Tuvalu - Week 20

To vave te taimi

Taaaaaalofa!  Man I love Tuvalu and everybody here!  This week has been so good and lots of great things are happening here.  First of all, we have Soo's baptism scheduled for this week!  I know I sound like the boy who cried wolf, but I think this week it is actually going to happen!  She is doing really good and super excited, so I hope everything will work out.  It has been a roller-coaster working with her these past 4 months, so this will be really meaningful to see her be baptized.

All of our other investigators are doing well also.  Logotau is doing great and progressing really well towards baptism at the end of the month.  He says he can feel the Spirit as he goes to church and meets with us, which is great!  He is a really funny guy and loves to make fun of Utah people, simply because that's where I'm from!  Haha Tuvaluans are the best.  

Another investigator Ali, has been an investigator for a long long time, but he just gets too distracted with the business of life to come to church and prepare for baptism, so I tried a curveball approach....  Every lesson we get him to pray at the end even though he doesn't like it, so I told him if he comes to church he doesn't have to pray in the lessons!  And it worked!  He's been two weeks in a row now and even shows up early!  Haha sometimes you just have to use a little "island flavor" ;)

In other news my hair is getting kinda long...it hasn't been cut since August!  The problem is there are no barbers here in Tuvalu, and the person who used to cut our hair went to school in Taiwan....  We have been trying to find one of the members to cut our hair but it's hard because  they're all busy.   The other day I looked out the window and saw one of our neighbors holding up a broken off rear view mirror to his face and cutting his own hair with scissors!  I may have to resort to that in a week or two.....

Also Tuvalu had their 37th Independence celebration this week!  There was a big festival going on on Thursday with dancing and lots of food, and the President of Kiribati came and spoke to Tuvalu!  Unfortunately we were sick that day, but we saw a few of the events on other days.  It was really cool!

That's all I can think to write this week.  I hope you all enjoyed conference!  Not sure when I'll be able to watch it, but I know that we do have a living prophet and apostles on the earth!

Alofa atu

Elder Harris

This is a pic of me in a hat made out of coconut tree leaves made by our recent convert Teruka.

Elder Paki

This is Teruka.  He is one super kid who loves to play basketball every chance he gets.  He was baptized right before I came to Tuvalu and hasn't missed a Sunday since he's been baptized!