8-26-13
Mom, I'm surprised you actually let that lady in the house since you're such a worry wart-but that's a cool experience, though. (We found a lady in our church parking lot who was going to be sleeping in her car and she had a mental illness. We were going to let her stay overnight with us, but ended up contacting a transient bishop who put her up in a hotel for the night. It was an interesting experience). The Smith's experience at the Hill Cumorah Pageant is pretty cool. It's interesting to see how the Lord puts people who are prepared to hear the gospel in our lives. We ended up not having the baptism because the funeral was the same day and they were related somehow, so it got moved back to September 14th. This week was interesting since that lady passed away. All of our lessons for the week dropped since the majority of them were related to the Makasini clan-so lesson were super low. At the same time, it turned out to be an alright week. We did quite a bit of street contacting and found some potential investigators! We also got in contact with some less actives. Since it was a Tongan funeral, they had a BBQ every night this last week and it was super good!!!!! They said they would go late into the night.It's so family members from all over could come over and bring things like money, food, and handmade Tongan mats. It was pretty interesting. They had the wake (viewing) on Friday night, but we didn't go. The reason they call it the wake is because they stay up all night. Then we went to the funeral Saturday morning. It was good. It was the first funeral I have been to and it was a Tongan funeral, so it was different I guess. They focused a lot on the Plan of Salvation and missionary work, which was cool. We skipped the burial since it was too far. We did go to the lunch party afterwards and ate really good food! (Shad always seems to bring up food!) They mostly spoke in Tongan, so I didn't understand it, so we talked to Brother Makasini and he translated some of it, but then we talked with Bishop Fletcher and while talking to him, he asked what we were doing during Sacrament tomorrow. We said, "Taking the Sacrament?...Bringing people?...Speaking?" He was like Ya, you guys have revelation. I just thought Oh Dang IT!!! We only got the night before notice-great. We still had stuff to do that night. So we briefly made our talks before church on Sunday, went to ward council, then spoke and surprisingly it went well. He said those were some of the best talks he's heard and people came up afterwards and told us good job. I'm not sure if people were just being nice or not-haha. It went pretty well for preparing it a couple of hours earlier. After church, one of the Makasini's daughter-in-laws came up and basically said she wanted to probably start taking the lessons. The missionaries before tried to have her take them, but she said with the death of her sister-in-law, she felt sad and saw that those that were members had hope and a positive outlook about it and she wanted that, so hopefully, that will pan out. Even though she passed away, it was kind of a blessin to soften some family members' hearts that we have been teaching! On Thursday (sorry I'm jumping back) we had Zone Conference and that was pretty good. President Watkins shared a good scripture for less active work in Luke 15. That whole chapter is really good and I had never thought of it that way, but Zone Conference was great. The missionaries from my last Zone were there, so it was cool to see them. A lot of them asked me if I had gained weight-OH DANG IT!!!!! It's only been about 3 weeks since I transferred. Anyways, that was some of my week-it was pretty good. It sounds like you had fun this last week. Hopefully, all goes well with school starting and everything. I know this is God's work and he He has prepared a way for all of us to share it one way or another!
Love ya,
Elder Whaley
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