Week 9

Bula Vinaka na noqu matavuvale!!!

AHhhhhhh 4 more days and I will be on a flight to FIJI!! It has gone by so fast. I am so ready to get there and start working though. We got our flight plans this week. Our flight leaves at 5:00 PM from Salt Lake so I will have a little bit of time to call you guys from there probably between like 3-4 and then we fly to LA and we have like a 5 hour layover so I can call you guys again from there. Our flight leaves at 11:30 pm on Saturday night from LA and we get to Fiji at 5:10 AM on Monday haha pretty crazy. and then we have a 4 hour bus ride from Nadi over to Suva so that should be sweet haha I'll be sending home a box later this week of just a bunch of stuff that I dont need to take with me and some pictures and stuff that I finally got to print of today since the machine has been broken haha
This week has been awesome. It has definitely been one of the best weeks I have had here which is pretty hard to beat when I havent had any bad ones haha the first thing that made it awesome was that on Tuesday our speaker for the devotional was Elder Holland!! It was an amazing talk. I have never heard anyone speak with that much power and authority. He talked alot about how his mission means everything to him and I really want to work my hardest and do my best so that I can look back on my mission in the same way. He also talked about how we have more prayers for us then probably anyone and how we should trust in the Lord and it really made me feel like I never should have a reason to feel down or feel discouraged about any situation I am in out here as long as I am working my hardest because the Lord is going to bless me with the things that I need. Hearing him talk really motivated me to always work my hardest and to love the work as I do it. I havent had any problems with that yet and I know that it will be even easier for me to love the work once I get to Fiji.
We also went to in-field orientation on Friday which was really good. They talked a lot about finding people and just all kinds of things that will help us to be better missionaries. One of the things that really stuck out to me from it was the amount of faith that I need to have in every part of this work. I think a lot of the time missionaries get caught up in focusing on how much faith the investigators have when really we as missionaries should have so much faith that they can do these things because we know that it is true and we know how much it can help them.
Sunday was also an awesome day. It was fast sunday and I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting. I talked about a talk that I had read I cant remember who it was by but he said that he was at a funeral of a teenage girl that had died and her father was speaking and one of the things he said was "our families faith is centered on Jesus Christ and is not dependent on outcomes" and then I talked about our situation with Jace and how I am so thankful that I have such good parents that had that same attitude because I cant imagine going through a situation like that in any other way. That is how we need to be in all parts of our lives. We just need to do the best that we can do and trust that the Lord truly does know what is best for us. Even though a lot of the times it may not seem that way. Us 7 Fijians also sang "Come thou Fount" in Fijian for sacrament meeting. I thought it sounded really good. I loveee singing in Fijian. Maybe I will sing you guys a song when I call you on Saturday haha We also had mission conference on Sunday which was really good. And the departure devotional with the MTC presidency. There were 500 of us set to leave this week. Pretty crazy. The MTC presidency is so awesome. You can really feel how much they care about this work and how much they care about us and they are all hilarious haha
The new Fijian district gets in tomorrow so we are getting kicked out of our classroom haha we just have to go into the one next door though because it is empty for another week until the new Tongan district gets in. We met one of them today because he is from Australia and internationals get in on Tuesdays. He knew me and Elder Stocks companion Elder O'Connor that left. He told us that he is getting married in 2 weeks haha pretty crazy!!
Well everything is still going great! I cannot wait to get there on Monday!! It doesnt really even seem real yet though haha I dont know if you guys sent me a package yet our not but the stuff you guys said you would send in the letter is really all I need. I ran out of gel today so hopefully you sent some of that haha Alright well I will talk to you guys on Saturday!!! AU LOMANI KEMUDOU!!

Lomana, Elder Hawk