Week #43

Bula noqu Matavuvale!.....Not sure where to quite begin this week! I'm sure you all want to know what happened for transfers so I'll save that for the end of this email :) HAHAHA Just kidding! So! NOTHING HAPPENED! Elder Bond and I are still out here in Levuka forever hahaha! I'm actually way happy. I love this place and there still is so much we need to do here! The Lord still needs me out here and it's going to be an adventure finding out why!? The rest of my week was interesting to say the least! Got kissed by a drunk guy...twice....That was a first....! One of our less actives through a giant crab at us so we took it home later that night and cooked it for dinner. All I could think about was Sebastian from the Little Mermaid. I'm sorry for all of you who were expecting a Little Mermaid 3 because Elder Bond and I ate Sebastian last Thursday night! We had a pretty crazy service day last Thursday with Akuila. He told us we'd be doing something with sand and when we showed up he gave us 12 burlap bags and we went down to the beach to fill them up with sand. After that he told us that we needed to carry them back up to his house. Akuila lives right at the bottom of the peak we climbed last week so it was a nice workout for the day haha! We returned to Levuka from Nausori last Tuesday so we missed two days of proselyting this week but the Lord helped us account for the rest. Currently we are trying to give people more baptismal dates and opening up some koros (villages). This Friday we are heading out from Levuka back to the main island AGAIN for Stake Conference on Sunday! After Stake Conference we have Zone Conference in Suva that Tuesday. As much as I am looking forward to Stake and Zone Conference I am a little worried about being out of our area for about a week! I'm praying that the Lord will take care of Levuka while we're gone. On a more spiritual note, I've had to learn a lot this week! It's not about my will and it never has been. This work and our entire lives is about the will of the Lord. Monday night while we were in Nausori we were sleeping on the floor when I felt something crawling on my chest and arm. Turns out I had a centipede on me. Their bites have poison, not deadly enough to kill but enough to hurt really bad so I was lucky I didn't get bitten! Tuesday night I got sick for some unknown reason. Bad migraines, a fever, and a sore throat. It was no fun but I decided to push through! It wasn't getting any better after a day so I asked Elder Bond for a blessing. The priesthood is the power of God and I am really thankful for my companion! We worked our hardest this week and I've been doing a lot of study on Joseph Smith and the atonement. The other day I was reading in Joseph Smith History. I've read it before but now reading it as a missionary made it so much more powerful! Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and he truly saw what he said he saw.. JSH-25 "For I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew God knew it, and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it; at least by so doing I would offend God, and come under condemnation." I feel the same way as Joseph Smith...I know these things are true. I don't have to see an angel to prove it. If science can prove it....well then great...But that’s not the way I know it is true. I know it is true by the way I feel when I sit across from someone and read the account of Joseph Smith. It's the spirit I get and the peace I feel as I read the Book of Mormon. I cannot deny it. The power that comes from the testimony of Joseph Smith cannot be denied. It testifies that God lives and his son Jesus Christ is our Savior. This gospel is what gets me through life. Something I've learned is that one cannot simply pray to know it’s true and then expect an answer. Repeatedly throughout my mission so far I've prayed and asked. At times it comes as a quick, peaceful, reassuring feeling. Other times it's taken me weeks to receive an answer. What God requires of us is to desire to know with all our hearts. We can't just partially want it. We have to want it with all of our whole beings. I asked with my whole self and I testify that this church is true. I love you all and am excited to tell you all about this next week’s adventures.

Love, Elder Jonati or Penati (some little girl called me that yesterday...It’s like peanut but penati hahaha)