Finally Cooking!

Week 14

02nd March 2015

This week was a challenging one.. we only taught six lessons this whole week! It was starting to get to me, but as my Zone Leader Elder Caballa says, the work is done - there is nothing more we can do than turn up ready for the appointment.. even if it is cancelled. We did however, do tonnes of OYM's. (Open Your Mouth) The mission standard for one week is only 50, but this week we got to 152. So while there's nothing big happening with the work out here at the moment we just keep it moving along and do everything we can. At the end of the day, free agency is a gift for all!

This week though, I've started noticing big advancements in my language, not big steps, but little ones to the point that I can hold a decent conversation with other missionaries and those I talk to. Hopefully this coming week is a better week for lessons. I am learning more of the "missionary" vocabulary in Tagalog too.

On Saturday we played basketball like we always do at our chapel, and there was heaps of people! The Relief Society and Young Women in our branch were doing zumba inside, some people were playing table tennis, and the rest were outside playing and watching basketball. All the people sitting on the side kept telling me to dunk it every time I got the ball in the game, and when I finally did - it wasn't clean at all - they all went crazy hahaha. It was weird!

The Zone Leaders came out our ways this week because the other missionaries assigned to the branch have a baptism scheduled for next Saturday with one of their investigators. The interview went well, and everything is well on the way. 

Sunday though, was a good day. We had 4 investigators come to church, so our Gospel Principles class was pretty full of investigators and fellowshippers, instead of just us missionaries. We did some work, then went to the Paete Elders apartment, which is where we stayed last night so we could all come do our e-mails together.

It's hot every day here.... when I get home and change my white collar is brown every night! Lucky I have plenty of shirts.... about to head off and do some more washing!

This week we will be focusing on contacting referrals, contacting those we OYM'd, and we will continue working with those investigators who we are teaching already. We also have Zone Conference and Zone Meetings scheduled for this coming week.

My companion is great. We usually eat out but this month we're going to try and budget our money by cooking more because it's gotta last 31 days - including a trip to San Pablo, and the possibility of being transferred. 

I cooked for us all after our District meeting last Wednesday, rice and corn beef lol....Corn beef, onions and sprite all mixed together adds extra buzz to the cornbeef lol. The ZL's told me to add sprite to add some buzz.

We had a less-active member come to basketball two weeks ago, and he attended church the next day. He did the same this past weekend, and as it was testimony meeting, he bore his testimony, saying that he never wants to go less-active again and wants to invite everyone he knows to come to church and read the Book of Mormon. He asked us to start teaching his partner, which we will start doing this Wednesday. 

Lots of love x

Elder Finau, Elder Tuivaiti, Elder Crichton, Elder Faka'i, Elder MacMillan