Area 4, Week 21 - Naduna, Vanua Levu, Fiji - 10/12/14

Well, everything here is pretty much the same. It is still Fiji and we are still doing missionary work. For about a day and a half this week, I was in Savusavu on exchanges with our Zone Leaders, and then after that, we just worked in our area. Just a normal week for us. Oh yeah, one big thing is that the Fiji Suva Temple closed this week due to needed repairs :( It will open in about 2 years.

The weather here is changing quite a bit. About 5 of the 7 days this week it has just poured. This is the most rain that I have seen in 5 months. You think that it would be the opposite way. I thought that Fiji was going to be just jungle and raining all the time.  But it is way different in this part of Fiji.  It is actually very dry and doesn't get a lot of rain, but it still is paradise :). It was actually kind of fun this week with all the rain because it got all the roads really muddy and we were able to get the truck pretty muddy! I will send you a picture of it.

I would like to share one thing with you all that really helped me this week. So as we were planning this week, I had a thought to meet one of our investigators that we have put on the back burner for a little while. We had planned to see him in 2 weeks from now but I had a thought to see him now. Also during this week, we were invited by our mission president to give out more Book of Mormons. They have ordered double the amount and they want us to give them out more. So I had a thought to teach this man about the Book of Mormon and get him reading it sense it is the only way he can know that what we are sharing is true. So we set up a time of the day to go over and see him and see if we could sit down with him.

So we went over to his house and we able to sit down with him. As we started to talk with him, he began to say that he did not have to much time to sit down with us. So, we started to talk about the Book of Mormon with him. So I pulled out a Book of Mormon to talk about the story behind it and also the purpose of the book. By his actions and how well he was paying attention, you could kind of tell that he was out of it a bit. So, Elder Walls pulled out a Book of Mormon written in Hindi and gave it to him. Holy crap, did his attitude change once he saw that book! He said that he has been looking for scriptures in Hindi that he can read from. He asked us how much it was and we told him that it was free and he just jumped for joy. He then started to ask more questions about it and even committed to reading it.

This really strengthened my testimony on how people are more willing to accept something if it is in their own language. I feel bad that I cannot really connect with half of the population here in Fiji by speaking their language but I have been called to speak Fijian not Hindu. We still visit them and teach them everything in English. I am glad that this mission is starting the Hindi program to bless more lives throughout Fiji. I know that God is helping everyone everywhere to hear the gospel in their own language. But I do have a strong testimony that everyone needs to hear the gospel in their own language and it will hit them more powerfully.

We were also able this week to have those same nonmembers come to church again. They even brought 2 more people with them. So there is about a total of 5 potential investigators that we are going to try to talk to this week. They range in an age from about 14 to 21. It is a good blessing for Naduna because we need something to boost up our faith. This is going to be one of our biggest goals for this week. We need to start teaching them and helping them to know more about the Gospel. We are really going to get the youth involved in teaching them and even have some of them teach some of the lessons.

We still are working on finding more people to teach. We are finding and teaching at the moment but we need to find more interested and prepared souls. We are working hard and involving the Lord in our area also. 

Well that is pretty much for the week. Everything is going great. We are excited because we are going to go down to Taveuni this week and get to meet a general authority named Elder Coward. It is going to be way fun.

The days are going by fast and the weeks even faster. I cannot believe how fast it is going by.

I love you all very much and wish you all a good week.

Kauta tani na bula gogo. Try to figure out what that means this week and that is my advice to you all.

Love,

Elder Grotepas

Me and VJ waiting to plant some Kasava

Just doing some missionary work!

Same with the other district!