House Hunting Week 2

Elder Saunders has had a very busy few weeks closing down a lot more flats, about 6 I think. Thankfully most of the time he has had help from the strong missionary Elders to move the furniture out. He has stored some of the items but some was rubbish and had to be dumped. Other things he gave away to the charity shop or took them to Camp Tuhikaramea.

This week I have just tried to catch up with all the baptism records and updating the missionary records after the transfer week.

We left for Whakatane early Friday morning that was after a quick stop at the office to check the mail. I don’t like going to any areas without checking to see if there is any letters or parcels for the missionaries. There wasn’t much there but I took what there was. We arrived in plenty of time for our 12 o’clock appointment to see a flat. To be honest Elder Saunders and I looked at the outside of the flat last week and he decided it was not suitable. But after having looked around the inside and seeing that everything was on the one floor he decided to give it a big maybe and would let them know on the Monday. After a weekend of pondering on the flat he decided that he would go for it. So we know have a flat in Whakatane for our missionary couple arriving in 3 weeks.

We stayed the weekend in Gisborne at the Belliston’s home. For the first few days we did not see much of them as they were busy of course with missionary work and we were busy flat hunting. There isn’t much in Gisborne at this time sadly. Mainly because we are fussy, we want the sisters to be in a safe location and for it not to be too small. We looked at two flats that were so small and one of them would have had to have the fridge in the living area which already could barely fit table and chairs in the room. I think it must have been built for Hobbits!!!

On Sunday we went to Te Hapara Ward and stayed for all 3 hours. This was a first for us as we normally go to Mangapapa Ward or start travelling back to Hamilton after Sacrament. We had wonderful meetings and felt spiritually feed. We attended the Gospel Principles class and the topic was The Word of Wisdom. The missionaries gave the lesson and as we were reading from the manual each of us were sharing experiences and our testimonies on how living a healthy lifestyle blesses our lives. We also shared how not living quite such a healthy lifestyle pulls us down. My Relief Society lesson was also good especially as we divided into three groups and shared our experiences on how to keep the Sabbath day holy. Something Elder Saunders and I have always tried to do.
We spent the afternoon relaxing and reading. The most relaxing day we have had in months. We spent the evening chatting with Elder and Sister Beliston.