August 24, 2009 E-mail

Well this week was awesome! We had a lot of good things happen and taught tons of lessons. But by far the highlight of my week was Friday.

The Nalila family (the chief) from Rakiraki came with family names to do baptisms for the dead in the temple. So not only did I get to see them and see a recent convert family I love do temple work...but I got special permission from the mission president to go on exchanges with a senior elder and perform the baptisms for the dead and confirmations! It was incredible. Plus I did them all in Fijian, which was cool. We were doing his father and grandfather and brothers. All chiefs, so we did all these names from the chiefly blood line. It was awesome. We did 246 names. I was exhausted after, but it was so incredible. I loved every minute of it. I am so grateful for the temple and the opportunity I have to do things like this.

Other than that, Saka from wailoku ward was baptized Saturday and confirmed yesterday. He is awesome. I love him and hope maybe soon his parents will come around and take lessons. I am pretty sure it is just his dad holding back. We also got a couple of new investigators who are golden and are for sure going to be baptized.

Transfers were this week, so we had some elders staying with us while we waited for planes and boats to other islands which was fun. Especially since elder Alba was one of them. It was fun to be with him again. We have two elders waiting for the boat to Rotuma that only goes once a month or so. So they will be living and serving with us for about a month. They are cool so it will be good.

In wailoku ward, we have been having great success in building up the ward and had really high attendance again. Tamavua is doing great. We have more investigators than time to teach them, so we are trying to pick out all the best ones. So it is going really well. We have some more baptisms coming up, so I am excited! Work is good and I am happy. Although I miss the bush. But i did get to see some other areas in Suva and compared to those, I am in the bush, so I will just count my blessings that I get to be there.

Oh, and Thursday, I successfully climbed my first coconut tree. It was only like a fifteen footer, but I don't care. At least I was up there.

Well I love you all and am praying for you. Keep up the good work in America.

Love.
Elder Wall