Dear Family! June 12, 2011

Kia Ora to all the Fano! haha Fano means Family. I want to learn some more Maori words since I’m here in New Zealand. Thank you all for your e mails and prayers that you say in my behalf....I really do love them all. I was very excited and grateful to hear Ryan is loving Heritage Tours and having a good time....that brings back so many memories of me going on that. What a wonderful experience. I would love to be in the Sacred Grove today...I pray he will have a very spiritual experience. I can still remember when we went we took of our shoes and walked around because it was holy and sacred ground. I remember when I was in the Sacred Grove I went off by myself and pondered the scriptures. I read the Joseph Smith history of the First Vision experience, I sat and pondered what I must have looked like. And most importantly I prayed. I prayed a lot and I asked our Heavenly Father if the Book of Mormon was true and if Joseph Smith really saw what he said. I can remember I felt the Holy Spirit testify to me that it was indeed true. I knew that the restoration had taken place and I felt the over whelming peaceful, warm, feeling of the spirit enter into my body witnessing unto me that it was true. I loved that place and its beauty...wow it’s a little bit of heaven on Earth. I pray and hope that Ryan will feel the spirit and it will be an experience that will change his life.

I was also excited to hear that Kaylee and Jami went to the Youth Conference thing. I’m sure that was a wonderful great experience. I loved all those kind of things...oh I was wondering...is Jami or Kaylee ever going to go to EFY like I did? I loved that experience. I bet it was really weird to have none of us kids there at the house.

Well my week was really great. I’m so excited too because we are going to the Temple tomorrow!! We will be driving down to Auckland tonight and then we'll stay the night. We will be leaving tomorrow morning at 7 to the temple in Hamilton. I can’t wait....I love the temple. We will be having a zone conference and a big program to kind of like a say good bye to President Porter and his wife. I will really miss them. We are all going to go to this ice cream place too which will be really exciting. This week we have had a lot of success. We've talked to a ton of people and trying to do all we can to spread the gospel. We were able to watch the Joseph Smith movie with one of our investigators that is getting baptized. Right now we have 3 that are set with a baptism date for the 25th of June. Hone, Destiney, and Ani they are all so great. On Thursday we went down to Auckland for leadership training. Wow I learned a lot and felt the spirit. They had some really good DVD presentations which brought the spirit in so strong. President Porter is such a powerful speaker. He is so inspiring...I don’t know what I’m going to do without him haha. He got a new assignment from the church. He is going to help the Leadership of the church leaders improve. Help them become better leaders. I know one of the reasons why I came to this mission was because of him. Saturday we went on a trade off. I went to the zone leader’s area and was with Elder Haight. We had a lot of great miracles, and we were lead by the spirit the whole day. We talked to about 70 people on the street and door knocking that day!! Yesterday at church we had a wonderful experience happen. We were spending the whole morning trying to get people to church. When we got there Hone (our baptism set) wasn’t there. And he needed to be at that sacrament to qualify for his baptism date. He wasn’t there so we prayed really hard. We had no one to take us all the way to his house and get him. A miracle happened a member came out and said elders do you need something. We drove there, talked to him, said a prayer and he got dressed and we drove back just in time and he was in sacrament meeting. So he qualifies...it was just a miracle.

Mom I’m so sorry to hear about Arizona....that’s horrible and makes me sad. I’m glad Susan is okay though. Well I’m sorry but I got to go now....I love you all.

Love Elder Kitchen