A Typical Sunday ...

I thought I would document a typical Sunday. Maybe, this one wasn't totally typical, but it was close in some ways:

1) Church starts at 9am and we teach a Primary class, so the early morning is busy getting everything ready and then walking over to Church (which is very close by). However, today we drove since we had to go somewhere right after Church.

2) Today was Ward Conference, so the choir was singing. We've really enjoyed our practice sessions after Church for the last several weeks. We had some very nice talks today and we sang several selections during the meeting.  Very nice!

3) We then get to our Primary class. We typically have about 15 girls in our class. We teach the 8-12 year olds. The week before last we had 19 kids there! We are teaching the stories of Jesus from the New Testament. Patsy does the lesson prep work and they always turn on wonderful. Here's a picture of her with the class. The girls love her dearly!

4) We are doing some Share Expo training today, so we had to leave right after class.  We missed Sharing Time, but they had someone there to cover for us.  The training was done at the office and we had several YSA and others involved. It went great as well!

5) We zipped home and had some lunch, then we were off to a beach. Usually every Sunday we pick another beach to go to and just walk there ... looking for shells and other fun items.  We went to Shakespear park this time.

It was a very fun day!!!

Time Out for Women (TOFW)

We had a wonderful opportunity of being able to work on TOFW. It was quite the honor to assist in the organization of the logistics and devotionals associated with their visit here. Of course, the TOFW people handle their event in:
   - Sydney, Australia and
   - Auckland, New Zealand

We organized the 15 devotionals that they held during the week between the events. We had devotionals in: Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Wellington, and Auckland. These included: mission meetings, YSA/Youth devotionals, and attendance at Sabbath day meetings.

On Friday (before the Auckland event), we had a great time going to the temple with Brad Wilcox and David Archuleta and then bringing them to Hobbiton was fun too!

We were able to attend the TOFW event in Auckland and this was fantastic too. We were able to have some time with the presenters back stage, so that was great as well!

The performances, music, and presentations were fantastic!

We received quite a few comments about the events, here's a few:
 - Elder Pearson:  Thanks for all you and Patsy have done to make this event so successful.  We thought yesterday was simply outstanding.
 - Elder Dudfield:  Glad to hear it went well in Auckland too. We had a fabulous time with them. Thank you to yourself and Sister Brereton making this happen!
 - Sheri Dew (a note to Elder Pearson):  I can't thank you enough for allowing us to bring TOFW to Sydney and Auckland again, and also for opening up remarkable opportunities to speak to missionaries and youth/YSA throughout your area. I've had nothing but positive comments from our team about the experiences they had and am so grateful to know that you felt well about things also.
 - President Maxwell:  I'm very grateful that we were able to have them come to our Mission. It was an inspiring and memorable experience.  Thank you for your help with the logistics of the visit.

Groundbreaking and Dedication in Hamilton

Last weekend we went to the groundbreaking of a new Stake Center in Hamilton and to the dedication of Camp Tuhikaramea.

The groundbreaking was exciting and we got also do some shoveling! Here's the article on the newsroom:
  - Groundbreaking in Hamilton

We went down in the van with the Area Presidency and since they had been gone for quite a while, we had an Area Presidency meeting on the way down (1.5 hours away from Auckland).

They had a cultural event along with a luncheon and that was cool!

A picture of the temple from the current stake center

Here's the article about the dedication:
  - Camp Tuhikaramea

You can see the temple in the distance

It was a fun day!!!