January 8, 2017 - Satapuala

o le au boiz + Sara

Family Home Evening = FHE

Things are good in Satapuala. We have 4 baptismal dates for the 28th and could be adding a couple this week. This area is kind of a gold mine right now because the past missionaries that served in this area covered two other big wards and weren't able to do much work here.

The ward here is really cool. I think they're especially happy to have missionaries assigned just in their ward. We've been able to faamasani with about all the ward members. 

One thing that I love about kids here in Samoa is that they never know their own birthday but if you ask them who their Savior is, they know it's Jesus.  If you ask them who struck the rock they know it's Moses.  If you ask them who ate the apple, they'll say Adam and Eve.  I love it!

We did a family home evening with a great family. It was really fun and most of them were at church yesterday. That's one thing that we're trying to do here; every Monday night, have a family home evening/FHE with a family in the ward and have them invite a non-member to join us if they want.

The work is super good and we have a young man we go on splits with almost every day.  He's preparing to go on a mission also and he's been super helpful. 

Sorry not so much to share today but will try to get some good stuff for next week.

Alofa atu!

o le au boiz + Sara

Family Home Evening fafaga

Question and answer session from dad:

I’m anxious to hear about your new place.  I’ll ask my questions in simple form so you can answer them quickly:

1.       Is the city in the boonies, or in a populated area?

I cover the airport.  It's pretty populated and we cover a lot of jungle too.

2.       What is the ward like?

The ward is good. We have a kid that we go on splits with a lot.  His family is really cool too.

3.       Are you getting to speak a lot of Samoan?

Yes, more than usual.

4.       How is P90X3 going?

I haven't really been able to do it because of our living situation but we're moving tomorrow to the other house so I should be able to start this week.

Mom's questions of the week:

What is the Samoan translation for "Latter Day Saints"?  We had discussed this on Christmas with Justin and Jeff and I thought it was really cool, so we wanted him to clarify it again.  This was his response:

"o le ekalesia a iesu keriso o le au pa'ia o aso e gata ai"

The "au pa'ia" part is saints, but "au" is team and "pa'ia" is holy, so I like to say it is the Church of Jesus Christ of the holy team of latter days.

faamasani = get familiar with