Monday, December 3, 2012

Back from Nadi! (part 2 of 2)

Bula Vinaka tale!!

Well we just got back from Nadi. It was amazing.. Elder Hamula is the man. We flew over there and we were running around like crazy making sure everyone got there and buying watermelon and drinks and ordering 10 huge pizzas and stuff but once the meeting started it was awesome. He talked a ton about getting rid of anything that is holding us back and just really serve with a willing heart and give all we have to the Lord. He talked about giving our will to the Lord because that is the only thing that we can give him that is actually ours to give. It was cool because his wife spoke to us too and she talked about Christmas and about asking ourselves "what can we give for the Lord?" and I think it is so cool that we have done that as our Christmas tradition for a long time. I know now that we write to Jace but it is still the same idea. Now we get to do the whole meeting again tomorrow but here in Suva. Then on Wednesday we have another zone leader council meeting with Elder Hamula there and me and Elder Estill have to account for the work the mission has done this year. It should be good though since we had such an awesome year.

So back to things in kind of a chronological order.. haha after the ZLC on Friday we had our combined mission zone conference on Saturday. It was pretty insane having 80 missionaries all staying in Suva and us driving around like crazy in our vans picking up people and dropping them off. The zone conference was amazing. Me and Elder Estill gave a training to the whole mission all at once and it was definitely one of the highlights of my mission. I learned so much from it myself as we were giving it and the spirit was so strong in the room. I love all of the missionaries in our mission so much. They are all doing really good work. Our training was about having a bigger vision of missionary work which will lead us to really feel its significance and give us a sense of urgency to work hard and get it done. I used the video clips from Elder Holland's talk at conference where he talked about how the gospel is supposed to change the world. It is actually really awesome because Danielle sent me that quote a few weeks ago and that is what inspired me to use that for the training and it was perfect. He is such a powerful speaker and that was like the best part of the training, just watching those videos, so thanks Danielle! Then at the end of it I read 2 Nephi 1:25-26 I think where it talks about arise from the dust and be men, and to shake off the chains with which ye are held bound. I talked about pretty much the same thing Elder Hamula talked about, giving up all the things we were before the mission and really living up to the significance of this work that we are doing right now. O yeah another way cool part of it was that I read a scripture from John where it talks about how the sower and the reaper will rejoice together and talked about how this week I was on splits with Elder Lauti in Nasinu while his comp did our baptismal interviews and that is the area that I served in for 2 weeks, and he told me that he was looking through the area book and 3 people that I found while I was serving there for those 2 weeks were eventually baptized. I felt so happy and so blessed with the feeling that I had done what I needed to do while I was there. It was so awesome. After the training I felt like we had just won the state championship or something haha but it was a way better feeling than I have ever had from winning anything in sports. I just felt so pumped up and excited and blessed to be here and to be doing this amazing work with all of these amazing people.

Then that night we had everyone at the mission home for dinner and that was way awesome and then we went over to the chapel and had our Christmas party. All of the zones had prepared like dances and stuff. Our zone's was way sweet. We did this Samoan slap dance. We are going to be making a video of it all so I will send that to you when it is done. We also made a way sweet slide show so I will send that to you guys too. I wrote this way funny song about all of the stupid stuff that all the senior couples and us in the office have to deal with with missionaries calling in and complaining about stuff. It was way funny. I got up and sang it in front of the whole mission haha It was to the tunes of lots of different Christmas songs. I was pretty proud of myself because I didn't know that I had that much creativity in me haha it was really cool.

Then the last highlights of the week on Sunday was that Kevin and Yungyung got bapitzed!!! It was such an awesome baptismal service. I was soo happy for both of them and they were soo happy too. I got a really good picture of all of us so I will have to send that to you guys. Kevin is going back to China for a little while for some business stuff but he should be back in a couple of months. They are both the man. We have a lot of other investigators too that will get baptized if we can just find the time to see them. I am really excited because after this week we should have a lot more time to proselyte. Then on Sunday night we had a big Christmas fireside with the all the missionaries and there was a couple hundred members that showed up for it. It was pretty powerful having 80 missionaries singing those songs. The spirit was really strong there. Elder Stock was conducting and he was the man. He made some funny jokes and said some really good stuff. He said that next November his family is renting this big catamaran boat thing in the carribean that fits 12 people. I guess his dad does it every year and they just sail it themselves and go all around. He said that I am invited to go so don't make any big plans for me next November. haha

Well this has been the most exhausting week of my life, physically, mentally, spiritually, everything haha it has really stretched us pretty far but everything has turned out so amazing. I feel so blessed to be here at such an exciting time. I am learning so much. It will be exciting to get to be with Elder Hamula some more for this next couple days. I know that we will learn a lot from him. Well I love you all so much! I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that he loves all of us. I have felt so much of His love this week. How blessed we are to have such a loving Heavenly Father, and the great gospel of His son to bring us happiness in this life and in the life to come!! Au lomani kemudou!!

Loloma levu, Elder Hawk

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