Dear Whanau,
We hit our year mark on the 18th! 6 more months to go!!

Valda has been coming to church on a regular basis. I am beginning to see that we were sent to attend the Auckland ward just for her. I’m pretty sure we were assigned to this ward because the executive secretary knew about Ashton and Elder Magalogo was in this ward who served with Ashton in Fiji. It was really nice to get to know him and his cute family. They moved away though a few months after we got here and then we were assigned to visit Valda. She saw our name tags and we were instant friends. She wrote this in her Christmas card to us, “Thank you for helping me rediscover the things that are REALLY important in our lives.” We are taking her to lunch this Tuesday for her Christmas present. She’s a fun lady with a good sense of humor. She is teaching us some Maori.

We got to go to the Auckland mission Christmas party this past week. It was a real treat to be surrounded by young missionaries again. We got some pictures with missionaries who have served in our ward and who Carter has worked with managing their medical care.

The senior sisters have an activity every Friday and this past Friday we learned how to post a memory on Family Search. I wrote a Christmas memory on my Grandma Nora’s page. We also had a cookie exchange. There’s not very many of us now so we are getting close with the few that are left.

Today was our Christmas program in Sacrament meeting. We sang in the choir and Carter & I were asked to sing the song Starbright. Luckily we had just sung that with a group for our Monday night Christmas activity, so we didn’t need much practice. Those Tongan & Samoan men in the choir sound amazing. They can really sing!

We went to a devotional tonight for Spanish speakers. They are going to start a Spanish branch in our stake. We met a sister who was a missionary in the MTC in Peru when we were there. Super small world. She was the only missionary with a New Zealand accent so she was easy to remember.

Arohanui, (Much Love)

Faye

Aroha= love
Nui= Big
Whanau= Family (pronounced Fawnoo, with the accent on the first syllable)