Tanna Week 10 December 8, 2014

Dia famle blo mi we mi lavem tumas,

Last week after you heard me we headed over to our Recent Convert Royal's house.  He said that his grandpa was sick and needed a blessing so we drove up to Royal's grandpa's house to give a blessing.
We hadn't met this man before but he was so nice and inviting.  We gave him a blessing and he said we can come back any time.  Then we went to Rodger's house and taught his family prayer and how the lord blesses us when we come together as family. 

Thursday we had originally planned on going to Inapkasu, and then Karimasanga, and Greenpoint.  But when we woke up in the morning it was raining really hard and we knew that the road in Inapkasu and Greenpoint would be too dangerous to drive so we decided that we would study a while and see if the rain cleared up and then go to Karimasanga if possible.  So we did an hour personal study and then we did our companion study for 4 hours! We learned a lot and it was fun to study like that with my companion.

Then we decided to do our weekly planning and afterwards the rain had mostly passed and we drove down to Karimasanga.  We crossed 3 rivers on the way there, it rained a lot the last few days.  We taught Henry and his family about enduring to the end.  We asked them about how they've been since the baptism and they said they've seen big changes and big blessings in their lives. That's how the gospel is, it blesses families and brings happiness in our lives!

Friday we  taught our investigator Joe about tithing and many of our other appointments were cancelled because no one was home.  We were however able to go teach Tiffany again and we taught her about the Atonement and why it was needful.  Then we drove up to Rodger's house again and we taught them about the temple and now they are really excited to prepare and go!

Saturday we started driving to Inapkasu but the roads were really bad there so we decided not to go up there, we didn't have much time to get everything we wanted done either.  So we drove to Karimasanga but the road that goes up there was too muddy so we had to walk up.  We walked up and saw Henry's family again and their were many other people around who were interested in hearing the gospel so we taught them all about the Restoration and Henry taught with us.  There are
many recent converts i've seen here and they are all so faithful. Especially in Lenakel, almost everyone in our unit there are converts!

Well we taught many people in Karimasanga and we walked down to the truck so we could drive to Greenpoint.  But we reallized that one of the tires was a little flat,  we had a spare so we changed our tire before going to Greenpoint.  Surprisingly we were able to drive all the way there and we wanted to go teach our investigator David there but everyone was gone but his son named Jacob so we taught him.  Jacob is already a member and we taught him about our baptismal covenant and after the lesson we drove down to Miraweng to talk to a perspective missionary.

We are preparing many perspective missionaries for Zone Conference, it's coming up in a few weeks and everyone who has their papers done will be going and they will be able to interview with the mission president. In fact we have a perspective missionary named Phillip at Greenpoint and he's leaving at the end of next month to go serve in Mississippi, cool huh?!!!

This island is amazing, we have a total of 20 perspective missionaries who are starting to prepare to serve. Well after we went to Miraweng we drove back to Lenakel and went to District Clerk Daniel and Julie's house where we ate dinner and shared a thought with them.

Yesterday we went to Church in Lenakel and 5 kids that we didn't recognize came. Only 1 was a member.  They walked a long ways to come to church. It was testimony meeting and Mama Kia (Papa Rodger's Wife) bore her testimony.  She said "I have many kids and they're all girls, but i'm sad because I don't have any boys. But now Papa God has sent me some boys, the missionaries, 2 of my boys are in this room,  and I have many others."  She was referring to me and my companion and we
were so touched by her testimony and it meant a lot that she referred to us as her kids.

One thing I like here in Vanuatu  is that you can call the mamas here "Mama blo mi" which means "My mom",  so whenever we say "yu mama blo mi" they laugh and we feel instantly like family to them. After Church we went to Whitegrass to hold a meeting with the Sister Training Leaders.  We met with them to plan out Zone Training and Assignments for Zone Conference.

After the meeting we went to try to find where those kids that came to church lived. They showed us what roads to follow and  they told us that their family sent them because they wanted missionaries to come.  We found their village all the way in Middlebush and their mom and Uncle were home and they said that some missionaries came before to their house but not for along time. They were so inviting and asked us to share a message so we taught them briefly about the Restoration.  Then we told them that the other Elders in Middlebush would come because it wasn't our area.

But we were so grateful for their invitation for us to come and they want the missionaries to come so bad. Afterwards it was late in the afternoon and we went to our Unit Leader Wilfred Nos's house and ate dinner and talked with them awhile before going back home for the night. Well know that all is well and I'm glad to be here again this christmas season and thanks Grammy for the package you sent! It came this morning and we plan on trying to make tacos for dinner! (I have a tortilla recipe to try out).

Iako Keke Ik Miam Pam! (Mi lavem yufala evriwan famle blo mi!)

Love,

Elder Beynon