October 24th - the teaching continues...

Three cute little Samoan kids just having fun.

Taking a break.

This week was pretty good!

Tuesday we had an island conference with one of the Area Seventies who is in the Pacific Presidency,  Elder Nielson.  It was a really good conference.  I wish we could do more things like that because it gives a great spiritual boost for the week.  I also got to see all the other missionaries on the island which is always fun.

Our investigators are good. We have about 8 but only one is progressing. We've finished lessons with him and he comes to church every Sunday but he says he wants to understand more before he gets baptized.  We're trying to help him read the Book of Mormon every day and let him know that we're not supposed to know everything...especially, before getting baptized.

We have a family that we're teaching and they love the church and accept everything we teach them. They really want to get baptized but their other family is strong in another religion so they are kind of afraid to make the change. This is one of the biggest problems we face here and one of the hardest to solve because Samoans are such a respectful people.  Going against the leaders of the family is considered one of the worst things people can do which I completely understand.  Family is so important in our church as well.  That makes it even more amazing when those people commit to the gospel.   There are a lot of Halloween activities happening at the church this week so we're gonna try to get our investigators to make it out to those.

The Tongan wards are in the stake we're in so Friday I had to do a baptismal interview for the elders there.  Usually they put Tongans there but they changed it so now there is a palagi elder and a Samoan so they've been learning Tongan. I had to do the interview for this cute little girl who only knew Tongan.  It felt like I was starting my mission over and it was very humbling...ha ha.

That's bout it for the week. if you have questions about stuff ask!

57 weeks out on October 19th

time is short.

This week was alright. We did have our baptism! Never thought I would baptize someone from the Philippines while serving in Samoa, but it happened! She is a really cool girl and she made good Filipino food afterwards. 

Can you maybe try to send some pumpkin bread???  I could really go for some right now.  (Mom thinks that was a really cute request, but definitely won't work when packages seem to take about 2 months to get there! )  Other random tidbits for the week...Jack should take Psychology with Gunderson. It's the best class. Oh and one of our fafagas drove us home and they have the new Tacoma. It's so flippin sick.  The big box family meal from McDonalds in the picture from last week that members bring to us sometimes has 4 drinks, 2 Big Macs, 2 McChickens, 1-10 piece chicken nuggets and four fries...& that's for 2 missionaries!!!  (Mom says YIKES!!!)

October 10th - lots of people to teach!

These kids are hilarious

We got two of these huge boxes for fafaga this week.

I think in the last two weeks we've had McDonalds 8 times.........

This week was really good. We met some new people that are really interested in the church.

L is a mom and her daughter F is 19 years old.  F did some lessons with missionaries before and really liked it. We visited them last week and talked with L and she seemed totally not interested and not wanting to talk to us. We then visited them this week and she was totally different. She apparently went to a ward with someone and really loved it. And now she really likes the church. We did two lessons with both of them last week and committed them to get baptized this month. It wasn't a firm yes so were gonna try to confirm it this week! 

The next person is this guy named D.  He is in his mid 20s. We visited this house with a lot of people and we just shared a quick message about the restoration and he really liked it!  He said he is just like Joseph Smith. He's been attending different churches his whole life and is still looking for the right one.  The only problem is that he leaves for Australia next week to work on a farm for 9 months.  (A lot of people do that here)  So we're gonna try to get his information and send it to whatever mission he's moving to. We were so bummed when he told us...

Then we met this lady who was really nice. She said she doesn't need to go to church, she can just pray and read the Bible and that's good enough. I felt impressed to share Helaman 5:12, one of my favorite scriptures.  We just talked about how we can help her strengthen her foundation. She said that scripture was perfect for her and her situation right now.  It was just cool to see the Holy Ghost work so simply but so powerfully.

This week we have a baptism for the Filipino woman we've been teaching.  

Finally a baptism!

It's already October - General Conference

 The old district. Transfers are this week but everything is staying the

same for us here except now I'm a district leader again.

The crew from Fagaloa (disclaimer - Elder Tiatia is totally flexing

so don't get your hopes up too much you young sisters out there)

We got to watch conference but it came with a price... We watched it live. Conference in Utah starts at 10am. Here we are 5 hours behind. If you do the math right you figured out that, yes, we had to be at the chapel at 5am to watch conference. We got up at 3:30, got ready, and then had to walk to the chapel. Both Saturday and Sunday. Conference was awesome  I know if we read and study each and every talk, we can find something in every talk that can help us with our daily lives. Something that stood out to me was how much they talked about the Plan of Salvation. Sometimes, actually a lot of the time, I feel we take this plan for granted. Just imagine if we didn't have the answers we do because of the Plan of Salvation.  Life would be a lot different.

Tala'i Tu'itu'i (going door to door) happened a lot this week. I seriously feel like I'm serving stateside when we do this. On Wednesday we were knocking doors and a lady comes out and tells us straight up she's not interested. When she closed the door, I just stood there for a few seconds trying to register what just happened. So weird. This one lady did let us in and we shared a quick message about the restoration. She was Fijian and said we can come back so we'll see what happens there.

I did get word that my first area (Faleasi'u) hit the goal of 20 baptisms they set at the beginning of the year and did it with three months to spare.  I really miss all the people there and I was really glad to hear that things are still moving forward. The missionaries there right now are my grandson and great-grandson. (meaning he trained them)

Our investigators are progressing but slowly. The difference in this area is that the ward isn't as supportive as I'm used to and they don't help in referring investigators that much. Missionary work is so much easier and faster when we all work together. So if for any reason you can help the missionaries, in the words of President Hannemann, DO IT! Not only will we bring more souls unto Christ, but we will be blessed beyond belief as we do so.

LOVE you all!