June 7, 2009 E-Mail

Hey there family and friends,
I am doing good - healthy and having a good time. This week was my six month mark and my companion and two other elders' one year mark, so Friday after proselyting, we had a party and burned a tie and shirt and had cake and drank mountain dew and coke in a traditional
Fijian ceremony style. It was a blast.

Then on Saturday, we went to Saioko. The work is booming there. One man is ready to be baptized and there is like 7 progressing investigators in one village and two other villages that
want missionaries to come. The mission is open there, but we don't have time with our weekend
trips once a month. There is also one other village that wants us to come open them up to missionary work with an opening ceremony.

Plus, the Branch President is amazing and also the village chief. Me and Elder Alba are writing a proposal to the Mission President to let us open it up. We would live in the village and just be straight up legit Fijians, living the old traditional life. It would be so awesome! I will let you know more details when we hear the President's response to our proposal.

The work in Rakiraki is going good still. We had a good turn out at sacrament (27). No one comes to the first two blocks though. Hopefully we can change that. We have been trying to change the terrible things in our branch, but it is not easy with our branch president working against us.

Every week a stake leader comes and supervises our Sunday and activities. The branch president started getting mad at him, so I hope the stake is starting to see the man's true colors and kick him out. The stake took away almost all his power and responsibility, which is good, but it sucks cause it gets put on us elders. So we're crazy busy trying to resurrect a totally apostate branch, when neither of us have ever held a church calling in our lives. We are doing our best though. One step at a time.

Our investigator pool is really low right now, but we have two new investigators this week. I am excited about them, but I think we need to focus on the branch right now.

My Fijian is progressing more and more, but I still just wish I could speak as comfortably in Fijian as I can in English. Not yet ...maybe one day. If I go to Saioko, I will probably get really good because nobody knows English there.

Well I love ya'll and I'm very excited to hear from everybody.

Love,
Elder Wall