Dear people of earth,
So let's get down to business (to defeat
the Huns ;) This week had some serious ups and downs, and not just the road! Haha
(another joke)
This week has been seriously challenging
due to the language. On Tuesday I had this experience when I was sitting with
my comp in the swamp talking to some old fart that spoke the weirdest Tongan I’ve
ever heard and I didn't pick up a word of it, even when they were making fun of
me. There were like 1 billion and 62 flies crawling everywhere! I had several
fly into my mouth while I was breathing, they were stuck in my hair and down my
shirt, eating my wounds and just being miserable. I sat there sweating like a
long eared cow for two sucky hours and at the end I decided I was going to put
down the spiritual hammer and learn this freaking language because I have never
been so frustrated and miserable. I swore to myself that I would literally pull
down the heavens to help me, this involved much prayer and study and I created
a plan to learn the language. You want to know what God told me I had to do to
learn? He said simple read the Book of Mormon in Tongan everyday and you'll
learn. When I had that feeling I was like, really? That’s it? But I can truly
testify that God will keep his promises and when I read from the Book of Mormon
and try to feel the Spirit during the day I have consistently improved and
understood more and more and been able to participate more and more. I'm still
far from conquering the language, but I can truly say I have divine help with
it.
This week I had some great experiences
with giving priesthood blessings. The spirit is very evident when we give them
and I have faith and confidence that we are using the power of God for the good
of other people. My comp is kind of new and never knew we could do that and so
now he offers it to everyone, I talked to him a little bit so we don't use it willy-nilly
and be disrespectful, but yeah that is always a good part. We had a instance
where we blessed this old man who was always shaking and really sick and last
time I saw him he was able to actually speak kind of and he looked a lot
better. Still didn't want to come to church, but hey, at least we helped him.
Another fun thing we did was go to zone
conference with president. There was a lot of fun on the road there, Vava'u has
lots of mountains and the guy taking us was hauling down and up them; it was
pretty much a roller coaster. We were in a van with a bunch of other
missionaries, there were two sisters, and one of them got major car sick and
puked out the window, which was amusing. My comp got carsick but didn't puke. I
thought it was super fun! It was all of Vava'u, so two zones. President started
out by ripping us a new one, actually he wasn't very angry but he talked to us
how the numbers we reported were really terrible and he had us all bear
testimony and asked us if our testimony was really or fake, because the numbers
showed that it was fake. I am making him sound really harsh, but it was an
awesome meeting and after the call to repentance we had a lot of fun and I
think it helped a lot. I got to do an interview, probably my last, with him. We
made a lot of jokes and I really enjoyed working with him. I try to live worthy
of his trust and I think I have been a better servant to the Lord because of
him. We stayed there forever; it took our whole night because president did
interviews afterwards so we didn't get back until 8:00 and we were starving so
we found food then went home.
We had a cool thing we figured out
during a comp study, we received an idea to use the first missionary lesson
with candles, candles representing a prophet, then Jesus Christ, then the 12
apostles and then the new prophet and 12 apostles with the fire being the
authority and priesthood of God.
I had a bad experience when we went to a
feeding. So the Tonga way is the Tongan people are always ready to give to
people in need, like missionaries I guess. So we went to our feeding, (first
the guy made a lot of jokes about me and I couldn't understand, but that happened
everywhere so I guess it's not biggie) but then he took us to all the stores,
basically door to door and told them that I was hungry and asked for food to
give to us. It was really embarrassing and I was really uncomfortable, but my
comp told me it was the Tongan way and no one was mad at me. I guess I should
just get used to it; it happens everywhere anyways.
I'm out of time and because there is
only one computer my comp is just waiting for me. The two pictures are of a woman doing the lalanga (weaving that all women do in Vava'u) and me doing
this thing to prepare the material to lalanga.
Elder Sitaki
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