Sister Keapo Chong's Mission Journeys: Training is over! I'm Fo' Real!

"Gaze towards the temple, not just the baptismal font."

bula mama!

TRAINING IS OVER! i am now a normal, fo' real kine missionary! woohoo! im up with the big girls now haha. now im just praying that i dont have to train the next intake because im so not ready, but i have a feeling i will. we'll see. tthey dont come until january so i have a month break lol. but our training was 12 weeks long, so ive been in fiji for about 12 weeks now. time flies so fast! can you believe it's december already!? oh my gosh! next month i will finish 6 months already! isa lei!

before i tell you about my week i will try to answer all your questions so i dont forget. so on pdays we still wake up at 630 and study for 3 hours and then we go to email. after that we do our grocery shopping and then 4-530 we go to the chapel and play volleyball! some members come and play, a lot of youth and then about 6 of us missionaries. so i usually see the same 4 elders all the time because we're in the same area. and then our pdays end at 6pm and it's time to get back to work. so for the rest of the night we either go teach lessons or attend a FHE or something like that. the weather.....it's so hot!!!!!! like for real, im dying!!! it has been ridiculously hot this past week, like me and my companion sleep with our own fans. i get like a shade darker everyday. but it's weird because it'll be so hot and then all of a sudden there's thunder and lightning but no rain. so it's just miserable! haha. but it's getting really hot here. it actually rained today for the first time. thank goodness! christmas here isn't as exciting as home. but it's only the 2nd of the month so maybe it'll get more exciting as we get closer. the service is coming slowly. this week was zone conference so we didnt do a lot of proselyting. but this week ill look for me opportunities.

but this week we had my first zone conference. and it was amazing! it was different then what i pictured for some reason, but in a good way. it was very personal because there's only like 31 of us missionaries there so we were really involved. our zone leaders talked about how our 3 hours of studying before we go out is really important and helpful throughout the rest of our day. our APs talked about how we need to role play in our companionship study. practice teaching the lessons we would be teaching that day or practice what we would say if we met someone on the street or were knocking on doors. me and my companion dont role play in our studies but now we will start! sis. klingler (mission pres wife) talked about using the book of mormon. she explained to us how important it is to use the book of mormon in every single visit. never miss an opportunity to talk about the book of mormon. she also gave us gave us all a reminder on the sacredness of the temple garment. she bore a powerful testimony on what a privilege it is to wear the garment and that we should treat with the most respect. lastly, we had our mission president, pres. klingler, talk to us. he talked to us about putting our "gaze on the temple, not just the baptismal font." he said when we teach investigators we shouldn't only focus on getting them baptized but focus on the getting to the temple a year later because that's where the eternal blessings come from. he printed the baptism and temple recommend questions and showed us that the questions were very similar! baptism prepares them for the temple more then we think. overall, the conference was amazing! it was fun to meet all the missionaries in my zone.

yesterday was sis. ons birthday! so i tried to make it special for her because i knew that she would be thinking about home a lot so i tried to distract her. i woke up at 230am to put up a birthday sign that i made her, so that when she woke up she would see it. i then made her a birthday crown and birthday card and she loved it! we then went to church and i secretly planned a little birthday party for her after choir practice with all the relief society. the sisters brought so much food and it was all for sis. ons. she was so happy! while we sang happy birthday to her she almost cried because she was just so happy and touched. i made her a chocolate pudding pie and some peanut butter cookies. when we got home i stuck a candle in the pie and sang happy birthday to her in hawaiian and she made a wish and blew out her candle. she loved her birthday and i was just grateful that i could help her have an awesome birthday away from home.

there's one thing that ive noticed that's changing about myself. my level of tolerance. lol. ive been working on 2 christlike attributes from preach my gospel. charity and patience. when i came on my mission i noticed that one of my weaknesses was patience. i would mad so fast at the littlest things. so since i got here in fiji ive been working on it as much as i can. and you know what, im getting better. i dont get as mad as before. so i truly see the hand of the Lord in my life. i read the christlike attribute chapter in preach my gospel, ch. 6, so many times because if you dont have christlike attributes then you cant do the work.

okay story time....so on saturday night me and my companion came home to our flat and i saw a big B52 cockroach in our kitchen. ive gotten very brave and now i can just grab a slipper and kill it. so i easily killed that one. but suddenly there were 3 more crawling on the ground and i just got so scared i screamed and my companion came running. she saw all the cockroaches and she went and grabbed slippers to slap them with and i went and got another one. so picture these two sister missionaries, still in our skirts, with a slipper in each hand ready as if we were going to war. so as my companion chased them towards me i would kill them. except one time i missed and it started crawling up my leg and i started to jump up down and tried to whack it off my leg. she couldn't stop laughing and the last one got away. i got the one off my leg and murdered it, til it could be killed no more lol. i then took our bug spray and sprayed all inside our cupboards which is where they were coming out from and sprayed a lot and closed the doors. later that night another 3 cockroaches came out half dead, so we gave um one hit and they were dead. i fell asleep with a slipper in each hand that night, ready to kill any other cockroaches that dare came near me.

but that's the night life of a fiji sister missionary :) i have to deal with frogs, geckos, cockroaches, and im sure there's many more to come. im getting braver and stronger everyday haha. but au lomani kemudou kece sara ga!!

loloma levu,

sista chong