Baptism

Week 65

28th March 2016

Ni Bula Vinaka Family!

WE HAD A BAPTISM!!! Tevita Tauyavu Tawake was baptized on the 27th of March 2016 & his wife became officially a returning member to the church as of the same date. The baptismal service was awesome!! I felt the spirit there :) It was right after church had finished, the branch was there in attendance. The Branch presidency conducted the service and all of Tevita's wife's family spoke and participated through the service (seeing as Tevita's family are not members but his wife's is, & he is very close with them). My companion baptised Tevita.  It was awesome. Afterwards Tevita's wife Miriama and himself shared with the congregation their testimonies, they were very powerful especially Miriama's as she shared her story with Tevita about how they met and their story together as he took the missionary discussions. It was so strong the spirit.

Sunday was a great day, the beginning of the day was slightly saddening. We had woken up early that morning to prepare and get ready to go to Judi's home to pick her up and help her to get to church. When we arrived to her house she was still asleep. She lives pretty far and so we knew by visiting her we would  most likely be late and maybe miss sacrament, but it was a sacrifice we wanted to and were willing to make in order to invite her to church. She was asleep & then her uncle woke her up and she told us to go ahead of her and that she would just meet us at the chapel. I knew immediately when she had said that, that she wasn't going to come. So we took her word for it and rode our bikes to church sad and let down. 

Judi is one of my favorite investigators and I'm very close with as missionary and investigator. Really hoping for her!! 

We have other investigators though, so we are working with others other than just Judi. A lot of them are new investigators etc. 

My week though has being a bit stressful, we had Zone Conference on Tuesday and Zone Conference is always like a whole day thing so we didn't get to do much in proselyting to people. Wednesday was interviews with Mission President and that started at 9am to around 1pm and then my companion and I went on exchanges with the district Leader and his companion. Thursday was the only day we had being in our area for a full day, including Sunday too. We did service in another area helping some missionaries move out of their flat into a new one. Friday we had exchanges again with the Zone leaders (Elder Palelei is my zone leader btw) though this time and exchanges goes for 24 hours so getting solid lesson and achieving goals we had was hard due to these things... But hey!! we had a baptism and had achieved some smaller goals and sore some wonderful blessings this week, one of them being our less active come to church, that being a girl named Vasiti. I spoke about her last week I think about how we always have lunch with her. We're very close with her, just trying to strengthen her and get her back on her feet to be independent spiritually. 

At Zone conference, the mission president's wife gave an awesome training based on a experience she had with her husband when they served together in Tonga. She told the story of when Tonga was under going many riots and damage due to the Government not listening to their opinions and needs for the country. Tonga also being 60% LDS a lot of people involved in the riots were members and one day she said that her and her husband were summoned to go and speak with the Queen of Tonga at the time. They spoke, chatted about many things and then came the topic of church. The Queen loved the church and was thankful for all that the LDS church had done for Tonga but she asked why that so many of the LDS members had being apart of the riots if the teachings taught them to be different. She didn't know what to say to the Queen, and then the Queen simply followed by saying '' Maybe, their just not converted enough''. Then Sister Layton (Mission Presidents wife) posed us the question ''Are we converted enough'' 

She shared another story about how her son fell out of bed one night and came crying to her and she asked how did you fall out of bed. Her son replied ''I wasn't in far enough'' and so the question together is ''Are we converted enough so much so that we wont fall out''. Zone conference was awesome!!! so was my interview with President, received a lot of direction and guidance. :)

Easter was cool, here in Fiji every Easter they go to the graves of their families/ Ancestors too and clean them. We got to check out some members families graves and honest to the man upstairs they are ancient!! back in the 1700's lol. They also have a big celebration, drinking Kava, eating pig and cow lol you know islanders the works hahah... so we got fed well ;) they also have church service too all day to commemorate Christs death.

Other things though my companion hit his 6 month mark this week and we celebrated it with ice cream and burned one of his ties. Next week when we get our support we're going to celebrate properly with making chocolate chip cookies haha looking forward to that. 

 Well yeah that was our week pretty much :) I've attached some pictures below, my camera isn't working currently so i am using my companions flash as one lol. 

I know the Gospel is true, I am currently trying to understand more about the Atonement. The Savior and God are living, the spirit is always there to guide us. Its really hard to define the voice of the spirit and the voice of adversary because it always mixes itself with our spirit to confuse our desires and pleasures. 

Love to you all,  take care and love one another, try reading the bible, thats what I'm doing at the moment. I find it so interesting tbh :) 

P.S: GO VISIT the lds.org site and check out the new Easter video by the church :)