ikorakora!

Bula vinaka!

Well I cannot believe that the time has come for me to send my last email to you guys before I will see you this week. It doesn't seem real to me at all haha Serving on Kadavu is way different from serving anywhere else in the mission. For some reason when you serve here you just kind of feel like you are apart of the life here and you kind of forget about everything else and just work. It is such an amazing place to be able to finish my mission. It has made it really easy for me to be able to stay focused and finish strong. This week we actually taught the most lessons that I have taught in one week in my whole stay in Kadavu so that was exciting for my last full week here. We also had our 4 baptisms which was so awesome!!!! Some of the best baptisms of my whole mission. What a blessing. I will talk a little more about that in a minute. The zone leaders were also here this last week to come and do all the interviews and stuff. One of them is Elder Peleseuma who is the Samoan elder that we were on Tuvalu with. He actually served here on Kadavu before he went to Tuvalu and now is the Suva ZL so that was really fun for him to get to come back here and see the people that he knows. 

Well I don't think that I told you guys last week but do you remember Ratu Sela? He is the guy that we baptized a few weeks ago. Well the week after his baptism he slipped back a bit and drank and he came home and got mad at his daughter and hit her. And it really wasn't a huge deal because that is pretty normal here but for some reason the mom was really mad so she went and reported him to the police and he got locked up and had to go to Suva this week to get judged. He is all good though and just got a warning and will be coming back this week. It has been so cool though to see how God really knows what he is doing in this work and how he needs to teach people. At first I was really nervous because the whole time his wife has been really iffy about the church and kind of against it and then when this happened I thought that she was going to totally blame it all on him being baptized but it actually had the opposite effect. She completely has turned around and said that she knows that this is the true church because he was baptized and then slipped and messed up again and instantly God had this stuff happen to him to teach him. It also gave us a lot of opportunities to serve them. This week we did service for them for like 5 hours. We went to the bush and cut a TON of firewood and bundled it up and carried it to their house and then chopped it up into smaller pieces and then went and chopped 2 more trees to make poles and made them a new clothes line and we also got the relief society president and branch president here involved and we were able to get them some fast offering money and went and bought them a bunch of food and took it to them. I already loved that family soo much but being able to serve them like that this week just gave me an even greater feeling of love for them. The 2 kids got baptized yesterday and the mom is now saying that she wants to be baptized this week as soon as Ratu gets back haha she will have to come to church a few more times first though. It also really softened the hearts of a lot of people around them. Kadavu is probably the hardest hearted people in all of Fiji (which is really still nothing compared to the rest of the world but it seems bad to me because I am used to most other Fijians haha) they are great people though. But a lot of people here talk bad about the church but this week we heard that a lot of people around here were saying "see this is the true church, they are Christlike and help others" so that was pretty awesome too. That day of service my companion got sunburned for the first time in his life because the sun was so hot that day and his eyes got super swollen the next morning. It was crazy haha. we worked our butts off. Thanks for teaching me how to work hard dad! haha

Other than that the other highlight of this week was yesterday. This whole week we visited all the less actives and investigators and we had all of the transport set up to get everyone to church and everyone was super excited and ready to come and we woke up yesterday morning and it was POURING rain and I prayed really hard that we could at least have some good weather for church and the baptisms. O yeah we also bought 2 big bundles of fish and we made kokoda which is raw fish with the lemon juice and coconut milk stuff and that is what we took for our contribution for the food on Sunday haha everyone loved it!! It was funny too because they said we are like the first elders ever to actually bring food on a day that everyone eats together at the chapel haha but back to the story. so we walked to the chapel and the rain had already stopped but we got there and called one of the members who was supposed to be bringing a President Korologa and all the members from Tavuki side and he said he wasn't coming because of the bad weather, too little faith that the Lord would prepare the way... ha but anyways.... I was calling around like crazy trying to find another way to get all those members here and finally I got a hold of someone there in the village that took the phone to President Korologa and I told him to just hire a boat from his village and they could just come. So all the members from Vunisea came and I started sacrament meeting and once that was over the people from Tavuki showed up on the boat and we had the baptism. Inoke, Kalesi, Tuqara and Onorina all got baptized. It was one of the best baptisms of my mission. The spirit was really strong and you could just feel the happiness and excitement that everyone had. It was great. After the baptisms Elder Tekenimatang and me were walking out of the ocean and I looked at him and then tackled him into the water hahaha it was pretty funny. 

Well I guess that is it for this week. Hopefully the weather gets better by Friday so my flight doesn't gt messed up so I can see you guys. Still doesn't seem real haha The members from Vunivesi made the zone leaders there call the AP's to call me and ask me when I am coming there with you guys haha so I am pretty sure we are going to have a nice party there haha that will be so awesome. They make the best food I have ever had! You guys also better start stretching and practice sitting cross legged on the ground! haha I am way excited to see McKay as well!! I have hardly talked to him since I have been gone. He would never email me back haha  Well see you Friday!!! Au lomani kemudou!!