Conference With Elder Pearson

All right, I apologize for last weeks brevity, but I seriously had almost mo time before the library closed. Allow me to try to compensate for this week and explain what’s been going on over here in the down under…..

IMG_0155All right. First off, Things have been really good with the investigator we baptized. He is really doing well. We go over and teach him every Thursday, and he’s doing so well. We had a great lesson on Jesus Christ and his role in the plan of salvation for the new member lesson, and it was fantastic. The sister missionaries in our ward are teaching his daughter who is 9, and she’s getting baptized on the 24th of this month. It’s so cool to see how well they’re doing. The family was less active not too long ago, and now they’re getting really into the church. I’ll send you a picture today when my camera is charged.

Secondly, we had a mission conference with Elder Pearson of the seventy this week. That totally blew me away. Our mission has been not doing so well on baptisms, so he came to fix all that. He first off basically said that there are too many missionaries here who are not here for the right reasons and they’re pulling the mission down, and it’s president’s responsibility to send them home now. He also said that us as the missionaries have lost a lot of our purpose out here, we have too many missionaries who worry more about who is feeding them that night than teaching and baptizing people.  He said that we need to lift our expectations from where we are by a lot. He promised us that if we would go out that night and not let a single person we talked to go without asking for referrals, we would find someone to teach that night. So we did. I had to get out of the car and chase somebody down the street because Elder Peluale said hello to them and then hopped in the car in order to do it and we did it. And we got a new investigator!

Then the rest of the week we went to work putting the stuff he said into place and got another five investigators! It was honestly about as a miracle of a week as I can imagine. Two of the investigators just walked into church and said that they wanted to take the lessons and come to church! I think the difference between before and now has not been really how hard I worked, but how much I expected that God would provide for me. The attitude of the whole mission up to this point in my mission has been “There’s really nobody here who will get baptized anyway”, so we work hard but didn’t expect much to happen. Now because we expect it, a lot is happening! I Honestly think we can get a couple of baptisms these next few months! We have Elder Bednar coming to talk to the mission in Febuary, and I can’t wait for it!

Time for some questions!

What was this funeral all about last week? Someone in the ward? It was a ward member, but I didn’t know her. She’s been in the hospital for years. Our ward mission leader thought it would be a good idea for us to be there because all her friends and family are non-members, so we did some work there.

How are the Samoan and the Tongan cultures different? Well….. Let’s just say I like Tongan culture way better. Samoan culture has a lot of unessecary painstaking jots and tittles, like chief language. harldy anybody can speak it, it’s really hard to speak if you know it, but if your talking to a chief, you have to speak it. And just other stuff like that. Samoans are open and friendly, but Tongans are loving. They don’t hold anything back. If you ask a Tongan for anything, they’ll do their best to get it done. (for instance, if you go up to a Tongan and say “nice tie” they’ll ask if you want it.) Tongans in general seem more humble, although that also makes them a little more carefree sometimes as well. But in general, I guess I can say that I’ve never met a Tongan that hated their culture, and I’ve met tons of Samoans that do.

Are you walking, biking, or driving now? Driving.

My District During Christmas
My District During Christmas

 

How is the work going? Fantastic! Better than it ever has been!

Well, Love you all heaps. Talk to you soon!

-Elder Shelton

Christmas Dinner!
Christmas Dinner!

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