Sister Keapo Chong's Mission Journeys: Preparing for March Madness

bula mama!!

well first things first....IM GOING TO SUVA THIS WEEK!!! im getting transferred!!! JUST JOKING IM NOT!! im still going to be in labasa, going on my sixth month here in labasa but i really am going to suva this week :) all of the missionaries are heading to suva on friday because on saturday elder neil l. anderson is going to be speaking to us. im so excited! it's so special to have an apostle come to Fiji and speak to us. also im just excited to go to suva and get out of labasa for a little while. it's been 4 months since i left this island hahaha. and you know in our family we don't stay on one island longer than a month, so it's driving my crazy haha!

Just me being.....ME!!

anyway, this week was better than last week. actually it was pretty good. we worked hard this week, preparing for our march madness next month which is our goal of 100 baptisms as a mission just in the month of march. my and sis. alaga are suppose to get 5 baptisms and so far we have 3 scheduled ones and im confident we'll get our last 2 soon. we already have an idea of who it'll be. both of them we actually just found/met this week! one of them is a woman named Dorika. this last week we just knocked one her door and were surprised at how open she was to our message and she asked us to come back. so we went back and shared a little more about the restoration and asked her if she wanted to take lessons and she said yes! this is one of the first times that ive knocked on someones door and they were so willing and open to learning about the gospel. so we're excited to start teaching her! the other girl we met this week was a referral from one of our young women. we actually met her in church! which was amazing that she came to church before we even met her and started teaching her, which shows some good signs. but we will be seeing her on wednesday and see how much she knows already and how interested she is in the gospel. but she seems awesome already :)

Joana and Sis Alaga

this week we went through some of the old teaching records in our area book and found this one boy that was referred by a member. so we went and visited that family and ended up he was sitting right there and so we met him right off the back. it was pretty funny. but we went back to visit him and see how much he remembered from when the elders taught him. he told us all the lessons he took and we found out that he had all the lessons already and just needed to be baptized. so we asked him all the baptism questions and he could answer all of them. in my head i was like "perfect! all he needs is baptism. what is he waiting for?" so we invited him to baptized and then we found out why he's not baptized yet. when we asked him all he did was look at his grandmother. at that moment i knew. he wanted to be baptized but his grandma said no before and won't let him because he's baptized in their church. so i explained to him about the priesthood power and why he needed to be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. he understood and you could see that he wanted to be baptized but his grandma wouldn't let him. the grandma than asked us a question, "in your church how many times do you believe you need to be baptized?" our member who came with us is a 19 year old girl and she looked at me and i let her answer it. first of all because i couldn't explain everything i wanted to in fijian, and i wanted her to try. so she did. she explained to the grandma the importance of the priesthood. the grandma started to cry and you could feel the spirit fill the room. when we left the home we committed him to pray about baptism and what we talked about. when we went outside the member that came with us was just like "whoa! ive never felt that before!" i asked her what she meant and she explained how she felt as she was testifying to the grandma of the importance of the priesthood. she said it was like something was speaking through her. she didn't really know the words that were coming out. i told her, "that is the Holy Ghost and that is how you should feel everytime you testify of the truthfulness of this Gospel." that one lesson changed that young woman. before in lessons she would just sit there and zone out. but ever since that experience she is engaged in our lessons and even wants to teach part of the lesson. what i realized that day is that a mission isn't only about teaching investigators and baptizing but also helping members have these spiritual experiences with us that they may be reminded about how beautiful this Gospel truly is and remember why they were baptized in the first place.

well, that's pretty much all i have for this week. au lomani kemudou sara ga!! kalougata tiko!!

loloma levu,
sista chong