Wet Keens

Pretty good week this week.

All of our people that we had on date have moved away and haven't been back for a few weeks  which is hard. We'll see them again soon hopefully though.

Sherran is doing good. She has been helping her husband wean off of smoking and has a date set to get married on August 23rd. She was planning on coming to church but then a village chief came and asked her to cook for him so she wasn't able to make it... But next week!

We taught one boy whose parents own an island so that was pretty cool.

It's been raining all week and that's not too fun, had some sicknesses rolling around the flat. Haven't been 100% since probably because it's been really cold here. A whopping 19C That does calculate out to about 70F but man it still feels freezing cold here. I had to go and buy a big fleece blanket because of how freezing it felt.


Vinaha sara vahalevu na veivuhe miau ba solia mai vei au na wehaku mai vale. Loloma yani

Elda G

 Crab

 When the bond money from the old flat rolls in and you feel like a high roller for a few minutes and then the housing coordinator takes the money from you mere minutes later...

too many travels

Well, it was a pretty uneventful week, lots of time spent travelling so not much proselyting could happen but we were able to get some cool stuff done in the time we had!

We were able to visit one less active woman who we had been trying to contact for a bit. In Fijian culture, if your husband wants something you have to listen no questions asked, so when they got married he wanted her to forget everything about the church and leave it all behind so she did. But we finally got in to the house and started talking to her.

We had visited her husband a few times earlier and nothing came out of it. He was a pretty strong Anglican and wasn't too interested in what we had to share. When we came back she said that he had a total change of heart. He was reading the things we left with him and was way more accepting of us coming! He said to never turn the Elders away. You never know, nothing may come of it but it's a testimony builder to me that the Spirit changes hearts. It's nothing that I said, it's nothing that my companion said, it was him and his willingness to open up to the spirit.

We also got to go to District Conference in Labasa. It was a great experience and the spirit was strong there. Plenty of people who are so open to the messages of their leaders. None of the talks were coordinated but themes of tithing and family history definitely emerged which show just how important they are.

Last night at about 2 in the morning this cat started screaming so loud. It had been down the road screaming for a few hours before that but decided to go right under our balcony. My companion started hissing at it to make it stop and groggy me walked out on the balcony and picked up and was attempting to spot it to silence it, but luckily he got away. He has still been screaming down the road as of this morning.

Well, it's been a good week. Love you all!

Elda Gwilliam

Views from Balcony #1 in our flat. 

This baby be chilling

"Jisu, Vinaka." *Right as I start the prayer*

Well it was a different week this week that's for sure. Elda Haderlie is gone and now I'm with Elda Hibbert. He just got off of Tuvalu and is a wonderful Elder

We got the chance to teach and re teach Rose and Derrick for their baptisms. Rose recently turned 8 and Derrick's records were lost and it was awesome to teach them. Definitely makes you have to think really hard about what you say when you are teaching.

Vika, the woman we put on baptismal date last week told us a few days ago she was moving to Labasa for the next month to harvest Sugar Cane over there. It was pretty sad but she said that she still has the desire to be baptized when she returns.

Elda Hibbert and I have beautified our flat a lot today and are currently transitioning it into the most spiritual bachelor pad possible.

Well we have some travels tomorrow so that will be fun, but sorry for the short weekly email. We also have Mission tour which will be awesome!

Loloma Bibi

Elda G

Elda Deters is dead. Heading home after "2 Short years."

We got our eyebrows done. Just for fun

Branch Baptism and a Re-baptism. Glad for the opportunity to see the awesome testimonies of children

Only flat in the FSM with double beds.. One of the bedrooms. 

Right after Derrick got Baptized, he shook my hand and whispered, "Sili Mada" or Swim please and then slowly sunk back into the water and swam away. 

Broken Ankles

Well transfer calls came around, and my ankles have been severely smitten.

We've been able to recover pretty nicely over these past few days. We've had a lot of good progress with people this week! So I guess I'll talk about the people a little bit more. Sharen (The one who read the Book of Mormon in 9 days) is getting married to her husband and plans on being baptized soon after!

We also teach a girl named Mere. She didn't want anything to do with us before, but her brother left on his mission about a month ago and has totally changed. It was an amazing feeling walking into her home when she was listening to church songs and was reading the scriptures when we walked in. The spirit was very strong that lesson and it went great!

We taught a woman named Vika. Her husband had passed away and so we taught her about the plan of salvation. The next time we visited her we taught her about the Restoration of the Gospel and asked her to pray about it. The next visit she was very excited to tell us she read the pamphlet and prayed and knows it's true!

The main part that I always remember is that us missionaries don't do the converting. We just have to be obedient to the standards and hope we can carry the spirit to them. Then it's up to them to accept or reject. If they accept it's nothing that we did in particular but their accepting of the Holy Ghost. Grateful for that in my missionary work. If it wasn't there i'd be wasting my time.

Loloma Bibi

Elda G

Me and Haderlie before he Flew off

Savusavu sunset

She wanted to take a no smile picture