook where he records the addresses on the street where we go tracting.  He will write a little on the line such as 'not interested', or 'not home', or 'call back later'. 

He is serious about tracting and we have met some wonderful people in this way. 

Elder Thatcher recording in his tracting book

We had such a nice meeting with the Pentecostal Minister we met last week. We thought they were Tongan because of all the Tongan flags flying from their house the day of the big Rugby game.  We were wrong - they are Samoan.  They welcomed us warmly and listened to our message.  We don't think they have any interest in the church but we gave them a Samoan Book of Mormon and left friends.  

Robert the Pentecostal Minister we met tracting and Ioana his wife

We were attracted to this house because of the beautiful hollyhocks in the yard.  A Tongan man answered the door and immediately told us he wasn't interested.  We mentioned the beautiful hollyhocks, telling him they were the first we had seen in New Zealand.  I told him that as a child I loved to make hollyhock dolls.  He told us how he had planted them from seeds.  He visited with us for quite a while and we felt that we left him with a good taste in his mouth about Mormons.

hollyhocks in bloom and it's December

We will meet tomorrow with Enekosi and Leitu.  Leitu has not been well.  We love these two so much and are praying for her return to health.  

We also had another wonderful lesson tonight with the Tito and Alofa.  Alofa asked us to tell them who Joseph Smith was.  It was the perfect lead in for the Restoration.  We invited them to read the Book of Mormon and pray like Joseph prayed.  We will pray ourselves for this wonderful family. 

our neighbors - newly shorn sheep - we are searching for the lost ones

Sister Briggs donated a small blue tree for our Christmas decor.  It will be the sum total of what we do this year as far as decorations go.   I think it holds symbolism.  Every time I see the tree the song runs through my mind, I'll have a blue Christmas without you.  I'll be so blue thinking about you.'  Not sure if those lyrics are correct but you get the idea.

the sum total of our Christmas decor

It's hard to wrap our minds around the fact that Christmas is close while our world looks like this.  We took this picture on a walk this week only about 1/2 mile from our flat.  It was hot today around 90 degrees.

A beautiful stroll through Murphy's Bush

Family Missionary Memory

We received a text from Kent this week sharing a story about his mission that he had told in Sacrament Meeting.  We hadn't heard this story before and thought that most in the family would not be aware of it either.  It was also historically instructive.  I asked Kent if we could put it on the blog and he told me no but I persisted and finally got permission.  I have had the thought that it would be fun to include some stories from the other missions people in the family have served.  I hope this will happen.  Here is our first family missionary story from Kent who served in Poland.

Elder Thatcher in Gdansk

Last Sunday brother Flammer in the bishopric asked me to prepare to take part in a special hymn sacrament meeting that would take place today. Here is what I shared.

“When I received my mission call to Poland my Grandma Winnie was very excited. She told me about a trip that she and Grandpa Vere took to Poland when it was still under communism behind the iron curtain. They had Irving Wasserman, a Polish Jew who taught music up at Utah State with them. She told me about one of the highlights of the trip which was visiting the beautiful city of Gdansk up on the Baltic Sea. During my mission I hoped that I would get to serve there.

My hopes came true when I got to serve in Gdańsk for the final ten months of my mission. Gdańsk became a very special place for me for many reasons. One of the reasons was that while serving there during March of 2004 Grandma Winnie died.

Another reason was that I got to learn more about the history of the city while serving there. Poland is known as the bloody doormat of Europe. Throughout the centuries It has been invaded and taken over by foreigners innumerable times. World War Two was no exception. Hitler had bombs dropped on almost every large city in the country. His largest concentration camp was in Poland in the city of Auschwitz. But there was one city that Hitler made very clear to his army that was not to be bombed. That was the city of Gdańsk. Gdańsk was to be a resort/vacation destination for the leaders of the third Reich, and for other Germans. After Germany took over the country they renamed Gdańsk the German name Danzig. Several decades after Hitler’s fall a great patriot was raised up in Gdańsk named Lech Walensa. He fought communism and suffered greatly for it. He started the Solidarity movement which later brought the fall of communism starting in Gdansk and then quickly spread throughout all of Eastern Europe.

The branch in Gdansk was small and struggling. On a good Sunday we would have 10 to 15 members, on a normal Sunday we would have around 5 members, and many times the 4 missionaries serving in the branch outnumbered the members in attendance. One Sunday early in my service in Gdansk we sang the hymn, Let us all press on. The second verse reads, “We will not retreat though our numbers may be few when compared with the opposite host in view, but and unseen power will aid me and you in the glorious cause of truth.”

As I sang those words I was filled with an in satiable desire to fight for the Poles in that branch and to do all that I could to build the church in Gdansk. I testify that as we served in that branch that we were aided by un-seen powers. Some of my most treasured memories are in that small branch up by the Baltic Sea in the city of Gdansk with the Polish people that I love. In the years since my mission, when I have been in situations where I felt out numbered, I have remembered the words of that hymn and my time in Gdansk.

We then sang the hymn as a congregation.

Elder Thatcher in the beautiful city of Gdansk
'We will not retreat though our numbers may be few'

Hope all is well with all of you.  We are excited that Maddie is supposed to be out of the hospital on Wednesday and we are thankful for that.   We think about Laura and the upcoming birth of baby girl Hadfield and hope all goes well.  We know we are missing birthdays like Emily's (Jeff and Amy's) and Claires.  There are quite a few birthdays in December.  We will try to remember them all.  We love all of you and are so grateful for your good lives.  We are so blessed to have the gospel in our lives.  We know this and are trying to share it with others inviting them to experience what we have always found so delicious.

Much love,
Mom and Dad,
Grandma and Grandpa
Elder and Sister Thatcher