Week #76

Bula Vinaka Family and everyone! The rain and lightening has not ceased. Every morning we walked out of the house last week the sun was out but every time we came back to the flat it was pouring rain and thundering like crazy again. I have to admit though.....I love it when the weather is like this! The other night there were no clouds above our house and it was just clear stars but out in the distance there was a pretty crazy lightening storm and I happened to get a pretty awesome picture that I will send to you all! But that's just a physical storm and today I would like to share about some spiritual lightening and thunder (the good kind!) Some pretty amazing things have been happening in our area. Last week I shared about the Wesele family who decided to come to church despite their traveling difficulties. WELL....they came again this week and their whole family seems to have changed! They are so much more happy and we can tell a difference in just a couple of weeks. Brother Wesele got up in church and gave a beast talk that was super powerful. Yesterday was just awesome.....SO MANY PEOPLE CAME TO CHURCH! As a missionary seeing an investigator coming to church is as good as opening up Christmas presents! This week we gave it our all despite the difficulties Satan tried to throw at us. Brother Vounijese's niece, Unaisi, finally started to take lessons. She's just 14 but really related to the Joseph Smith story and wants to be baptized! We have also been working with Osea who came to church as well. He's all set and good and is ready to be baptized this Sunday so we are way pumped for him. Earlier this week, Elder Willoughby and I were walking through Nabukaluka village and saw the weirdest thing! When we walk through the villages all the poeple are usually sitting on their porch and they say Bula to us and we just say Bula to everyone but this time was WAY different. As we were walking through the village we looked into the houses and there were white folks everywhere.....We were both tripping out hahaha. It's not every day that we see white people out in the villages....We eventually found out they were from the Australian aid there to help out with the school in the village. Anyway, Brother Juta had 3 kai valagis (white people) staying in his house and we decided to share something with them. We shared about where the Book of Mormon came from and they got way interested. We gave them each their own Book of Mormon and we got to show off our Fijian skills hahaha. They said they had always heard of the lds church but never knew what it was about. They were surprised to hear that we believed in Jesus Christ. If only everyone knew our real name is "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints"! Those guys probably never would have thought that 2 lds missionaries would have met them in the middle of a fijian village hahaha! So that was fun. I've been having to drive a lot more lately because this Wednesday I am going to take my driving test finally.....wish me luck HA! The other day we had to take the car in to Asco Motors to get a tune-up and so we got to go to Suva and get New York pizza....I just have to say that I didn't know that's what pizza is supposed to taste like! The other day we were offered to have some Yavu ni toa (chicken feet).....we kindly said thank you and that we had already eaten. The more I serve in Fiji the more I love it. I am convinced that there is no where else on this earth with such humble people as here. We've been teaching a family for awhile and they all have said they want to be baptized....only issue is everytime we go over there, there are more members of the family. Slowly one by one they will all hear about the gospel and will be baptized. Anyways, being a missionary is awesome. Lesson learned from this week is that if you want the spirit we must always, constantly be repenting. I'm so grateful for Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on our behalf. Because of Him we can become clean!

Love, Elder Jonutz