Another Week in Samoa! (Well, Actually Seattle)

 We spend the morning cleaning on P Day and then we write letters and it explodes. 

look at how beautiful!

 P-Day letter writing

 Look at how beautiful the city is. This was taken on our unsuccessful day up in Northgate. 

 Sister McBride, Seka, Michelle, Katie, and me. They come out with us sometimes. All returned missionaries. 

 More P Day activities. 

We made guacamole and the little ball thing got cut in half. it was funny. I think things are somehow a lot funnier on the mission. 

I made fudge filled squares for District Meeting and our investigators on P Day. Not as good as Cookie Chronicles, I know. But I'm pretty sure they tasted a lot better.

Talofa Family! 

How are all of you? Hope you're feeling better Mom. This week was great. We were never able to have a lesson with Keli and Donnet (the preacher family). But we've been over there a few times. Samoans are SO hard to get in contact with. But we're going to just keep trying.

 We had lots of Samoan chases this week--meaning when we saw a Samoan driving we pretty much follow them to try to see where they live. Some of our chases are successful. Sometimes we lose them. And sometimes we follow them to work. haha.

We were still unable to see Sina this week. I feel so bad for her. Pray for her and for her husband's heart to be softened. Siona still hasn't gotten married. he didn't come to church yesterday either. We're not sure what to do for him. We haven't seen him since Tuesday and he's not answering our calls. We can't go out and visit him since he lives in Kent. That's probably been the most difficult thing. With the mission boundaries changing we can't go visit Federal Way, Renton, Kent, or Auburn. That's where most of the ward lives and most of the Samoans in general. That's part of the reason finding has been so difficult. Our District leader has talked to the mission president but nothing has come out of it. We tried to go to one of the new areas that's been added to our mission to find Samoans this week. We went up to Northgate. No Samoans. Just white people. We realized that where we live is more of the ghetto area. haha.

 

We were unable to start the lessons with Thao this week. We really need to start the lessons so she can feel the Spirit and realize that this is the truth. But her husband, Nepo, stayed for all three meetings yesterday so we were super excited about that! We need him to be that example for Thao and to be the head of the household. 

We've just been doing tons of tracting! It's been great. Interesting, that's for sure. We realized we're really good at picking out Asian homes. They have some of the same signs as Samoan homes I guess. Anyway, many animal experiences. Everyone seems to have a dog. And the dogs can all smell my fear or something because they come running at me and barking at me. Ugh. I don't like dogs. We've also been chased by a goose--luckily there was a gate between us but it came running at us and followed us the whole length of the gate. And we've seen a lot of bunnies on the side of the road. I guess wild bunnies. They're actually pretty cute. There's spiders everywhere, too.

I lost my planner last Monday and Tuesday. I couldn't find it anywhere. Apparently,  I had left it at the grocery store. Luckily someone had turned it in. I was so grateful I was ready to cry. 

We had the weirdest experience the other day. One of the weirdest on my mission. One of the weirdest of my life, actually. We had an address from the phone book for what should have been a Samoan. It led us to this apartment complex so we decided to tract the complex. The first door we knocked on--this black lady answers and looks us up and down. We asked her if she believed in God. She then told us she was God's chosen. Sister McBride said, "That's great, what do you mean by that?" Oh my goodness. She unleashed on us. She asked us what color Moses was. She then proceeded to tell us that Moses was black and that the Israelites were black. Meanwhile, her dog was going crazy. This was the UGLIEST dog I've ever seen in my life. For real. It was so fat and never stopped yipping and barking the whole time we were there. It had a lion's mane. It was such a gross little fur ball. I wish I had a picture to show you--ugliest dog ever. Anyway, the lady goes back inside and gets her Bible and she flips to five or six different scriptures all trying to convince us Moses was black from scriptural evidence. The Israelites were black. God's chosen people were black. Jesus Christ was black. Her interpretations were pretty hilarious. For example she found a scripture talking about Christ. He's black because he's described as having hair white like wool (only black people have hair like wool) eyes like fire (that's definitely blue or grey) and feet like brass (obviously that's describing a black man.) *Read all of the above parentheses in a black woman accent. Savannah would be good at it. She went on and on just talking at us. Never even let us speak. She basically told us we're going to hell because we were white. Apparently God only loves  His black children.The rest of us are all cursed. Oh my goodness. It was the funniest thing ever. We walked away trying so hard to control our laughter but we went straight to our car and just about died. We were laughing so hard. She hated white people. She told us we couldn't know what we were talking about because we were white and God's chosen people were black. Hahahaha.

 

We had one of the most amazing experiences last night. We went tracting at an apartment complex that we were a little nervous about. It was a little sketchy. holy cow, though. it was a gold mine. We handed out five copies of the Book of Mormon. We met a girl named Comfort who's 19 and just moved here from Ghana. She was so sweet and shy and was genuinely interested in learning more about the Book of Mormon. I'm so sad we don't get to teach her. We have to send it off as a referral. She said a few times though that she would love for us to come back. She had the cutest little siblings too. I just want to be her friend. She was so nice. 

We also met Antonio. Oh my. He was such a miracle. So prepared by God. We had just finished at an apartment and the next one had two pretty scary, large black men who had been swearing and were listening to loud music. We were pretty scared of them. Anyway, we decided to skip that apartment and the few that were next to it. We were walking up these stairs when we see Antonio inside an apartment with the door open. As soon as we passed him we both just said: Oh. We knew we needed to talk to him. We were about ready to turn around when he was at the door and started talking to us. He came to us! He's in his twenties. He was asking us where our church was and questions about what we believe. He had a friend that came up as well. We handed Antonio a Book of Mormon and were telling him about it. His friend said he wasn't interested, but Antonio said he was. I was so impressed by him. That took a lot of courage. His friend walked away but we kept talking to Antonio. We bore our testimony about the Book of Mormon and told him that if he would read and pray about it he, too, could know if it was the word of God. We invited him to read 3 Nephi 11 and we read the last two paragraphs of the Introduction with him. He was so excited to read the Book of Mormon. I've never spoken to someone who was that interested and excited about learning more. It was so neat! And guess what?! I extended the baptismal commitment. I was pretty nervous because this is pretty much my first time. And he said he would be baptized when he comes to know these things are true! I was so happy! I forgot to put him on date. I was just so shocked that he had said yes. Luckily Sister McBride put him on date. He was so great. I'm so sad he's not Samoan! i want to teach him so bad. But he gave us all of his information to refer to other elders and he asked us to tell them to come in the next few days. He's Christian but hadn't been to church since he was eight or nine and he's been feeling lately like he should start coming back to church. He said he was so happy he spoke to us and when we told him he got to keep the Book of Mormon he was so happy and said he was going to read it that night. I can't even explain to you how amazing that was. The rest of that night i was just giddy. I wanted to cry. God really had prepared Antonio for us to meet him. He's so ready for the gospel. I LOVE it! So much joy! It felt so good. The spirit was strong and he was just so excited about our message. Now we just have to go find our "Samoan Antonio," yeah? 

This week was just great. I love missionary work. It is definitely hard, but experiences like Antonio make it so worth it. God loves him so much and is so excited for him to learn more about our gospel. Missionary work is the greatest! 

I love you all so much! Pray always. Choose the right!
Love,

Sister Veronica White