Week 8

Bula Vinaka na noqu matavuvale!!

Holy cow! I cannot believe I have been here for 8 weeks!! pretty crazy. Everything is still going awesome. This last week was really good. We didnt get our flight plans like we were expecting but we should get them this week for sure. We got to host this last week and that was pretty fun haha getting to see all of the new people come in and think about how much I have already grown up in the short time that I have been here. We get to host again tomorrow so that should be fun. This last week me and Elder Stock got all of our silk ties and went upstairs and traded them all for polyester ones cuz we cant take silk to Fiji cuz it will rot. But I got some pretty sweet ties out of it so it was good haha Oh!!! and last night we decided was fort night so we took all of the mattresses off of the beds and made a sweet fort out of all of the extra blankets that we dont use!! it was definitely the coolest thing ever haha luckily our roommates that are going to Brazil are way cool and loved it too haha everyone kept coming in to look at it and thought it was the coolest thing ever. I took a bunch of pictures of it so I will try to send those next week haha
I also finished D&C and JSH this week which was awesome. I dont know if I have ever read either one of those all the way through but I am glad I did. They are both such great testimonies that Joseph Smith truly was a prophet.
So today is our P-day and like weeks ago we made a poster of the first vision in Fijian to put in our room so that we could memorize it and we have had it as a goal for like every week but we have never done it. so today we decided we would do it and I memorized the whole thing in like an hour!! it was pretty sweet. So I’ll have to recite it for you guys when I get to call you next week. I think we get to the Salt Lake airport at like 2:30 ish and I should be able to call you from there and from our big layover in LA. That will be awesome to be able to talk to you guys.
Both of the devotionals that we had this week were awesome. Last Tuesday was Elder Zivic from the 70 and he talked a lot about just becoming a man and doing your best and stuff. He said a man needs to know 3 things. Where I am, where i'm going, and how I am going to get there. Being on my mission and setting all of these goals all the time has really made me realize how important it really is. I dont think that in our lifes we really step back and evaluate how things are going enough. Or step back and think about where we want to be in our lives and how we are going to do it.
The other devotional was President McIff from the MTC presidency. His was kind of similar to Elder Zivic's. He talked about how "The Lord needs missionaries, not young men and women on missions" and I have always felt that way. If I am going to take this time out to serve the Lord I am going to give it my all and be the best instrument in the Lord's hands that I can be. He also talked about our attitudes which is another thing I have always had a strong testimony of. Before I came to the MTC a lot of people said how they didnt like it or how it sucked but I came in with the attitude that I was going to get the most I could out of it and have fun doing it and that is exactly how it has been. I have not had any days that I looked back on when I was laying in my bed and said today wasnt good. Every night I lay in bed I think about how great it is to have this opportunity and how great doing this work makes us feel. And I know that is mainly because of my attitude about it. He also talked about how Bronco Medenhal wears 3 bracelets one has an A one has a D and one has an E. They stand for Attitude, Discipline, and Effort. He wears them because that is how he lives his life and that is how he wants his football players to live theirs. I know that in anything we do in this life if we have a good attitude about it be disciplined and put in our best effort we will be successful in everything that we do.
It sounds like everything is going great with you guys! keep up the good work. I cant wait to get to Fiji in a week and a half and start really learning the language and teaching the people. AU LOMANI KEMUDOU!! CAKAVA CAKACAKA NA LUVEQU!!

Lomana, Elder Hawk