Elder Grotepas : Area 1, Week 12 - Nasinu, Fiji 5/26/13

Beautiful Sunset

Dear family,

How is everything going? I am so jealous that you are in Lava! I miss it there being with the whole family. But, I will be back there sooner than you know it. Well this week has been really good. It has gone by fast. The main thing that happened is that we finally had our baptism for Ana and Neitani. It was a good day yesterday.

Well this week we have not had really anything much new besides the baptism yesterday. On Tuesday of last week, we had the privilege to go to the Suva Temple. It was really cool and exciting. It had been a while since I had been to the temple. We woke up at like 5 in the morning to go. We had to ride a bus for a half and hour then walk 15 minutes. It was really cool to go there. Because we went to the temple on Tuesday it interfered with our district meeting. So we had that on Wednesday instead of Tuesday. So this week our schedule was a little bit different. It was really good to go to the temple and have some rest for a little bit, to take away a bit of stress. I look forward to going there again.

Well this week we found a new investigator. Her name is Joana Moce. She is an older woman from a little island named Matanuku off the coast of Kandavu. She does not speak one bit of English. We met her through an investigator that we are teaching now named Violet. I have already told you about her. When we went over to see Violet she had Joana there and she wanted to hear the gospel. Violet had already taught her most everything! We started the lesson and said a couple sentences and then she just took over after that. I felt kind of weird because we are the missionaries and we should be teaching but our investigator was teaching her! It is all good though! It was good for her to do that since we are not always going to be with her to teach her friends about the gospel. So it taught her about how to share the gospel! Violet knows that the church is true and wants to be baptized but she is still waiting on her and her fiance's wedding. They are planning on getting married in October. Going back to Joana, she will be going back to her island this week Tuesday. She is really interested and said that she wants the missionaries to come to her island near Kandavu. She says that she is really good friends with the cheif of the island and she said that the chief would allow it and he would sit in on the lessons and study with them. It would be really cool if me and Elder Ishibashi were the ones that helped get an island converted, to be the first to teach a person and start that plant in their hearts. She said that it is like a 120 dollar boat ride to the island there. So it might be a once a month thing. She said that she really likes us and what we teach. They were able to come to church and stay for the baptism that we had for Ana and Neitani. They really liked it a lot.

Sundays here have been stressful. It seems like everyone wants to talk to us after Sacrament Meeting. We have about four people trying to talk to us at a time and they all need our help. Our ward mission leader needs to talk to us, we have a person that wants to hear the gospel (which is great), we have someone asking for a white shirt that we have for him, we have kids wanting to shake our hands, we have a baptism to get ready for, Bishop wants to talk to us, and we have to find a key to get into the door! Man it is so stressful. Also we had a fireside last night. I had to talk in it so that was on my mind all day long also. The fireside went really good and my talk went good also. It was in English because it was a combined English and Fijian Ward fireside. But then after it was all over, we got a call from Ana and Neitani's parents and they wanted to know where they were at. We had no idea so we were really stressed out and needed to help find out where they were. We ended up calling one of the members that Ana and Neitani had become friends with, the Vesikula's. Lukily, they said that they were over there. Man we thought that they were lost or something but they made it home okay and they were safe. Yesterday was maybe the most stressful day that I have had on the mission. It was all good though.

That was pretty much my week. It was really good. I cannot believe how fast these weeks are going by. My training program is done. My mission is going by so fast.

I love you all very much and miss you all. Thanks you for everything you have done.

Love,

Elder Grotepas