Out Of The Mud (Dratabu Area, Week 4)

Dratabu Koro

Trust me, the title for this week has a funny story behind it. At the time it wasn't funny, but now it kind of is.

And so on Monday we had a Zone Family Home Evening, which included a talent show that just turned into a bunch of last-minute skits. It was fun, though, and then the next morning we enjoyed Zone Training Meeting. I say we, but actually Elder Whiting and I had to leave halfway through to go pick up a missionary at the airport in Nadi. When we finally got back around 2:30, we went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders and I brought Elder Fitisemanu with me to Dratabu area. We had a fun exchange and made a few more airport runs on Wednesday. We also started teaching Jolame, Iokimi's cousin, and his family. All the kids wanted to come to church, and they would have had the transport come to pick them up. When we found out it didn't, we were pretty embarrassed.

This is what missionaries look like when 

they're headed to the airport (our treat to them)

Wednesday night, after switching back, Elder Whiting and I went on another adventure through Nadi to go find a missionary from Christmas Island who had landed, lost his itinerary, and was staying with some nice people while he waited for us. We searched for probably an hour before we finally found the house. We brought him back with us to stay at our flat, and then early the next morning put him on his flight to Suva. We thought after that, surely the adventures were over. Oh boy, were we wrong.

Friday we had a Leadership Training Meeting, which President and Sister Layton and the Assistants drove out to Nadi to do for us. We learned tons about our calling and responsibility as leaders in the Fiji Suva Mission. After that we struggled for a few lessons with some of our investigators, though we did give Jolame a baptismal date for later this month, which he gladly accepted. And then, Saturday came.

Play-Dough activity at our leadership training meeting 

- it's a moko (fijian gecko)

Like I've explained before, as a District Leader I have the privilege of interviewing baptismal candidates before they are baptized, and we had three interviews in Nadi on Saturday, all in a row. The first two went okay, though during the first one a downpour had started outside. By the time we picked up the Nadi Elders to go to the third and final interview, it had rained for a good few hours. It's still raining now, on Monday afternoon. They told us that the interview was down a dirt road into a small settlement. We discussed it, voiced concerns about driving down it, and ultimately decided to just go for it. As we were headed down, however, another car was coming up, and there was no room for it to pass, so we pulled off to the side of the road to let the man pass. We'd pulled a little ways into a short driveway on a hill, but as I tried to back up the hill, the tires just spun. I tried pulling forward, but didn't know that it was a patch of freshly laid dirt, which makes for excellent mud. And then we couldn't move at all.

You can imagine my panic. We tried to push it out, but it was no use. We were forced to abandon it for the night, to the dismay of the owner of the house whose lawn we had accidentally torn up. We prayed and fasted that night, but when we woke up Sunday morning, the downpour was worse. We went to church, wondering what to do, and during Sacrament Meeting I had a thought come to my

This is Junior - his jacket is the best

mind, which I am convinced was from the Lord. The voice in my head asked, "What are you doing? Don't you know that I can do My own work?" I had forgotten the whole week to include the Lord in His own work, and even while fasting and praying to get the car out of the mud, all I was thinking about was how inadequate our abilities were to get it out by ourselves. Finally, after church, and a lot of pulling and tugging with the Zone Leaders' truck, we gave it into the hands of the Lord. The owner of the lot then called a man with a tractor, who was able to come and get our van out of the mud. It was a miracle - but the bigger miracle was that the Lord had pulled me out of the mud in the first place.

Okay! Let's all have an even better week this week, cause I know we will!

Elder Barnaby