Many Firsts This Week

TALOFA FAMILY!

How are all of you? Sorry to hear you've been sick Mom. Not ok. Get better. How is everyone else? Thanks for the emails. Keep them coming. I LOVE hearing from everyone and getting emails and letters (hint, hint.) Tell Joe to write me a letter. I haven't heard from him yet since I've been out in the field.

This week--miracles, miracles, miracles. Oh my. It's been incredible. This really is the Lord's work. We met President Choi this week. Oh my, I'm so excited to work with him! He is so great and so is his wife. They are incredible and so cute and sweet. Bruce would absolutely love them. He told us that if we don't understand him because of his accent that it's our fault. He's hilarious. And not just in the fact that English is his second language. He has a really funny sense of humor. I wish you could meet him. Anyway, just so excited to work with him and to see the direction the mission takes under him. It will be so good. That was at my first zone conference. 

I also experienced my first set of exchanges. I was with Sister Ika who serves in the Tongan ward. It was good. She's so sweet, but I was glad to be back the following day and be in my area with my investigators. 

Fourth of July was weird this year. It didn't even feel like a holiday. Lots of people were gone or busy. We finished the day off with a fafaga that was very Samoan. Not the typical food you eat on the fourth of July. I ate taro and other Samoan things that I don't know what they're called. I was pretty sick to my stomach that night. I just wasn't used to that food. But it's all good. 

Remember Sina? Her husband came home this week and it did not go so well. We can't even meet him because he won't let her meet with us. He won't let her go to church. He won't even let her drive herself to work. He's very controlling and slightly abusive. There's not much else can we do with the situation. The Bishop offered to go over there but she doesn't want him to. We just continue to pray for her and send her text messages. Also Siona who was supposed to be baptized. He still isn't married so he can't be baptized yet. His "wife" won't pick a date because she's pretty against the church. So keep praying for both of them, please.

This week we focused a lot on finding because we don't really have any investigators. We've been struggling to find new Samoans, but towards the end of this week it really picked up and we saw so many miracles. I'll start with what happened on Wednesday. We were driving to Sina's to drop off a card for her when we see a Samoan family walking on the side of the road. So being missionaries, of course we chased them down. We parked further away so we could walk past them but then they turned down a side street so we had to go back to the car and park on the side street they went down. It was quite the ordeal. We parked and started walking towards them. Their names were Ben and Baby and they had two children. We gave them a Book of Mormon and a card with our phone number and took down their address. It was so great! We kept walking the opposite direction of them until they were out of sight and then we turned around to go back to our car. When we were almost there, a policeman pulled up in front of our car. I think he was going to give us a ticket so we hurried to our car and got in and started to drive away. He tried to pull out after us but there was a van right behind us so we hurried and turned down a side street and made some more turns. It was quite exciting and scary. hahaha. In a matter of less than twenty minutes we chased down a Samoan family and ran from the cops...I guess that's the life of a missionary. 

The address that Ben and Baby gave us didn't really make sense. We had a house number but not the street pretty much. So we of course tried all the 12245 homes we could in the last few days. Every home we tracted wasn't interested but we asked them if they knew any Samoans in the area. As we went we'd also look for Samoan signs--Christmas lights up, huge shoes in the front, leis hanging from their car mirrors--things like that. 

Anyway, one man gave us a referral for a home that we never would have thought were Samoans. But guess what?! We have an appointment with them tonight! It was such a miracle. It really testified to me that the Lord is in this work. It started with Ben and Baby which led us to this other house which led us to this family. This all happened over a few days. It's just so amazing to think about. 

Guess what? The family that we're meeting tonight...he's a pastor for a Samoan Christian church. Oh boy. A little intimidating. But it will be ok. Luckily it's the Spirit that does the teaching. We just have to follow the Spirit. We're a little nervous, but it will be good. Pray hard today! it would be so great to share the gospel with this family. They are really nice. 

Another miracle... We met kenny. This also was interesting how we met him. There was a set of apartment buildings that Sister McBride has never tracted before. We don't usually tract but since we have no investigators right now and no referrals we have been. Anyway, we wrote down this address and then came back the next day. The apartments were all locked up so we decided to tract the street across. There was this adorable red house that we went up to. it was an old man who told us he was too old to hear our message. But he told us there was a Samoan family behind his house. There were a few houses back there that we never would have gone back to because we didn't even really see them. Anyway, we go back to a house with no Samoan signs at all and this is where we meet Kenny. He had two adorable little girls. He's a Nazarene and when he first came out to talk to us I'm pretty sure he was just wanting to debate. He told us that he can't believe what we believe. There's the scripture in Revelation that talks about not adding to the word and so he can't believe the Book of Mormon. Anyway, we ended up talking to him for about an hour. It was so amazing. The Spirit was so strong. At first he was asking questions about missionaries. He kept lauging and saying we were nuts for giving up 18 months of our life and putting college off to go and get rejected all the time. But behind that there was a lot of respect. He kept saying how amazing he thought it was that we had this much faith to go and do this. He was suprised we were willing to do it when we're not getting paid and we're not doing it becuase we want a career in our church. He kept saying he was impressed that we've been lifelong members and still have so much "fire" to go out and share our message becuase with the Christians he's dealt with they usually have that strong faith at their conversion and then they kinda die out. I can't even explain how incredible the discussion we had with him was. He's been told by many people how bad Mormons are and he's been given anti stuff to read before. Apparently "John Smith had gold spectacles and gold tablets that he used to write lies." Anyway, it was really neat. 

He kept saying that he was really conflicted becuase the way we carried ourselves and the faith we had was completely opposite of what he's been told about Mormons. He told us that he couldn't make sense of it in his mind because he can't accept the Book of Mormon but he told us we just had such a good "vibe" and "fire" about us. It was definitely the Spirit he was feeling! We just kept testifying that we knew the Book of Mormon was true because we had read and prayed about it. Towards the end of our discussion I asked him to read Ether 12:4. I was kinda worried that would cause him to shut us off, but I knew I had to listen the Spirit and be bold. He did read it and he kind of shuffled through the book. He was really surprised to see it was like the King James Bible. Sister McBride shared a little bit from the Introduction and we told him how the Book of Mormon was written by ancient prophets, not Joseph Smith. Over and over again he kept saying how he was conflicted. I loved it! He said he probably shoulnd't have even been talking to us but that we were leaving a very positive image of what the Mormons believe. How it didn't coincide with what he's heard of the Mormons. At the end he said he had a lot of thinking to do. 

We left him with a Mormon.org card and our phone number and told him to go to the website. That it was actually put out by the church so the information there is what we believe, etc. He invited us to go to this discussion thing for young adults that his church puts on on Wednesday nights. They discuss current issues and their takes on it, etc. and about faith. Anyway, it sounds a little intimidating to go, but I think we are going to try. We just have to pray about it. Anyway, I hope that story even made sense, but it really was one of the neatest exchnages I've had thus far on my mission. Watching him change just in that hour we spoke to him and seeing his opinion of the Mormon church completely turn around was incredible. I would SO LOVE to be able to teach him and his family. But even if it's not the right time yet, I know we followed the Spirit and did exactly what Heavenly Father wanted us to be doing in that moment so that eventually he'll be ready to hear the lessons even if it's not now. It was such an amazing, spiritual experience. 

Sister McBride and I are continuing to work hard and trying to find more Samoans. The elders are also struggling with finding so they've started looking in the phone book and they gave us a list. From the list we have another family we're going to visit. The old man was about to close the door on us until we started speaking broken Samoan to him and then he invited us to come back sometime this next week. They love it when Palagis speak Samoan. Even if it is really bad. They find it very amusing so we are using that to our benefit. 

This week will be great. Hopefully by next week when I'm emailing we'll have some new investigators! There are miracles every day, We just have to open our eyes and see them. This is the Lord's work and He loves all of His children so much.

I love you all so much! Choose the right!

Love,
Sister Veronica White