Blog Description

A collection of letters from our favorite missionary. This blog is compiled by his sister and is made up of pictures and images sent to the fam.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

September 19, 2010 - A New Area and Golden Investigators

Well this week was GREAT. The Lord truly has been preparing Tuvalu for the missionaries. I am so blessed to be here and get to see this great work! We have seven baptismal dates for Oct. 16. I have had some of the best lessons of my mission this past week. So many investigators that are so ready to join the church! They have literally just been waiting for the missionaries to come and teach and baptize them. They have such solid testimonies and love learning the things that we teach them. It is so amazing that they were able to have so much faith and belief in the church without even really knowing anything about it, as far as the doctrines and story of the restoration. They just know they found and felt the spirit in this church and were willing to wait patiently for two years to join and be taught about it. They are awesome people! It has been a priviledge to get to teach such prepared, attentive, and ready to learn children of God.

We had 65 people at church yesterday and 10 of them were investigators. It was great. The branch is lacking a little bit in organization and functionality, but everything they lack they make up for with faith. They are such faithful saints. We have some good plans to do some training and get some callings and auxiliaries set up. It will be good to work with the branch. We have so many investigators and such far walks though that we are really busy. So that is good.

One interesting thing this week was the fact that we had NO money. We had problems with transferring money from Fiji to here because it is a different country, so this entire week we had not one dime and no food. We walked from door to door finding members and investigators to feed us. It was an interesting experience that made me appreciate the missionaries from the church's beginnings who went to England with nothing but the clothes on their back. Luckily though, in the Polynesian culture it's not too hard to find people to feed you.

The national elections of Tuvalu were this week as well, which was interesting. They have a day of like "campaigning", but we were told that whoever gives away the most free alcohol and food wins. So we had A LOT of interesting run-ins with some not so sober people on the streets. It was funny. Then when the winner was announced, the next twenty four hours were full of random fights breaking out on the street with angry people whose candidate didn't win. That was entertaining as well. Luckilly Polynesians fight fair: man to man, fist to fist, so there were no weapons involved. I think some Latin countries could take notes there.

It is still so freaking hot that I think I am going to die every single day. I can't believe the power of the sun here! They literally hang fish on clothes lines in the sun and it cooks the fish, then they eat it. It is so scorching.

The language is hard. My companion can understand it pretty well, maybe like 50% or more. I am hovering at a solid 5% understanding and speaking. He can't really speak it all that well either, but definitely way better than me. Some old people can speak and understand Samoan though, so Elder Key does good with them. I am going to keep working at it though and hopefully it will come quickly.

That about sums up my week. It was really good and I am excited for this next week. I hope yours all goes well. Until next week..

Alofa,
Elder Wall

1 comment:

Unknown said...

boso,nice to see with your lovely family.i hope you'll enjoy getting bak home.i'll pray that when i'm on a mission,i'll that they will let me go to serve in utah so i can come and find you there,if i'll get baptised by elder key and his new companion,i don't know if i spell that one correct.ok,i wish you pray too that one day i'll meet you in utah or you meet me in tuvalu with your wife,if you get married.i don't remember your email address,and here is my address.Teikauea.d.i'll pray that you'll get bak home safely to your lovely family.