Fiji Nei

BULA MAMA!!!

well well well it sounds like home is the same. crazy kids, volleyball, and song contest. hahaha!! from what you told me about the boys volleyball, i so want to come and watch them! it sounds like they might be going to states!! isa!! im so happy for them. and i totally agree with you that kapule is the reason they are playing the way they are...how is that guy anyway!!?! lol

anyway it has been a beautiful day in fiji nei. jk it's not it has been raining almost every single day. but it's not a good rain, it just gets more and more humid when the rain comes. oh well im not gonna complain :) but this week we had the ba sisters come and do splits with us. i had the opportunity to be companions with Sis. Tuahiva for the day and i learned so much from her! what we decided to do was go and visit our old investigators, like the ones that have been our investigators for a long period of time. so we went and saw Sis. Bull and Felipe. We went to Sis. Bull's house and had no idea what we would be teaching her because she has been taught all the lessons over and over again, we've been reading the Book of Mormon with her so that's what we decided to do. we chose a chapter that we would read with her but didn't feel very confident about it. so i said a little prayer inside to have the Spirit guide us on what we should teach her. when we got there we asked her about her Book of Mormon reading and she said she read Alma 34, which is what we gave her last time. i had totally forgot about it because it had been such a long time. so we opened up to alma 34 and as soon as i opened my Book of Mormon i knew that that was the chapter we needed to talk about that day. as we talked about what she read, about the atonement, and preparing ourselves to meet God, we asked her what were some things she needed to change before she met God. she said many different things but we then reminded her of the law of chastity and she started to cry. i began to bare testimony to her of how important baptism is and about the power of the atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. the Spirit was overwhelming and she knew that she needed to be baptized but first she needed to get married. we will see her again this week to check on her progress.

after we went to sis. bull's, we went to visit a boy named Felipe. we found his teaching record in an old area book that we found in our flat. so we decided to go and visit him one day and asked him all the baptism questions...he knew it all! but what we failed to do was go into debt about how much he knew. so sis. tuahiva and i went to visit him and had a lesson with him. we had planned to read mosiah 18 with him and talk about baptism again. what ended up happening was us asking him a lot of questions. well sis. tuahiva asking a lot of questions about Joseph Smith, priesthood, etc. he told us that he had been baptized already and we asked him where his pastor got his authority from and he didn't know he said he thought he got it from God, but really he had no idea and i dont think he thought about it before. we then retaught him the Restoration and how Joseph Smith restored the priesthood of God. we asked him where Joseph Smith got his priesthood from, which he answered "Pita, Jamesa, kei Joni." we then asked him where they got there priesthood from and he said, "Jisu Karisito" Qori!! but for some reason he still didn't fully understand how only our church has the priesthood power or the proper authority to baptize, so we'll be going back and teaching him all the lessons again.

it was so fun to be with sis. tuahiva. she's from tahiti and i stayed with her when i first came to fiji for that first week we stayed in Suva. so it was like a reunion lol. she's hilarious!! we get along so well and the Spirit was so strong when we taught together! i think it's because she reminds me of aunty abby, that's why we got along so well. i felt like i was just companions with aunty abby for 2 days. in fact!! i found out that sis. tuahiva is cousins with aunty abby's mom!! so i showed her pictures of moehau and matu and she said, "oh my gosh this is the moehau abby's mom always talks about!" haha so funny i was like yup that's her!! but we had a good time together. hopefully we can be companions one day :) but no matter what i will definitely go and visit her in tahiti...some day...haha.

yesterday was an awesome day as well!! we went to church and ended up getting about 2 referrals which is very rare!! and will start teaching them this week. one is a less active's step children. and the other is a girl from a part member family. we're excited and definitely have seen the blessings of hard work. it is true when joseph smith said that after the trials come the blessings. i have witnessed it myself this week.

funny story...so we were walking down this street, salusalu st. at 7 pm for our dinner appointment and it was dark already. anyway when we were walking and i heard a dog from the side and i looked and there was a gate so i was relieved. but then i heard a dog from behind and i didn't know if there was a gate or not so i automatically threw my scriptures at my companion and was about to book it!! my companion grabbed my arm and stopped me from running because come to find out the dog was tied up, but only i didn't know that. ugh i hate dogs!! i carry my scriptures in my hand now because it is literally my sword!!

au lomani kemudou sara valevu!! kalougata tiko!! how's your book of mormon reading!?!?! we'll be finishing the book of mormon this saturday as a mission. fastest ive ever read it in my life...2 months hahaha!! and it all flows together and is like one big story now...i love it!!! the things in the Book of Mormon are so real!!! all the things they talk about and the things that they foresaw are all coming true, its crazy!! like i just read mormon 8-9 today and he talks about whoever will bring the book of mormon to light and whoa!! he nailed it!! joseph smith did all that and is that person he described. wow!! my testimony has definitely grown so much. 

and lastly mom dont worry about me. im fine.  I LOVE MY MISSION!!! I DONT WANT TO COME HOME!!!  i love everything about my mission. love you chokest!!

loloma levu,
sista chong

Happy 20th Birthday

bula mama!!

WE HAD TRANSFERS!!! AND GUESS WHAT!!!!! im staying in labasa......hahahhaha!!

happy birthday to me!! hahaha its crazy to think that i just had my birthday here in the beautiful islands of Fiji :) that's not something everyone can say. but i had a good birthday. i pretty much planned everything myself. we went over to joana's house for lunch and we made some fijian food lol. some fish, tavioka, baigani (eggplant) in lolo (coconut milk). i made that myself :) husked, scraped and squeezed the milk myself lol im going native yo! then we watched "the legacy" while eating. it's a church movie about one of the woman who traveled to Zion. you should watch it. but after lunch we went to the chapel because the Relief Society had an activity and it was volleyball!! so ofcourse i told my companion that all i wanted to do for my birthday was play some volleyball, so that's what we did :) and then when we were finished, we were on our way home and ma (my fijian mom) called us and said Asaeli had made me dinner for my birthday. woohoo!! so we went over and he made me chicken, dalo, and ice cream for dessert. it was so nice. so my birthday was good. it feels weird to tell people that im 20 now instead of 19 haha, throws me off.

Happy Birthday Dinner

as for the rest of the week, it was pretty good. we went and saw one of our new investigators. we were trying to figure out what to teach him because we felt like we didn't need to start from the very beginning of the first lesson with him but we didn't know where we needed to start. so we moved on to our training for Sis. Alaga and this week we're focusing on using the Book of Mormon. as soon as we finished training we both felt that we needed to just teach him about the Book of Mormon. we had given him one when we first met him and so we decided we would just go over and talk about where it came from and then read 3 Ne. 11 with him. we read through the whole chapter before we left so that we could think of some questions we could ask or what verses were most important to mention. the one thing we forgot was that we would be teaching him in Fijian. so i had all my questions and verses in my head....in english! we got there and started our lesson and i realized i didn't know how to ask all my questions in Fijian. right then i said a short prayer in my heart asking the Lord to please help  me with my Fijian. throughout the lesson i knew it wasn't me speaking. many of the words ive never heard of in my life and i could understand everything he was sharing with us. at the end of the lesson he told us that he knew that the Book of Mormon was true. we invited him to pray about what we read that day to know without a doubt that this book is true. it was a very powerful lesson.

yesterday in church we had branch conference. the senior couple, the walkers, came from savusavu to attend our conference. it was a nice conference, we combined with one of the other smaller branches in our area and it was good to see all the saints in labasa come together. the topic was tithing. different but it was good. the senior couple that came is awesome! elder and sister walker always have smiles on their faces and you can just see their love for the work and their strong testimonies of the Savior. after the conference sister walker talked to us about helping the primary. i have to learn a song that's not in the primary songbook or hymnbook. it's called "the family is of God" or something like that. but sis. walker asked me to learn it and to really help the primary to learn it so they know if for their primary program at the end of the year. so i got a lot of work to do. but it'll be fun!

well that was pretty much our week here in Labasa. funny story...the elders had to give their truck to some other elders in a different area. anyway so on saturday i had to show them how to catch the bus up to boca. it was funny because they were so tired lol. but we caught the bus and i told them that we needed to be at the bus stop at 5 to catch the last bus back to town. well we go and teach and me and sis alaga get back at 5 exactly. we here the bus coming and the elders were no where in sight. we called our district leader to call them to tell them that the bus was coming already and they needed to hurry. well the bus pulled up to the bus stop and we told our investigators who were catching the some bus as us to go ahead because we have to wait for the elders. suddenly as they were getting on the bus they said, "sister! the elders are coming!" me and my companion come out on the road to look and you just see to guys in white shirts and sulus running as fast as they can, sliding through the mud, with their arms flapping everywhere trying not to fall hahahaha!! it was the funniest thing!! but they made it to the bus in time and they were dead tired and all sweaty...gross! lol it was fun though. we were cracking up because they were like "wow sisters walking is a whole new kind of mission." i just laughed and said "now you're serving a REAL mission" hahahaha!!

our district leader is getting transferred, he leaves on wednesday. and guess who our new district leader is....our assistant to the president!!! woohooo!! hahahaha im scared lol. but it'll be good fun :) au lomani kemudou valevu sara!!

loloma levu,

20 year old sista chong :)

March 9 - Zone Conference Weekend

bula mama,

well this week was a really good week. busy but good :) first of all we went to savusavu for zone conference. president klingler came down and we caught a 2 hour bus to get there because president took my seat in the elder's truck haha jk. but fo real. anyway... it was a really good conference. all the training we got was to help us as we strive as a mission to get 100 new converts to the Gospel. the zone leaders talked about introducing EVERY investigator to the Book of Mormon because that's the evidence that we have about the whole Restoration. they had one of their recent converts come to conference and bare her testimony about how she came to know the Book of Mormon was true. her testimony was truly inspiring. she is the only member in her family and has just put her mission papers in...she's amazing!!! anyway, it really encouraged me to make sure i introduce the Book of Mormon to everyone. the APs (assistants to the president) trained us on positive daily contacting. making sure that we go and make some type of contact with each investigator everyday. whether it be giving them a pamphlet, movie, scripture to read, leaving them a note, giving them a call, or asking a member to go and visit them. the reason for this is so that they don't lose that excitement and Spirit they had in the last lesson. if we only see them once a week it gives Satan time to drive them away and lose that excitement and the Spirit. sis. Klingler trained us on diligence. to never give up and keep going. it made me thing of "Finding Nemo" when Dori says, "just keep swimming, just keep swimming..." that's exactly what diligence is! just keep swimming!! don't stop because you're tired or scared. the Lord is on our side, we are on the winning team. so just keep going! it really got me motivated, it was a kick in the butt to keep pushing to the end. lastly, pres. Klingler talked to us about repentance. he showed us all these scriptures in the Book of Mormon about the conditions to repentance. he helped us to realize that we are the ones that help our investigators make those first steps of repentance and in order to ask them to repent we need to repent ourselves first. makes sense! but conference was awesome!

also at zone conference my zone leader, elder andrews said his departing testimony. out of my 2 first zone leaders, one left and now elder andrews who is the second of the 2 is leaving next week. it was so sad. he has done so much for all of us in this zone and has definitely inspired me to keep going. he is honestly one of the most humble elders i know. he loves the people, knows the language, loves the work, and is truly a disciple of Jesus Christ. i hope to be like him when my time comes to bare my departing testimony. he's the bomb.com!! 

well after zone conference me and my companion thought that after we had our interviews, we were getting on a bus and heading back to labasa. then we found out that we were staying one night in savusavu. oh my gosh! we didn't bring anything!! so we made our district leader drive us to town and told him all we needed was a sulu and a toothbrush. as soon as those words came out of my mouth i knew that i had been in fiji too long. before i would complain and complain that i need this and that just for one night but now all i need is a toothbrush and a sulu to sleep in. that's all, simple. wow! haha.

when we got back from savusavu (in the same clothes) we just went straight to work and started preparing for our baptism on the next day. Nikhil and Navneet were finally baptized on saturday. they were so happy and loved coming to church in namara, in town, on sunday. usually they go to our little unit up in boca where they live, but they had to come down to namara to be confirmed and they loved it! they sleept at a members home saturday night and came to church with them on sunday and were confirmed members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. they also were able to stay for our missionary musical fireside last night. it was all about the Restoration, which was perfect for them. we had different members speak on various topics. we also asked different members to sing in the program. we had the Bull family sing "joseph smith's first prayer", the primary, including Nikhil and Navneet, sang "books in the book of mormon," mission prep class and missionaries sang, "we'll bring the world his truth," the young men sang, "praise to the man," and lastly the whole congregation sang, "we thank thee of god for a prophet." the fireside was so powerful and the Spirit was overwhelming. the Restoration always brings such a strong Spirit no matter where you teach it or how you teach it, it just has that power.

this week was a crazy but blessed week. many blessings. many smiles. and 2 more souls brought unto our Savior Jesus Christ. au lomani kemudou!

loloma levu,

sista chong

one thing i forgot to tell you was last night we were taking the boys home in a taxi and there were 4 of us so i had to sit in the front seat. i haven't sat in the front seat of a car for over 7 months. i got so scared during the ride because everything was so close. it was just weird and i wasn't use to sitting in the front anymore.

The beautiful Fijian baptismal font

Really BIG dalo!!!

Shout out to ELDER HIGA's Ohana!

Roughest and Most Amazing Week

bula mama~

thanks for the lu'au videos. isa! the missionary haka was hilarious!! hahahaha!!! i loved it!!!! of course the video of hawaii aloha made me cry haha! no surprise there :) can't wait to hear that again when i come home. sorry i was so late today, we had to clean our flat like really really good because we have flat inspections on wednesday. and i cleaned under the sink and counters in the cupboards and i killed about 15 cockroaches!! gross!!! now i can say i have no problem killing cockroaches :) i still dont like them touching me but i can kill them with one slippah with no problem. 

as for me here in fiji we had the roughest amazing week ever! i dont know how that works but that's exactly how our week was this week. the amazing part was we had a baptism!! anjala finally got baptized this past saturday. she's the sweetest, cutest little girl. she's only 8 and she's tiny but her faith in the Gospel and her Savior Jesus Christ is bigger than most of the rest of our investigators. she had the biggest smile on her face the whole program.

it was rough because there was just so much stress planning this baptism. starting from friday we got a call from our branch mission leader who said that he met Nikhil and Navneet's father in town and he said they weren't coming to the baptism. so we called them and they said that their dad said that they were going to a funeral. when i heard them i understood and they said next week they would be baptized. well after the baptism we went up to boca to teach our other investigators up there. as soon as we get out of the elder's truck we see Navneet and his dad getting off the bus with groceries. sis. alaga and i followed them because we just wanted to talk to them about the baptism and just see what's going on. they were pretty much running home because they saw us, but we just walked slowly and got to their house and only Navneet came out to tell us to come back because they have to bath. but we told him we weren't going to have a lesson, we needed to talk to them and their dad about when they will have your baptism. he went back inside and next thing we know we see him run down the hill to the river to have his bath and his dad didn't come out and talk to us. he hid in the back of the house and never came out. me and sis. alaga were both very disappointed and didn't know what else to do and so we just left hoping we'll be able to meet them on tuesday. so we'll see what happens. 

besides the baptism we have been focusing on finding this week. all we did was knock on doors all day, every day. and you know what.....i OYM'd in all fijian this week after a really long time. we always OYM indians for some reason but this week majority of the people we met were fijian and we spoke to them in fijian. many times i was tempted to speak english once i found out that they spoke english but something told me to just speak fijian. just do it!! so i did and i realized that i knew a lot more than i though i did. some of these people we will be going back to and visiting, which means we will be teaching in fijian which im really nervous about but really excited at the same time. 

we have zone conference in savusavu this week thursday and president will be coming down. so im excited for that. we always have meetings with president when i most need it. it's like he knows exactly what's going on every day lol.

but that was my week. the roughest amazing week i have ever had. lol. au lomani kemudou sara valevu!! 

loloma levu,

sista chong

Preparing for Baptisms

bula mama,

well this week was a wananavu week! well for the most part. we had 3 of our investigators have their baptism interviews this past saturday and they did well, so they will be baptized on 1 march, this saturday. all 3 of them our kids...8, 10, and 12. it's amazing how much they can understand about the Gospel and the Restoration at such a young age. it really shows how the Lord has prepared them at this time. 

while preparing Nikhil and Navneet for their baptism interview i thought back to how we first started teaching them. when we first went to OYM their house we only met their father. we found out that their dad use to be an investigator to the elders like 7 years ago. so we got so excited and we started to teach him. at our 3rd visit or so with him i asked if his sons were home and if they would want to come and listen to the lesson. at the first lesson i knew that we didn't come to this house for their father, we came for them. i didn't know why i had this thought but i just knew that the boys would be baptized before their father, the Lord had prepared the boys for us at this time. as we continued to visit them and teach them we found out why the dad wasn't prepared. there was something that needs to be dealt with before he can be baptized but the boys were ready. this week while we were practicing their baptism questions during our lesson i was just thinking that i would have never met these boys unless we asked them to come out that one day. we probably would've taught their dad a little while and then dropped after a while because he lost interest. but since we asked them to come out that one day, although their dad still lost interest, the boys didn't! so on saturday when they get baptized my heart will be full of joy because the minute that come out of the water they receive the key into the kingdom of our Heavenly Father, all they have to do is endure to the end and enter the temple so they can stay in the kingdom. im also hoping that their baptism will make their dad think about his own baptism and make him realize that if he wants to be with his sons forever, he needs to follow their footsteps and be baptized.

we found a new family this week. there are 3 daughters, the mom, and the grandma. their dad passed away about 5 years ago. when we went back for our first actual lesson with them we taught them about the Godhead, prayer, and families. you could feel the Spirit so intensely. i poured my heart out to them about how it is possible for them to see their dad again and to live with him forever. i could see the oldest daughter's face start to change. the first part of the lesson she listened but you could tell that she wasn't really interested. but as a bore my testimony to her about families are forever i could see her demeanor start to change. i could feel the Spirit working in me and also in her and right when i was about to "break" her, her cousin walked in yelling and "POOF!!" the Spirit was gone. Satan really does everything he can to keep people from receiving the Gospel of Jesus Christ. i was so mad at the cousin for doing that but i knew that she didn't know we were there, but after that the lesson wasn't the same. the Spirit wasn't as strong and so we just closed our lesson and prayed. we walked out of the house and i was so angry at what just happened! as a missionary i forget that when we open our mouth to one person Satan is right there trying to stop them from listening to us. He's the worse!! but when we say our investigators progressing by reading the book of mormon, praying, coming to church, inside im jumping for joy because they are overcoming the temptations of Satan.

last story. sis. alaga and i went up to boca on thursday and it was raining crazy!! there were rivers going over the roads!! (dirt roads) so when we crossed we had to pull our skirts up because the water was up to our knees. anyway when the elders came to pick us up they told us that we had to all walk down to the truck because the water was too deep for them to drive it up. so we walked through the river and it was like up to our knees, sometimes mid-thigh. well at one point walking through the river my camera was in my pocket and it fell out. i didnt notice til we were driving down the hill and so the elders took us back up to go look for it. it was 730pm and it was dark already and the elders just dropped us there because they had an appointment and they were going to come back for us. so we told them after we look we would just start walking down and they can just pick us up when they see us. so we looked for like 30 minutes in the dark with our flashlights and we couldn't find it. so we started walking down at about 8pm. we walked and walked and walked and walked all the way to line point. it's like from our house to wailua golf course. we walked up and down hills along the main road at 8-9 o'clock at night, just us 2 sisters. it was the longest i have ever walked in my life!!! finally the elders came and picked us up and took us home and as soon as we sat down we couldn't get up again. the next morning...burrahh!!! we couldn't move our legs, like fo real!! lol. but it was definitely a memorable night that im sure ill never forget :)

au lomani kemudou sara valevu!!

loloma levu,

sista chong

Reunion and Elder Anderson!!!

bula mama!!

well where to start lol. let's start with who i saw...EVERYONE!! i saw my mom (sis. ons), 

my dad (sis. pyne), my whole intake, 

and elder ishibashi! haha. it was funny because i was walking through the hall and all i heard was "sis. chong! ive been looking for you!" i turned around and looked at the elder's tag and lo and behold, elder ishibashi! it was funny!! we talked for a little while and took a picture which ill send you. 

but it was so good to see everyone, especially everyone from my intake. i cant believe i hadnt seen them for almost 6 months!! hahaaha. all the elders were like, "sis chong so long!" i was just like "yup thats what happens when your in labasa." hahahaha! but it was fun :) one of the elders from my intake played the piano for prelude music and i didnt realize how much i missed him playing the piano for all of us. it was so nice. but man it was good fun. it was really fast but i was grateful i got to see all the elders and sisters, that never happens! 

there is also an elder wilson here who walked up to me and said that a sis swain served in his aunty's ward in utah and she told him to find me and take a picture so she could show her. what a small world! haha.

anyway, elder anderson was amazing! each one of us got to shake his hand and he called each one of us by name when we met him. when he spoke to us he put on a mic headset and came down right in front of us to talk to us. he was so close! lol. but he talked to us about missionary work in relations to the atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. it was more of a discussion, then a talk. he asked us questions and talked with us and gave us so much insight. i learned that we can't learn about the atonement through only studying it in the scriptures. but we also need to use it! we need to repent everyday and think about how we can help our investigators use the atonement and let them know of the sacrifice our Savior made for us. that's how much He loves us!! everything he said was just awesome and really opened up my eyes. ive heard about the topic before but he opened my eyes by helping me look at things from a different perspective or view.

after we had the conference with him we got to go to a cultural night that the suva stakes held for elder anderson. we went with the sisters we were staying with, which was sis pyne, but it was so fun! they did meke (fijian dance), there was a hula, which made me cry a little lol, and then they had rotuma, kiribas, and indian dances. it was my first time watching all these kind dances. everyone enjoyed it. all the missionaries were sitting at the way back watching and recording on the cameras. sadly my camera died right before :( but it was so much fun!

okay now for the work. we have 3 baptisms coming up on the 1st of march. our 3 kid investigators. they're all so excited to be baptized and they'll have their interviews this weekend to make sure they're ready for baptism. but i think they're ready and they can't wait to be baptized. my only wish is that they continue to stay strong even when they grow up to be adults and raise their families in the Gospel. that's something i noticed here. many of the indian members are baptized at a young age and by the time they're adults they go back to their old religions and fall away from the church. so i pray that these 3 will be strong and endure to the very end.

last thing...this last week it rained really hard one night. and so what we did was we went outside and played in the rain and decided to have a rain bath. so we brought out our shampoo and soap and everything and literally bathed in the rain! it was so much fun and ill definitely do it when i come home and teach the kids how to bathe in the rain, fijian style :) haha.

 

and an answer to laa's question. yes i am learning fijian. it's taking time, im not super good at it yet, but im working hard. pray for me :) au lomani kemudou sara valevu!

loloma levu, 
sista chong

Gotta include the Fijian critters!  Gross!

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

Learning how to make some good curry with Sis Devi

Ate a chili - straight!

Indian people like hot food so I'm learning how to eat HOT

Do you see Meli?

Fish boiled in coconut milk with eggplant and bele. mmm mmm mmm ono!! I'll make it when i get home :)

A member made a iri (fan) for me with my name on it and gave it to me this week. It's the first gift I've gotten and I was so grateful.