Week #40

Bula Vinaka Matavuvale! Man this week has been one of the best trials ever! Recently I listened to a talk by Richard G. Scott entitled, "Transforming power of faith and character.” One of the things stated in his talk is that we can convert the trials we face in this life into steps of happiness! Never really realized that until this week. This week a lot of the people we planned to see were busy and the majority of our lessons fell through. The first thing Satan wanted me to do was to be discouraged........ So I tried to do the opposite of that! On Wednesday we went to Moturiki only to find out that the member who lets us stay the night was yali tu (GONE). She was in Suva, which fried all our plans of visiting our 7 investigators in Moturiki. I will admit that it was hard to stay positive in this situation and it wasn't until the end of the day that I was a witness to a miracle. When I first heard that she was gone in Suva I had no idea what to do..... Her family was the only place possible for us to stay the night on the island and I wasn't about to let my companion and I get stranded on an island for the night. So we went to go and say a prayer. We felt like we should leave Moturiki because the Lord had other plans for us to do. We called Deni, our captain and he said he'd come by in about 2 hours to pick us up. So we used those two hours to be directed by the Lord where to go. We felt like we needed to see our investigator Siti first. In that lesson he told us he wasn't liking the ways of his AOG church and that he remembered what we shared with him and asked us if we knew of a way that he could come to our church. We were happy to explain to him how to get to our church! After this visit we were confused where to go next. We weren't getting any solid promptings of where to go so we stayed put. A few minutes later an older guy came up to us and started just talking to us about our church. He told us that he was from an outer island off of Moturiki. We shared with him just a little bit about our church and he told us he wants us to come out to his island. He just has to get the chiefs permission first. The funniest thing about that whole conversation was that he had us sit on top of someone's grave and teach him the lesson. It was cool haha NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE!!! I can cross that off my bucket list! Within our limited two hours of being in Moturiki the Lord showed us what to do. I should have never got discouraged. Heavenly Father had it all under control! The rest of the day was led by the Lord. Trucks came by that picked us up at specific times that if we hadn't gotten the ride we wouldn't have been able to see those that we did. Our Wednesday was His Wednesday. The rest of the day our appointments fell through but Heavenly Father did not abandon us. He told us which houses to go to and who to see and what we needed to say. We found 5 new investigators this week and I've never done more OYMing in my entire life. Our week was his week and because we were doing his work he was with us in His work! Trials strengthen our faith and if we endure them with good character it will make us even stronger later on in our service. That's probably the biggest thing I have learned this week. I've really been trying to give this work my all but sometimes like Nephi in Nephi chapter 4, I let my natural man and sinful state discourage me. This week has been so directed by the Lord I cannot even begin to describe it to you. Promptings from the Holy Ghost are real and the power of God is more than a feeling, it is a reality. On Thursday we did some service for one of our investigators who lives in Waitovu. We got to use our seles and trim his bushes. It was some legit hard work and my forearm kills! Now I know why fijians are so ripped hahaha! On Friday we were invited to feel the hectic emotions of trying to get married. On Friday at 10:00 in the morning Akuila and Koula were scheduled to get married. We sat outside the courthouse with them for about 2 hours until this guy came out and said that the guy who was supposed to marry them was in Suva! I was like NO WAY ARE YOU KIDDING ME. But Akuila was madly in love and set on being married on Friday no matter what HAHAHA. They started asking us if we had the legal authority to marry and we told them haha...no. After trying to contact our Branch President for an hour he finally showed up. We asked him if he had the authority to marry and he said he didn't know. So we took it to a higher authority and called the stake president. He bought Akuila and koula boat tickets to come out to Suva to be married on Saturday. Long story short, Akuila and Koula got married. Friday night Akuila called us three times at 3:00 in the morning asking if he could take our camera to Suva to capture their wedding. It was a pretty stressful day....and night. He was going to be baptized this Sunday but since they were in Suva we had to push it to next Sunday. Which actually works out perfectly because our other investigator Sakaraia is being baptized next Sunday too. So they can be baptized together now! One thing I learned from Friday is that Satan really really REALLY did not want our investigator Akuila to be married! This work is the best and I love the Lord! I miss you all and will be excited to tell you this next week goes!

Much Love, Elder Jonutz

Pictures from Week #39 (no letter because of Skype call on Mother's Day)