Duwali

Bula Vinaka!

This week was a good week. My trainer is very nice and funny. Her name is Sister Tune. She is almost done with her mission and she is from Kiribati.

I am doing better at learning Fijian. I have been studying the Book of Mormon in Fijian every day and it has been helping a lot. It was very sunny for the first half, and i got burned on my neck really bad. I got so tan from just 2 days of being in the sun. We have been teaching a less active family because two of the kids are getting ready to get baptized, so we are giving them the lessons. We went over this week to give them a lesson. They hadn't done their Book of Mormon reading, so we decided to read a chapter with them. We were helping them read, and my companion was reading out loud, then they would copy what she said. Towards the end all of the kids were reading at the same time. It was so funny and I had to try really hard not to laugh out loud. We found a lady who only spoke Fijian which is very uncommon. She was telling us while she was crying that she didn’t have any food to give us, but that she would pray for us because she knew we were from God and that we were doing a good work. It was incredible. I don’t know if she will be interesting in changing her religion, but she definitely felt something. Wednesday was Duwali. It is an Indian holiday, kind of like Christmas. The Fijians don't celebrate it, but they get the treats from the Indians. There were so many fireworks. On Wednesday we had a dinner appointment at a member's house on the other island. The picked us up in their boat. I think we are the only sister area like that. It was so much fun! I found a shark in the water. on the way back it was raining really hard, so we were soaked by the time we got back to our flat. It was dark when we came back, but you could see where to go by the moon. It was the coolest thing ever.

So here nobody has lawn mowers. If they are lucky they had something like a weed eater and then rake up all of the grass. If not, they do something called ‘werewere’ where they get down something like a machete and chop all the grass and then rake it. It takes them a long time. It was really sunny the first couple of days this week and then it got rainy. Last night it rained so hard. Our roof is metal and so it was so loud I had to yell to talk to Sister Tune. This morning everything was flooded. Some parts of the road were completely flooded. Our front yard had about 6 inches of  We got to speak in Sacrament meeting yesterday. Then we taught Sunday school for the youth and also young womens. We are working to start an activity night with a spiritual lesson, treats, and then games one day a week. I think it will work! The youth in the ward all ready do something like it, but we want to add on with a spiritual thought. I seriously love the kids here so much. They are so sweet. I am constantly amazed at how little people have here. A family in our ward needed to take one of the kids to the hospital because they had chicken pox. The teenage boy came over one night to burn our garbage and asked us if they could have money for the bus so they could take the baby to the hospital, if they could pay it back. I just let them keep it.

Other than muddy shoes, I am doing great!

Have a great week!

Moce, SisterWayment