Hello Family,
First of all can I just tell you that my heart is full too much! Today the couple came back from Vila and they carried all of our packages home. I was shocked that I had two from all of you! I feel spoiled! I about died when I saw all the candy!! I have no idea how you all knew that the past 3 nights I have been dreaming of twizzlers and sour candies. I am not even lying...how pathetic…but don't blame me, it is my subconscious. Thank you big wan! All
of our neighbors wanted to pass a big thank you too! We all opened my packages and the kids went nuts!! I taught them how to roast starbursts in the fire and they think it is so neat. The best part is, they hate the sour candies. They close up flattened every other candy, but the sour ones are "too salty" for them. They put them in their mouths and spit them out. haha. Thank you too much!!! I am excited too much to use the scar cream. The best news of the week, my rash is close up finished on my face! It only stings when I touch it. Before it was a lot of pain, but now it is close up finished. No more oozing face. Awesome! I can not wait to use the medicine to see if I can look semi normal!
Mother those pillow cases are adorable!! I am going to try to send a photo of us with them, but the internet here is not very good. We love them!! Thank you big one!! I loved all of the pictures that you sent this week. Everyone looks old. Mase is so big and I could barely recognize all of our deacons in that picture. I am glad that you and Mase got to have a day out on the town. He is the cutest! Tell Ben congrats about winning the games. He has always been a great ball player. I am glad too much that you all are doing so well.
Our area is a whole lot of hard work, but I absolutely love it! There is zero time for rest, and a lot of work to be done in organizing the branch and unit that we look after. The church is still pretty new here, so part of our jobs as missionaries is to teach the leaders how the church is organized and teach them their callings. The other week the Branch President asked me to call a Branch Mission Leader and interview him. I kindly told him that I didn't hold the priesthood. He looked a little confused. This week we were able to meet with him for a few hours and explain how sister missionaries can't make callings, or give blessings etc. We are making progress though. One thing I have learned out here is patience. Oh boy is this something I have had to pray and pray for. You all know I am not a patient person, but I am
getting better every day. Sometimes it gets hard out here, but every hard day that we have we try to look for the "small progress." By small and simple things great things come to pass. I know without any doubt that is true.
This week we found one young girl at a school, her name is Ann Rose. Papa God has prepared her to meet us. We sat down and talked a bit at first and she shared with us about how she felt like something was missing in her life. She told us that she wanted to
change. We shared with her about Papa's plan for each and every one of us and she just lit up. She is really, really, smart and she asked us if we could come see her every day. We have seen her about three times this week and she is progressing like crazy. We are planning on, asking her to be baptized this week and I could not be more excited!
Louisanne and Marilyn are great! We are having to teach Louisanne a little slower because she is younger. I really want her to understand what we are teaching before we introduce any more material to her. Her sister Marilyn brought all of her kids to her lesson and she had already taught all of her kids what we had taught her the time before. She told us the sweetest experience she had when she prayed and asked if Joseph Smith saw Papa God and Jesus Christ. These are the moments we live for as missionaries. Now for the hardest part: This week I am determined to talk to her husband to see if he has any interest at all. This is always the hardest part, but I will not doubt the abilities of Papa God to soften the hearts of these great people.
There is also this new church that just came to the island. It is a"group" of youth that get together every single day and they have"gifts" (prophesy, healing, etc) they yell prayers until the wee hours of the morning and they fall down and see visions and angels. All of
the people here are amazed by this new religion. EVERYONE is attending (members, investigators etc.). We are facing a hard hard time because everyone is so excited that a church is seeing angels and visions. It is interesting because half of our members follow this group and the other half want to fight with them. Needless to say we have been working a lot on trying to strengthen the members of our branch.
To answer some of your questions: My companion is Sista Tenge she is from Fiji and I love her! She is more blunt than Becky Parry:). Sometimes it is a good thing that she can't understand Bislama, because she would have something to say about what some of the members say. My car is amazing, but one of my wheels got eaten by this dog. Funny story: So we were going to go and visit an investigator and we saw a dog sleeping on the ground in front. When it saw us it started running for us and barking. The dogs here are pure evil and so I reached down, picked up a stone and threw it at him. He stopped chasing us and was acting like a good dog. After we took off our shoes and went into the kitchen to give a lesson. When I came back out only one of my shoes was there. I looked over and the stupid dog had eaten the whole back of my shoe...haha. Everyone was dying laughing. The little girl said, "He (the dog) always does payback" hahaha. Man, it reminded me of Bella and her attitude. Like I said my face is slowly getting better. It isn't as swollen, and no more oozing. Everything here is great!
I am glad that you are trying your best to make family scripture study. I know that it is super hard on the weekends but try your best to do it in the morning. I promise you that as you all try to read every morning it will change the whole course of your day. It will give you a shield against all temptation and hard times you will face. There is full up strength that comes from scripture study. One advice for Benny is at the distrubution center they sell these Story Books of Mormons. I bought one in Bislama in Vila and they are amazing. They have pictures and they tell all the cool stories from the Book of Mormon. Something to try.
Thank you too much for all of your love and support!! I love you
all!!! Have a good week!!
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