Samabula - Week 17

Vodo waqa yani vuka lesu mai

Bula vinaka!

It's been a great week!  We had a big meeting with the leaders in the mission where some awesome things happened, and then we took a little trip to one of the outer islands.  And all the while preparing for two baptisms next week!

So we had our Mission Leadership Council this week here in Samabula with President and Sister Layton and all the leaders around the mission.  It was so good!  We had been facing a bunch of issues around the mission, and this meeting was a game changer.  There were a few changes implemented and some great trainings by both President and Sister Layton.  Sister Layton spoke about courage, and how we sometimes have to be courageous to stand for the right.  She shared a quote by Gordon B Hinckley, "The price of leadership is loneliness. The price of adherence to conscience is loneliness. The price of adherence to principle is loneliness. I think it is inescapable."  It was way good and gave everyone a needed boost.

The next day Elder Faamoe and I got to go out to an island called Kadavu.  It is south of the main island, probably about as big as Taveuni, but really unique compared to other big islands because of how far away it is.  There are two elders out there, Elder Miller and Elder Solomon, so we went out to do an exchange with them and see how the work is going there.  We got on a boat at 9:00 p.m. in Suva and got off in Kadavu at 1:00 p.m. the next day.  It was long!  We slept on the floor with all the other Fijians haha it was an adventure.  I couldn't really sleep because they were playing this Chinese action movie which was really loud, but it was definitely a memory maker.  We spent the day with the elders in a village newer to the church where they are looking to make a new unit of the church.  Kadavu is beautiful!  It probably has the nicest beaches I've seen in Fiji.  We flew back on Saturday.

We found out last Monday that Vilikesa got called to a 3-week deployment type thing for his job as a police officer.  So he won't be getting baptized until December.  But Lesi is all set for this week to be baptized!  And also remember that Korean family?  They kind of disappeared for awhile but now they are back and moved into a house in our area.  They wanted the sisters to teach the girls and us to teach James, their 14 year old son.  So we've been teaching him trying to get him ready for next week to be baptized.  He is doing good trying to learn the gospel (they weren't Christian before) and English.  We usually have a translator to help us teach him but yesterday we didn't, so he just pulled out his phone and we used an app like Google Translate to teach!  We hardly spoke at all, but the Spirit was so strong just communicating simple truths of the gospel to him in his native language.  Talk about the gift of tongues(or thumbs)!  Also Kesa and her husband are doing really well.  We committed them both to baptism but because of his work schedule it probably won't happen until late December.

Loloma bibi,

  

Elder Harris