Week 8 on Gaua February 17-February 23, 2014

Dio famile blo mi we mi lavem tumos

This week was pretty good on p-day.  I washed my clothes by hand for three hours!  I had a lot of laundry to do.  Tuesday we were only able to teach one lesson to some kids.  But it's alright.  On Wed. we taught five lessons so that was good.  We were able to teach many investigators with a baptism date.  Thursday morning we helped Tyron and his family work on their house for service.  But we weren't able to teach anyone.  Friday we taught a couple of lessons and taught the investigators the baptism interview questions.  Then our unit leader Paul told us to come to a birthday party for his grand daughter.  We sang happy birthday, but here they have a second verse to the birthday song.  Then people gave gifts, cups, baskets, chickens, money and anything they could give.  It was cool to see a birthday party here.  They hook up some big speakers and play music which was fun and everyone ate food.  We ate rice, lap-lap, and beef.  It was a great meal and they had cake too!  The cake was good except that the frosting was made out of almost pure margarine.  Yuck!  But I was satisfied.

Saturday we only cracked out one lesson, but we were able to teach all the lessons that are important before baptisms.  Sunday we went to church, then the two Elders from the airport came to interview our investigators for baptism.  Three investigators here are ready to be baptized.  One our investigators didn't come to church that day or the interview, so we just had to change his baptism date.  But we know we will surely baptize three people on March 1st.  We will be baptizing our perspective missionary Tyron's mom and sister.  Tyron will probably do those baptisms, and me and my companion will baptize a 13 year-old named Jared.  I'm very excited!  We were able to teach a few lessons and invite another one of our investigators be baptized.  We plan on probably baptizing 2 or 3 people on March 8th.

The work here is very good and I am very happy to be serving here.  Know that I love it here.  I wish you could all see it here and meet all these neat people.  Plan on getting an email around March 21st and 22nd when I go to district conference.  Love you all and hope all is great with you.

Love, Elda Baenon

P.S. I got the letters you wrote me and Kenzie's letter.  By the way, yes, I met Caleb Brough while I was transferred.  I think the pictures he sent was with me and him at the airport when I flew out.  I remembered when we first met.  He said that one of his mom's friends knew me and Broughs mom told him to look for me.  I was able to talk to Elder Brough a little before I was transferred.  He is from Gilbert, Az and went to high school with my cousin Wyatt Smith.  Elder Brough knows Uncle Travis because Travis substituted his seminary class a few times.  It's cool that we have these connections!