First (Dratabu Area, Week 3)

Kuki Ravudra with his best friend, his speaker system.

Awesome week! Absolutely hectic and draining but awesome nonetheless!

Lemme break it down for ya.

So on Tuesday I accidentally had district meeting go for 2 1/2 hours (no one was really happy about that - my bad), but it was good nonetheless. We had a cool activity where I gave the missionaries different materials to make a card tower, but some of the materials were just there to frustrate them and, in some cases, I gave them less cards than they needed. While they worked, I held up a sign that said, "Just ask for help". Each team slowly realized that I was holding the sign and then asked for specific help, like a better base for their tower or more cards. It was all about our mission president's 5 steps to success (I'll let you draw ties between the activity and the following):

District Meeting card-building activity, group 2 

(Brother Vodonaivalu, Elder Howard, Elder Johansson)

District Meeting card-building activity, group 1 

(Sister Baki, Elder Jones, Elder Tony)

                                                       1. Personal Relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ

2. Hard Work

3. Exact Obedience

4. Teachability

5. Attitude

But next time, I'll keep it to an hour or less. Oops.

District Meeting card-building activity, group 3

 (Sister Hawkins, Elder Whiting, Elder Babcock)

Baptism of Iokimi Ravonu Turuva.

Wednesday was a crazy day, we picked up another new senior couple, saw a bunch of our investigators and less-actives, and reviewed the baptismal interview questions with Iokimi, who was (spoiler alert) baptized on Sunday. His interview was supposed to be done on Thursday when the Zone Leaders got back from a meeting in Suva, but they got back too late, so we postponed it until

the following day. Iokimi was so excited when he passed the interview, you could just see it in his 12-year-old eyes. Two of his friends, Alipate and Jolame (the latter of whom has come to church two weeks in a row), both asked when their baptism interviews were. It was way cool!

Said goodbye to Elder and Sister Knight -

 Elder Knight took care of the mission finances and

 Sister Knight was our mission nurse for the last 18 months.

Friday we also put the Knights on their plane home. Elder and Sister Knight had been serving in Fiji for the past 18 months as our mission's finance secretary and nurse. We were sad to see them go - and it was way funny, cause the Zone Leaders made it to the airport just before they went through security to say goodbye. Saturday we filled up the baptismal font and saw some of our other investigators, but near the end of the day we started getting worried about the baptismal clothing for Iokimi's baptism. After doing a baptism interview for the Nawaka Elders' investigator (and eating some amazing pumpkin curry) we started racing around, looking for some baptismal clothes (a white jumpsuit) that a family had forgotten to return after the baptism. We couldn't find it anywhere, though. We raced around and checked both chapels in Nadi (Nawaka Ward and Nadi Ward), but no one had any baptismal clothing. In the morning we made it halfway to Lautoka to meet the Zone Leaders when we got a call that a white sulu had been found for Iokimi's baptism. We were so relieved, and he was baptized Sunday morning. He received the Gift of the Holy Ghost (https://www.mormon.org/blog/gospel-of-christ-part-4-gift-of-the-holy-ghost) in Sacrament Meeting directly after his baptism. It turned out to be a great week with that kind of ending.

Checking out a river to see if we can have our baptism there -

 it was kinda dirty so we thought against it.

Iokimi is the first person in his "yavusa" (a portion of a tribe where the members are all interrelated) to become a member of the church. Because of him, about 5 or 6 other people have started to take lessons and started coming to church, too. In Fijian, we would call him "na isevu", directly translated as the first fruits of a harvest, but meaning that he is setting the tone for the rest of his family, being the first one to join the Church. He bore his testimony to his friends the other day, and even though it was simple, it was powerful.

Roti for days!

We're in for another crazy week - we're heading up to Lautoka today for a Zone Family Home Evening tonight! Sota tale!

Elda Barnaby

That is an old-style Fijian "bure" (house)