Elder Grotepas : Area 2, Week 9 - Waila, Fiji 11/10/13

Ni sa bula vinaka matavuvale,

How is everything? Everything here is going great. This week was a really good and fast week. It feels like just the other day I was writing the same family letter to you guys. Well it does not help when I emailed you all on Tuesday of last week so it was one day sooner. But this week went by really fast and we had a great time. To start it all off, we all went to the temple on Tuesday and that was a great experience. We do not get the chance to go all that much so it was a blessing for us to go. After that, we had our Zone Training Meeting on Wednesday. It was really good to see the whole zone and how much it is growing and all the progress within it. In our zone, we have an island called Levuka. For half the week, we had those two Elders stay in our flat. Elder Pence and Elder Leota. So it was really good to talk to them and see how the work is moving along there.

This week was also one of the best weeks that we have had here in Waila. We got a total of 13 lessons with training in there also. I know that we could do better and get more but this has been our best. Another really cool thing is that we had 3 investigators come to chuch. Like I talked about last week, we have met a new family from a less active named Tomasi. In his family, he has five kids and four of them are eligible to be baptized. We saw them this week and we had a good lesson with them. They are all All Nations and they have lot of questions. All of them think that the LDS church is false and is a cult, but as we taught them, they began to loosen up and understand more about it. We invited them to be baptized once they know the church is true and a couple of them accepted our invitation. All we have to do is help them gain that testimony and to accept a date to be baptized. They seem to be interested and I think that they will listen and be baptized one day.

We have also found another family about 3 weeks ago that are doing really well. They were once a former investigator and they really like the Elders. They even named one of their daughters after one of the missionaries that lives in Salt Lake City. So they really like the missionaries and they are willing to listen. The mother of the family has lots of questions about the church and she wants to know more about it. The father of the family is really accepting and really likes us. We asked him to say the closing prayer and he said a good prayer about how he knows that this is the church that will help him and his family live together after this life. He said that he knows that he has not done the right thing in not raising his kids up in the church and he wants to change. So we are going to have a member come with us this week and have a lesson together. They know each other so it will be a really good friendshipping opportunity. The family is great and I have faith that they will know the truthfullness of our message and accept our invitation to be baptized. All four of the family.

This week was a really good week for us. We are still trying to find more people to teach and we are trying our hardest to let as many people as we can hear about the church. In the last General Confrence, someone was talking and they were talking right to the missionaries. He said, "If you missionaries want more people to teach, you have to open you mouth more. You have to talk to everyone that you see." This was some really good advice to me because it is so true. The only way that we are going to get more people to teach is if we open our mouths more and talk to everyone about the church. I have made that as a goal for me this week and the next year of my mission to talk to as many people as I can and not let anyone pass through our path.

This week was great and I am always praying for the family. I hope that you all have a great week this week and are protected. I want you to know that I KNOW THAT THE CHURCH IS TRUE!!!

Thanks for everything,

Love,

Elder Grotepas