Week #57

Bula Vinaka everybody! One of the craziest weeks of my life and no breaks in between hahaha! Hard work is the best! So this week we had interviews with President and Sister Layton and Zone Conference! This week was spiritually on fire and how to explain it all to you I do not know! So we're finally starting to get to know some members here and we had a way fun family home evening with the Gounder family! They are a part fijian/indian family and are so amazing! They had us organize a game for all of them to play and Elder Payne and I blew them away with our “Psychic Missionary Powers”. HAHA I'll explain that one day ;) At the beginning of this week we were assigned to go and visit this less active lady who lives in some of the sisters area. We were told that the sisters were not permitted to go there because it's a little more sketchy than most areas in Fiji. So in other words....."We were volunteered as tribute".  At the beginning of our usual day on Tuesday things did not go as planned. For any future missionaries out there the best thing you can learn to do is to just trust in the Lord and go with the flow. ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE CALLED TO SERVE IN FIJI!  So we were just walking to one of our investigators house when this mini bus pulled over next to us and said, “get in the van!” Normally...not exactly the 4 words you want to hear but he insisted we get in and that he knew where our flat was and that he was going to drive us there. We saw it as a free ride hahaha. 5 minutes later he passed our flat and ended up driving all the way to the sisters flat and so we were like all great....let’s just get off!  So we got off and remembered our assignment to go and visit the less active member from their area. So we found the road and started our search for Sister Tagimocia! For those of you who don't know Fijian (haha that’s all of yous!) Tagimocia is that famous flower from Taveuni! We didn't think it would be that big of a deal but as we started asking people if they knew a “Sister Tagimocia” they all replied. "No...No tagimocia here. That flower only exists in Taveuni”.  Long story short, we didn't end up finding her but we did get another random ride out in the middle of nowhere and we ended up at this member’s home. They said they hadn't been visited by missionaries in 2 years so they were way excited to have missionaries over again. The Lord leads us to those he needs us to and sometimes it’s just so unplanned and out of the ordinary.  As a missionary I've just learned to enjoy whatever happens in a day because I know it's led by Heavenly Father! Thursday we had Zone Conference and it was incredible. "No grit no Pearl" was the theme and it was all on how trials can make us the people God plans for us to become. It was exactly what I needed. That night after Zone Conference we went to go do a baptismal interview for one of our investigators! Sela Toloa! He was baptized on Saturday and it was an amazing experience for Elder Payne! His first baptism...Let’s GO! So because of my past areas I had no idea that this new ward likes to create baptismal programs. In all of my past areas they haven't had any printers so I just always made hand written ones.  Elder Payne and I spent awhile making some pretty awesome programs and the Sisters were way impressed and so was the Bishop so yeah....We won hahaha! Jovesa is doing awesome! Two days ago he committed to a baptismal date. We talked a lot about trials before faith with him and he now knows what he has to do do be baptized! Our Sisters in the district are just working way hard! We're going to have a combined baptism with them this Saturday.  The work is keeping us busy here in Fiji and trials are awesome!

Love Elder Jonutz

Sela's Baptism

This is a strange dog

The primary wrote us letters on Sunday :)