TUESDAY - February 21, Surprise...emailing one day early this week!

 Beautiful Savai'i

Emailing early this week because we have to go to Apia later today and the boat leaves at 4pm.

This week was good.

Thursday was pretty funny. Our fafaga was an older couple, probably late 60s. We sat down and the wife is half blind, and she says, "That's a good looking white guy in front of me." My companion and I couldn't stop laughing.

Friday we did two baptismal interviews for missionaries. We got home around 8pm. The culture here in Savai'i is very strong and each night they have 30 minutes where you're supposed to sing a hymn and say a family prayer.  No one is allowed to be out on the streets. A bunch of elderly men in the village come out on the street and patrol.  Cars are not allowed to pull in or out of anywhere and they have to keep going straight or stop and pull off to the side and then wait for it to be over.  So we pulled into the chapel without realizing it was the "sa" (the prayer time). We got in trouble, but thankfully he just let us off with a warning.

Another example of the culture in Savai'i happens on Sundays. In one village, if you aren't at church you get fined $10. Even if you're on the chapel grounds but not inside the chapel, you get fined. Pretty different, but I'm sure that would help us at home.

Tomorrow we have a meeting with all the zone leaders in the mission in Apia so that should be interesting...

My laundry

An unexpected transfer and now a zone leader in Savaii...Tuesday, February 14th

"Just thinking about how cool Samoa is..."

From mom:  Yeah!!!  We finally heard from Justin again.  He was transferred to Savai'i and now has his "p-day" (personal day) on Wednesday, which is Tuesday for us.  It was great to get so many photos and read about how happy he is in his new area.

Since this last week has been so crazy, I'm just gonna start from last  Wednesday....

So we got the transfer calls last Sunday and I was going to stay in my area and train a new missionary. Wednesday we had the training meeting and things were going really well. Then, president called me and another Samoan elder who I'm familiar with and he sat us down. The first thing he did was invite Elder Sa'u (the elder next to me in the photo of the two of us) to say a prayer. When that happens, hearts usually start pounding...After the prayer,  president says, "We're gonna make a change. We need zone leaders in Savai'i. Savai'i West Zone. Faiaai is your area."  We were so excited!   Elder Sa'u (now my companion) is from my first area which I served in for 8 months. Then later, we were together again in Tutuila for 4 months. 

After that happened, we rushed to my house and cleaned up my clothes and got things ready to pack up and leave.  We had to hurry to get to the last boat that goes to Savaii. Luckily, it's only an hour boat ride.

"How we do transfers in Samoa"

We got there and found out that the zone leaders who were there before us and were getting transferred crashed the car pretty badly.  Our area is super far away from the wharf so we took the other zone leaders' car and did transfers for two zones.  It was a very long day.

The next day we had to get up at three in the morning to take elders to the boat that leaves at 6 in the morning.  That's just one example of how far away from everything we are.  Then we had to wait for the elders coming to Savai'i from Upolu.  The boat was supposed to get to the wharf around 1p but didn't arrive until 4.  So we were stuck at the wharf all day which was pretty boring.  Then we finally dropped the missionaries off, got home, and slept.

Friday we once again had to get up at three in the morning to take two elders to the wharf who were finishing up their missions.  Then we had to go do baptismal interviews for the zone.  We ended up setting up a marriage to take place the next day on top of the baptism.

Saturday we did more interviews, got the wedding done, and attended the baptism all of which were really great.  A very productive day!

Sunday was church and I got the opportunity to introduce myself to the ward.  We are currently covering 5 wards which is over half the stake.  So I'll be introducing myself a lot more this upcoming month...
                                                                                                                                                          

Monday, before we were able to go do some lessons, we had to do another transfer that ended up taking us around all of Savaii.  It was super sweet and incredibly beautiful, but pretty long and took us about 4 hours.  Then we finally had the opportunity to get out and do some visits.

 "Our Zone"

 "Me and the Prez"

Tuesday we had a zone meeting with president which was awesome. We talked about the Book of Mormon and how all those we teach have to be reading it.

Wednesday, today, P-day, we had to once again get up at three to take reports and baptismal papers to missionaries going to Upolu.  Then we did some shopping. 

So as you can see...life is super busy but I LOVE IT!!!

 Me and Elder Sa'u

January 29th...FINALLY, we hear from Elder Sterner!

Note from mom...we didn't hear from Justin the last two Sundays, so we were anxious to hear from him today.  Since he is back out to the more remote areas of the island in Western Samoa, the internet connection is often hard to find.  We were so grateful to get his email and read that he has been really busy, and is SO happy.  He loves Satapuala!  And mom is happy because we got three weeks worth of photos! :)

 Lots of fun with the kids

 Just a little hot & sweaty...ha ha

Hi everyone! The past three weeks have been really good!  I have a new companion, we have a new house, we just had two baptisms and we have three more this Saturday!

The work is really good.  Our area is pretty big so we've been busy getting the people we are teaching prepared for their baptismal dates and not much time for tracting.  This week we hope to find a lot of new people to teach.

We're baptizing a couple this weekend and honestly, the first time I met them I never thought they would be interested in our church or getting baptized.  The gospel changes people and the change that takes place is amazing.  The Church is the best!!

I think I've lost weight too which is good...

 sugar cane

 Baptism

 our new house...BEFORE

our new house...AFTER! :)

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

Happy New Year 2017!

Upolu

Talofa mai Satapuala! This week has been crazy but also really good. 

Even though I got transferred, leaving Tafuna wasn't as hard as usual.  I guess I'm getting used to it and I'm really excited to head back to Upolu.  It was hard to say goodbye to our baptism from last week.  She is so cool.  I gave her my facebook so when I get back, we'll stay in touch.

We flew to Upolu Wednesday and crossed the date line.  I am no longer in American Samoa and it was only a 25 minute flight. Then I stayed with elders in an area for the night and then the next morning we went to the office to get my trainee. We had training meetings with the president and APs. Then we headed to our areas. As we were driving, the APs called and made a fa'afuase'i change. I'm no longer training (after a lot of training) but I am going to be companions with a native from Savai'i. 

When we got to the area, we went and met with the ward members. The ward is awesome. There are a lot of youth we've been able to do splits with who are preparing for missions.

The area we're in currently doesn't have a house that we can live in because before we got here, the other missionaries covered other wards with missionary houses.  Since we've only been assigned this ward, we are currently working on finding a house.  Right now we are living with a family that is outside our area.  There is a small house at the back of the chapel that only has four poles holding it up, so we are really pushing to see if they can get it walled so that we could live there.  It's so much better when we are able to live close to the chapel. 

It's going to be pretty cool to be in this area because there haven't been missionaries here for a while.

We got the bishopric action list yesterday and there are 23 people who aren't baptized in the church computer plus a few others that are in the area book so LOTS of work to do. Super excited.

Fagaloa

 The road in fagaloa that we drove on all the time

December 25 - MANUIA LE KERISIMASI

We got to skype with Justin for about 3 hours on Christmas which was the best!

He's doing great and was waiting to hear if he got transferred to a new area....

Manuia Le Kerisimasi - skype in 6 days!!!!!! :)

MANUIA LE KERISIMASI

Things are going swell here in Tafuna.  This is the last week until transfers so probably at least one of us is going to get transferred.

Our investigator getting baptized this week is so awesome. We did a couple lessons with her this week. One time as we were walking up, she had the Book of Mormon voice over playing throughout the house which was pretty funny.  She has shared so much about her past with us and she's come so far.  She is keeping a journal of everything she has learned and she just loves the gospel so much.  It's so cool to finally see someone so interested here in American Samoa because it's been a while.... 

We had Stake Conference and Elder Haleck of the Seventy presided. He is the Area President here and is from American Samoa.  His wife was taught by our investigator when she was in college and they said they're going to come to our baptism so that'll be pretty cool.

One thing President Hannemann has asked us to do differently when we teach is to really explain the Godhead.  Almost every first visit we have with someone, they'll say, "We all go to different churches but we worship the same God".  Most of the time we would just nod our head and agree. But President has asked that we say, actually we don't.  We worship different Gods.  My God has a body of flesh and bones and they are three separate beings. It's actually been fun doing that and we have had some interesting conversations with people.

Alma giving some food for thought...

44  For behold, it is as easy to give heed to the word of Christ, which will point to you a straight course to eternal bliss, as it was for our fathers to give heed to this compass, which would point unto them a straight course to the promised land.

 45  And now I say, is there not a type in this thing? For just as surely as this director did bring our fathers, by following its course, to the promised land, shall the words of Christ, if we follow their course, carry us beyond this vale of sorrow into a far better land of promise.

 46  O my son, do not let us be slothful because of the easiness of the way; for so was it with our fathers; for so was it prepared for them, that if they would look they might live; even so it is with us. The way is prepared, and if we will look we may live forever.

Hope everyone has a safe and Merry Christmas!!

Alofa atu 

(mom & dad are assuming this is where Justin lives...???  He didn't give details)