November 1, 2009 E-mail

This week was good. No one knows what Halloween is here so that is too bad. I'm sure if they knew about it, they would celebrate it. They love any excuse for a holiday. They seriously have like two holidays a month, anything to get them out of work and school.

We had some cool things happen this week, but things are still really slow. The entire mission has kind of slumped off and all of the areas are pretty slow right now. I don't really know why; just trends I guess. Maybe Christmas will come and things will pick up.

But one really cool experience we had this week. One of our recent convert's mother had a stroke and died (which isn't cool) and worst of all, his Dad died last year. They were both young and he is only 15. They are almost at their one year mark. But Funerals in Fijian Culture are huge. All the family from outer islands and far away come in and they have big feasts and church sessions as a family. So we had a really good lesson with him trying to offer him comfort and also used the funeral as a good opportunity to teach and contact people. At the funeral, our bishop was very very bold and taught about the plan of salvation and basically told everyone that their church now doesn't give answers about an after life and had us come stand on the pulpit and said they all need to talk to us. Then I gave the closing prayer and the look on everyone's faces when a young white kid stood up and prayed in Fijian was priceless. I wish I had a camera. Lots of people came and talked to us afterward. I hope some new good investigators come from it.

I also learned from it the true meaning of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.They yell and scream and roll in the dirt and pull on your legs. It is crazy. It is like the scene on Other Side of Heaven but worse in real life cause you just are appalled that a grown person would act like that. It is not a pleasant scene. Josua, the kid whose mother it was, chose not to go to the funeral because he knew his aunts and uncles were going to be like that and he didn't want to have to go through it. It is pathetic that he had to miss his own mother's burial because his family goes crazy like that. I felt so bad for him. It's so sad that the people think they have to mourn like that cause they will never see their loved ones again. The Plan of Salvation truly is a great comfort and blessing in our lives. It was a cool experience though.

We had two lovo's (earth oven) in a row and I ate way more then is humanly healthy. It is no wonder I am so fat. But we also had an awesome activity with the young men. I taught them how to play American Football and we played. They picked it up super quick and were very good, just like I knew they would be (Lucky people with their black skin and being good at sports). I discovered how fat and slow I am. I would be running and think to myself, "This can't be as fast as I can run," so I would try to go faster but nope, it really was as fast as I could run. So that was depressing. I felt like I was in slow motion the whole time. It didn't help that I was playing a bunch of little Fijians who are wicked fast and run all day everyday to get where they are going. But with the exception of me being slow, it was a success. We had tons of less active, recent convert, and non-member young men in attendance and they all loved it, so it went really well and we're hoping to have some good new investigators come from that as well.

As far as investigators go, we still don't have anybody progressing. We had great lessons and they say they want to be baptized, but they just won't come to church. I don't get it. One guy promised me that if I gave him a white shirt he would go, so I gave it to him and he didn't make it. I am gonna go make him give it back. We have a couple of new people who we have taught once or twice who I have high hopes for. We will go at it again this week and hopefully come out a little better. Well that's all I got. I love you all.

Loloma Levu,
Elda Lalaga