WOW! How about that announcement!?? Right when Elder Muir, one of our senior couple missionaries told us I instantly thought of Rand. I know that he will pray and fast about it and make the right decision for him. Just because they changed it does not mean everyone should go right at 18. It will be hard if he leaves before I get home but no matter what he does I will just be glad that he goes. That is way funny that he was homecoming king! haha he is the man. Shows the world that you don't have to do all the things the rest of the world is doing to be popular and liked. People will like and respect us even more when we live the standards of the church. We just got to listen to the audio of the Saturday morning session this morning because Elder Muir put it on my flash drive for me. He is going to download the other audios onto my flash when he gets them in the next few days so I will be way excited to get to listen to them. We won't get to watch any of it until the 28th of this month when hopefully we will get to see 2 of the sessions for church.
Well this week was really awesome. Lots more traveling. On Tuesday we were up in Labasa and we did our zone training meeting there. Came back to savusavu that night. Then woke up Wednesday morning for the 3 hour bus ride and then 2 hour boat ride to Taveuni and then did our zone training meeting there with those elders. Then woke up on Thursday morning and did the 2 hour boat ride and then the 3 hour bus ride all over again haha pretty crazy. But our trainings went really good. We are really excited though because this week we actually get to be in our area for the full week! I think that will only be the 2nd time in the whole time that I have been here haha
In Taveuni I met Sister Maiwiriwiri's dad! That picture is of me and him, so you will have to send that to Harry so that he can show it to her. Me and Elder Moaalii had to meet with the district president because that is one of the things we have to do as ZL's and her dad was at the church so I was talking to him about how you guys took his daughter to lunch in Florida and stuff and he thought that was pretty cool haha Taveuni is a cool place too because the international date line runs through the island, so technically it is a different day on the 2 different sides of that island but they don't follow it haha But it is cool that we are the first ones to live the new day every single day.
So the work here in our area is still exploding. We are having 2 baptisms again out in Vunivesi this sunday. Semi didn't pass his interview yet because we found out that he smokes so we will have to help him with that before he can get baptized. He is the man though. We should also have like 5 more baptisms next month which will be way awesome. One of the guys we are teaching is an 80 year old man named Inoke. He is the one that just called us over to his house one day while we were walking through his village. We were on exchanges this week because of baptismal interviews and so me and Elder Inu went and taught him and we had a way awesome lesson with him about baptism and he was just explaining to us all these reasons why he knows that his baptism as a child was wrong and how he has such a desire to be baptized by us because he knows it is the right baptism and we used the picture book thing and I explained to him about receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost after baptism and we showed the picture of the girl with the hands on her head receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and he started bearing his testimony and he started to cry and told us how when he sees those hands he felt like they were the hands of God that will be giving him this great gift. He bore testimony of his desire to be baptized and receive that peace in his life before he passes away so that he can pass in peace and know that he will be received by God. It was way powerful. He is the man. I love him so much.
So my favorite talk by FAR that I heard just from conference so far was President Uchdorfs talk from the Saturday morning session. It was amazing. How he just talked about living life and enjoying the journey and being happy with every day that we live and making the most out of our lives and becoming who our Heavenly Father wants us to be. I felt so blessed to have lived such an amazingly happy and blessed life so far and am so looking forward to everyday that I still have to become a better person and be happy! this life is so great!!! What a blessing. And what an amazing blessing and opportunity I am living now by being here in Fiji and serving the Lord. I have honestly never felt such happiness in my life as I have this past year and a few months. I am going to continue to enjoy everyday of it. My favorite of his many amazing quotes from the talk was "don't wait until we are ready to die before we truly learn to live" I feel so blessed to know how to truly live when I still have to much life ahead of me, and that way to live is to live this gospel to its fullest and enjoy its blessings in our lives. I love you all so much and am so thankful for the times that we have had and the many more to come!! Au lomani kemudou!!!
Loloma, Elder Hawk
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