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Bula noqu matavuvale!

Well this week was pretty awesome. The work here and the branch is
progressing a lot faster than I expected. We are definitely being
blessed a lot. My English is getting worse I can tell haha awesome.

This last week started off awesome on Monday night. We went and
taught a man named Tomu. It was him, his wife, his cousin, and another
lady that lives at their house in the lesson. It was our first lesson
with him and as we sat down and started to explain ourselves and our
purpose as missionaries and stuff like that we asked him some
questions about himself and he told us that he grew up in the AOG
church but as he got older he never felt any peace about it and so he
left and he went to the new Methodist church and he became a talatala
(preacher) there and he was really involved in that for a while but he
said it came to the point where every time he came home he never felt
any peace about it and so one day he went to preach and he said he
couldn't do it anymore because he knew it wasn't right so he left that.
and he said after that he went over to Nadi and he was having a hard
time and he kept praying that the lord would help him to find the
truth in his life that would bring him the peace that he was always
wanted. and he said that ever since then he goes to the Methodist
church every few weeks but he knows it isn't true and he said to this
day i am still searching for the truth. we were kind of shock and how
prepared he was but the spirit was really strong and we just explained
a few teaching about the church and the BOM and answered some of the
questions that he had and then bore our testimonies. He told us that
every Monday at 7 o clock his house is our house and he will be there
with his family to listen to our message. We left and we could not
stop talking about it all night haha I just wanted to go back there
and teach him everything right then and show him that the Lord is
answering his prayer right now. so we have been excited all week for
tonight to go and teach them again. we have so many awesome
investigators right now and it is great because they are all couples
and families and stuff like that that will really strengthen the
branch a ton if we can help them get baptized.

The branch is doing so much better already. this week there was 26
members at church which is almost all the members on this side of the
island. We have some more less actives that we are working with so
hopefully we can get them coming too. it is just so hard to get around
the island so it is super hard for people to get to church but we have
a lot of good plans to help them out . We had a way powerful testimony
meeting that I know strengthened all of our testimonies about the
church and really lifted all the members spirits. after church all the
members were all super happy and spirits were high so hopefully we can
keep it up. it was definitely a good start. we also had a meeting with
the branch presidency. I am actually the 2nd counselor haha I might
have told you that already. But the meeting was awesome. We are going
to start giving the members callings and getting all of the auxiliaries
and stuff set up with teachers and leaders. I think it will help the
members out a ton to have responsibility like that to help them want
to come to church. We also planned ways to have certain boats go to
some other villages to pick some members and have them pay part of the
cost and the church budget to pay part of it so that should help us
get some more of the less actives to start coming back. We are really
excited about the way things are going.

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This last week we also went up to the other end of the island to the
other unit that is here. it is pretty much just one really strong
family and a few other people around there. We are teaching a family
though that the mom is a member and has started coming back so she has
3 kids that we will baptize next time we go there and hopefully we can
keep working with her husband and help him join as well. they are a
great family.

When we go up there we ride the ferry boat up there on Thursday and
stay at those members house until Sunday and then ride a little fiber
boat back. The ride back in the little fiber boat is like an hour and
a half and it is gorgeous because we get to see like that whole side
of the island. There is a bunch of white sandy beaches along there
that are pretty much untouched.

The members house that we stay at up there in Kavala has LOTS of rats.
If you don't cover your feet at night they come and start chewing on
your feet just like in the other side of heaven and you just here them
running around the tin all night haha the toilet is just a dug out
outhouse with a small tin shelter around it and the shower is just a
pipe outside with a few pieces of tin thrown up as "walls" pretty
awesome. we definitely get to live the real Fijian life while we are
there. cook with firewood and everything. it was cool. the last night
we were there some people that we taught gave us some fish and we took
it back and ate it and I think it was bad because I got pretty sick
and had to run outside to the outhouse a few times in the night haha
after that one day I was all good though.

Well everything is going awesome. We are working really hard and we are
being blessed because of it. The Lord is preparing a lot of people
here to strengthen this branch. I am really sad that I  have such a
short time left and would love to extend my mission but I know that I
will just work as hard as I can with the time that I have left and do
my best to do what the Lord sent me here to do. Au lomani kemudou!!

Loloma, Elder Hawk