Thursday, October 19, 2017

if it tells us to do something good, it's probably of the Spirit

Here's last weeks letter: Ahhhhh!!!! A had her baby!!!!!!
R!!!!! That's an awesome name! Man, I can't believe you and
dad are finally grandparents!!!! That's awesome!!!!! For real, I can't
wait for pictures to be sent!!!!! That's so good to hear that he's
healthly!!!! Ah man. that's way awesome!! Ahhhh. Good good.
Well, that's good to hear. yeah, please send me tons of pictures. I
totally want to see him. What a nice name. R. Sweet.
Ah I just got some pictures. He's way cute. Everyone looks so happy!
Ah man, you guys are all looking way sharp.
Well, my week was good. Nah the trio only lasted about 2 days, good as
it was. We actually did have a lot of investigators in church this
week. This week was conference for us. There two sessions on saturday,
and 4 on Sunday. We had a few people on Saturday, and 10 on Sunday!!
I'll go over a few of our investigators so you can get a feel for how
the work is going here:
We've got A: a 20ish year old young adult who would have been
baptized this week but the conference happened so we decided to move
it to next week. I think I already told you, but yeah she prayed about
which church to join and got her answer, a powerful happy feeling. She
had her interview this week as well. She's really prepared.
K: who is a's brother. He also had a powerful spiritual
experience as well recently. He was praying and he "remembered the
words we said" and prayed about it. He had a feeling from his toes to
his head, as he described it. He's progressing way nicely as well,
he's got a lot of desire.
It's sad, we've seen a few people and lessons be dropped and fall
through this week. But we've also seen a lot of miracles. We felt like
checking a house and it turns out there were some pretty good
potential investigators, a small family as well, they didn't seem to
have any problem with taking lessons, so we'll be over there sometime
again this week. We also visited a potential investigator, there was
another young adult sister in the house, so we invited her to join us.
Turns out she was way prepared. She hasn't been baptized yet, but
she's taken lessons with elders a little bit before. We lessoned with
her once. Found her a "friend" who brought her to conference saturday
AND Sunday. We found her again on Sunday and she was reading a book of
mormon we hadn't even given her. Huge blessing. I never imagined that
I'd be the kind of missionary who sings songs in lessons, but Elder
M likes to do it once in a while. And I'm pretty prepared after
Butaritari like the one time when me and my comp pretty much sang a
duet for the sacrament hymn because a song was chosen that no one
really knew. And it was actually pretty much a solo cause my comp
didn't sing very loud jk, I guess he sang loud enough. So yeah, it was
a good experience. Serving a mission prepares you to be able to get
out of your comfort zone a bit.
Sorry I suppose I went on a "tangent" so to speak, but we have like
30ish investigators right now, some are further along than others. But
I probably don't need to explain them all. Any way.
We also felt like visiting a less active. Went to his house, he wasn't
there. We visited some people we knew who lived by them. Not much of
it. As we were walking home though, some lady stops me: "Euta Sefka?",
which was a pretty frequent phrase to be heard by me when I first
returned. Cause as you know, I was here when I first came to Kiribati.
Anyway, I didn't recognize her at first but I talked with her a bit.
She led us to her house. Then I remembered! Me and elder C
lessoned with her a little bit before I left. Anyway, it was a nice
reunion. Turns out she had been baptized since. Though they were a bit
less active. She pointed out a lot of houses near her that were less
active who we could visit. So it turned out to be a productive
experience. We've had some bomb fellowshipping recently. Lots of
desire to help from people around us. I know the Spirit definitely
does help us and whisper to us things we need to do. I've seen this a
lot throughout the week. It's way awesome. Although we can obviously
all work on following the Spirit and understanding and recognizing it.
But I love Gordon B. Hinckley's explanation on it, something like: if
it tells us to do something good, it's probably of the Spirit. It's
way true. Sometimes you don't even realize that's it's the Spirit,
cause it's just a good thing to do, but looking back you can see it
was the Spirit bringing it to mind.
Well, here's a few experiences: we "worked out" with one of our
investigators, about 14 years old, a boy. Three mornings this week. It
was way fun. It's just like being back with the brothers again haha.
Hmmmm, apart from that, we heard a pretty cool story about a guy who
lived "i buki" on the outer islands. He could apparently unscrew a nut
from a bicycle without a wrench. He couldn't close his hands
completely cause the "skin was so thick". Apparently it's true. Haha,
not sure though. I've heard some pretty crazy stories.
Well, I know the church is true! I'm so grateful this week especially
for prophets! Their words are definitely true! In the name of Jesus
Christ, amen.

Anyway, THIS week has been good. Some quick interesting things that
we've been up to recently:
A got baptized this week! We made awesome programmes, and no bake
choclate cookies (my comp is good at cooking). The service was really
awesome, we had great speakers, and the baptizees (we had 3 total from
our district being baptized) gave great testimonies.
Well, we're getting closer to one of our investigators by getting
interested in kiika, octopus or octopus fishing. This morning we went
out on the rocks when it was low tide. We only got one octopus, it was
tiny. We gave it to a neighbor to cook and eat, she was way happy. I
also caught a baby eel. It was pretty cool. And we saw tons of star
fish & crabs.
Well, have a great week!!! Thanks for all you do!!! Ti a bo!!! Love
you!! - ELder SEFfker

Monday, October 2, 2017

You’ll be sure you’ll receive guidance and comfort

So this week has been pretty good. Monday night was my comp's
birthday. The YSA members threw a party for him. It was way fun. We
had 6 elders there. Some cool things that have happened this week are:
we had an investigator receive a strong spiritual impression that this
church was true while she was praying. It really hit me when she told
us, it's definitely strengthened my testimony that God really will let
you know the truthfullness of this church if you really ask Him in
prayer and with faith. We've seen the Spirit present in our work which
has been awesome. From investigators making changes in their lives and
having real spiritual experiences in their lives to seeing less active
attendance jump at church parties and Sunday meetings. Myself
personally, I've felt the gift of tongues a lot this week. I've also
seen the power of prayer a lot this week. One of the best advice to
any missionary serving would definitely be to pray about every single
problem they find themselves entrapped with. Don't let problems last
without praying about them. If you say a pray in faith and you really
seek His guidance, you can be sure you'll receive guidance or comfort
or a way even that it'll be solved. Well, have a good week!!! I
tatangiringkami, I taningaa manga kaitibooara ma te ingaina n nano, ma
n na boni mwakuri mwaaka ni karokoa te tai anne. A rangi n tikiraoi
ami katoto. Ti a bo!! - Elder SEffker
 It's awesome! Like when we first got to Makin. THe bikes had
been sitting there for maybe 7 months. For about two days it was tough
to get work in because the bikes were way problematic, but we just
kept trying to fix them as fast as we could and then get back to work
and ride more smoothly. Before we knew it days had gone by without
problems. Then we fly back to butaritari, the bikes are randomly
broken and stuff, we keep fixing them till Sunday, our 3+ hour biking
day. They didn't break at all!!! Then we get here and same, bad for a
few days and then they just randomly stop braking. It's like the bikes
get used to us. But it really is just lots of blessings.