Elder Zachary Harris—Fiji Suva Mission: Tuvalu

One year older and wiser(hopefully) too!

Talofa taina mo tuagaene i te taeao gali tenei.

Man it has been one of those mentally exhausting weeks that ends up being really rewarding in the end! This week was a pretty crazy ride. The beginning of the week was way stressful! Every lesson we went to, something would go wrong and it would fall through and we would be left with hardly anything to do. We spent a ton of time just walking all over the island trying to find someone to talk to or teach. To make matter's worse, one of our most solid investigators who was preparing for baptism like disappeared. No one knew where she went or where she was staying. We were pretty bummed out most of the week. But towards the end of the week we started to see some results from our hard work and got some great lessons the last couple of days! I think it was a bit of a test for us to see if we would keep working or not, so I'm glad we stuck it out!

S____ is still doing fantastic, and it has been 5 weeks since she has smoked. She wants to wait for her husband though, so they can get baptized together! The only problem is that her husband was one of our many fall-throughs of the week so we're going to have to work hard to find a good time to sit with him. Haha island time is so stressful.

I turned 19 this week! I wasn't sure exactly what day to celebrate because the 28th was actually the 27th in America but the 29th wasn't the 28th.... So I just celebrated both days! Nah just kidding I just did the normal routine of missionary work haha. But Elder Paki had his birthday two days after mine! So we ended up just eating a lot of TimTams (this amazing chocolate cookie) because we didn't have any cake:( But it was all good and fun!

On Saturday night Brother Niko showed up and asked me to talk in church the next morning! I was way excited (which doesn't make sense because I hate speaking in front of people) and also really nervous because I didn't have that much time to prepare for the talk and for my Tuvaluan. I wasn't really sure what to speak on, so I decided to kneel down and pray about it. While I was praying, an impression, actually a question, popped into my mind, "What is the meaning of a disciple of Christ?" So I figured I would talk on that:)

I studied a bit and came up with 6 principles of a disciple of Jesus Christ:

1. A disciple of Christ is willing to give up anything to follow Jesus Christ.

2. A disciple of Christ listens to His word and is obedient to it.

3. A disciple of Christ follows Christ's admonition to "love one another."

4. A disciple of Christ is completely loyal to Christ at all times, in all things, and in all places.

5. A disciple of Christ is a missionary!

6. A disciple of Christ is not ashamed of the gospel.

It really helped me understand what I can improve on to become a disciple of Christ and serve Him. And I hoped it helped our branch members in Tuvalu as well (if they understood me....).

Have a good week:)