Papitaiso

This week has been really good. Elder Lee is back and doing good! I am very happy to have my companion back!! That definitely was a high point of the week being able to get back with him. I really look up to Elder Lee a lot. He is a great missionary and although we haven't been able to do as much work together as we'd like, he has had a positive attitude throughout this whole trial. He is just a great guy and a great missionary. 

Joseva and Timoci got baptized and confirmed! It was such an amazing experience to be able to be a part of their conversion to the gospel. Love those guys.

We have had a couple really cool experiences this week!! Especially with our investigator named Kriteshni. I have talked a little about Kriteshni in the past, but haven't mentioned much about her because we hadn't seen her in a while. Well we were a little frustrated in how long it had been and not being able to get a hold of her over the phone like she told us to, and so me, Elder Guyman, and Elder Giles decided to go find her haha! It was super out of the blue, but we just headed out to go find her house. I had been to her house one time prior, but it was a month or so ago and it was super late at night and so I really couldn't remember too well where it was. Just the general area. Well we wandered around for a little bit(got about 200 smiles on the way), and then we finally found it and her mom was home! We came in and found her mom super super happy!!! Kriteshni came a few minutes later and they were both so happy and just overboard excited! It made me happy too, but I felt like we were missing something. Like they maybe knew something we didn't. Her father then came home and was pretty nice to us, but I don't know it was just weird because everyone was happy but no one talked too much. We left and they told us to come back the next day!

The next day we found out that, long story short, Kriteshni knows the church is true. She has been reading the Book of Mormon and has been trying to call us to come for the lessons, but every time she tries her father tells her she can't. Her mom is very supportive though and they talked together just 2 days before we came and prayed to God and Kriteshni explained how she said,"Heavenly Father I feel like this is the path you have put before me, but please show me a sign so that I can know that this is what you want me to do. Because right now I can't move forward. I need help." Well the day we came she and her mom both knew it was an answer to their prayers. And it was her birthday just to make it even better!! And so that was just awesome! We came back the 2nd day and we found out that she has finished 3 Nephi in the Book of Mormon!! She is so awesome. We gave her a blessing to have the strength to talk to her father about her desire the get baptized. She just called yesterday after church again and told us to come back Monday(today). We are heading there in just a few minutes! Sorry long story, but it was just a huge miracle we saw this week and honestly I still can't even do it justice in the time I have on right now. 

Zone conference went really good!! It was with 4 zones together, and so so many people were there. Also it was the first time our whole intake was together! I'll send a pic of us 4 down below. Crazy to think Sister Ioane and Sister Kau only have 1 transfer left!!

Love you guys. Have a great week!!

Elder Hess

Hamar saati beemar hei

This week has been good, although unfortunately my companion Elder Lee's health has gotten worse. We were in the hospital from Tuesday until Thursday doing tests and scans.Finally after getting a CT scan they found out that he has Hepatitis A. So his liver isn't doing so well and after consulting with the doctor and President Higgings they decided that he need to be quarantined in our flat for a week until his next appointment on Wednesday. This disease is pretty contagious and so he has to be all by himself and been for the past 4 nights and will be for the next couple days as well. He isn't allowed to leave the flat and so it's pretty crazy, and he is so bored. It has been hard not having a companion, but over the past week I have been just floating around from companionship to companionship doing exchanges.But it hasbeen pretty fun actually. But please make sure to please pray for Elder Lee. 

From the couple days of work we were able to get in this week we have see some really cool miracles. This week we were able to finish the lessons with Josefa and Timoci and it is so awesome seeing how prepared they are! They honestly are so excited and so are we!! Josefa was telling me some super cool insights on how the Book of Mormon goes together with the Bible! It was so awesome! Their baptism will be this Saturday! 

Well not so much time, but I love you guys and love this work as well! God is good! Have a great week fam! 

Elder Hess

ई हफ़्ता

Sonu got confirmed yesterday! We were nervous we were going to be late because we were coming from Navatuyaba ward and only had a few minutes before Naulu ward started, but we said a prayer and then when we got there we saw Sonu same time getting out of a taxi with the Rakatia family who gave him a ride. He had on a new white shirt he had bought the day prior, and a new tie. It was all perfect timing and we were so happy and thankful. Throughout church Sonu kept taking my namebadge and putting it over the pocket on his shirt and just saying,"This will be me soon." Love him so much!

We were able to be a part of some really good lessons and to be able to really see the hand of the Lord in the work this week! The picture below of us with all the fijian family is right after our lesson on Wednesday night with Josefa and Timoci! They are so humble and prepared and we are really excited for their baptism coming up this next week on the 9th! It has been a long road, but to be able to witness them at this landmark in their life is a really special opportunity! Woohoo! 

We also had MLC this week which was really awesome! We went to the temple together as a group the night before and it was such a big uplift to me personally. I love the temple so much and it's such a blessing when we are able to go inside. It reminded me of the promises shared in the dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple from Doctrine and Covenants 109:22-23. 

Me and Elder Lee Chip Sao have been practicing our sanskrit recently! It's really fun to learn with each other. The whiteboard written in sanscrit is from our weekly planning this week. We have started doing it in sanscrit for language practice.

I love you all and am so grateful for the love. I love this work! I know God lives! Have a great week:)

--

Elda Hess

Baptisms, translations, sickness, and more!

This week was full of so many stories that I don't have time to tell them all, but here are some highlights.

The number one highlight of the week was definitely Sonu's baptism!! It was such a good day! It was early in the morning because we had Stake Conference the same day. At the baptism Sonu bore his testimony after the ordinance and it was so special!! He has a powerful testimony of the Restorations and prayer! Next goal... MISSION:) He is 23 and so he definitely has time to prepare to serve!  He is such a good guy and I have grown to love him so much! He is the Indian boy we are with in a lot of the pictures. Elder Ishibashi got permission to come back to the area and baptize Sonu just before he left to go back home! He was at the baptism and just a couple hours later caught his flight back home to Hawaii! It was sad to see him go! Really loved serving with him! 

At Stake Conference we had a really cool thing happen. So Stake Conference is done is English, but they have a translation department that translates the conference into both Fijian and Hindi! They have a back room set up with a bunch of cool equipment and a headset so you can hear the talk being given, and then speak the translations through the speaker which then gets send to all the different headsets that have been distributed throughout the audience so that they can understand what is going on the same moment it is spoken! Technology is pretty dang cool!! They were short on help for the Hindi translations and so someone recommended me to help with the translations ahhahh! Well I didn't feel super qualified and was a little nervous because it was so 'on the spot', but I did 2 talks in the Saturday session that first day and then the second day they asked for help again and so I did the translation for about 4 out of 9 talks given during the Sunday session! It was a really cool and fun experience!! Definitely it was a first for people to see a white kid doing that haha! They also are going to talk with President Higgins to see if I can go in a week or two to go help them at the Suva Zone Conference as well. Speaking Hindi was really hard for me to adjust to, but now I can say with my whole heart that I love it!! I only got 2  pictures from the first day! But I'll send them below! 

So my new companion is Elder Lee Chip Sao, and he is awesome!!, But the reason we are on a little late today is because we just came from the Hospital. He is so, so sick! It is actually pretty scary because they don't know what is wrong with him. He was in the hospital in the West for 5 days last week and then when he got transferred here to Nausori things haven't been getting better! He has been throwing up blood and not able to eat anything for a long time. They said today that he has an infection in his bloodstream, but they have no idea where it is from or what to do to help him, and so we are all a little nervous! So if you guys could all keep him in your prayers please! I'll keep yous updated on how the things are going. 

Well because we don't have so much time today we've got to head out now. I love you guys! Hope everything is going well for yous all! God is good and has a plan for us all! We just need to keep faith. Have a great week!

Pictures:

1-3: Baptism

4-5: Translation 

6: Devi/Sami family

7. Dinner with Aaji

8. Tuinamoala family last week

9. At the chapel

10. At Sonu's house with his mom

11. Two cute kids I met

12. Josefa and Timoci who's baptism will be in a couple weeks woohoo

13. Levai's family

14. Lunch at Priti's house

15. Jone is the MAN

16-17: More with Levai

18. Tradition

19. Send these two off from the airport to Rotuma. So jealous.

April 23, 2018 Ii haafta saab se achcha ra

Hello! This week has been really good and has really gone by so fast! Probably because we were able to spend the entire week in our area and didn't have to run around doing so much administration like in the past two weeks because of the floods and so forth. Ministering is much more enjoyable than administering. 

Oh one funny/awesome story from this week! So up until now I have been driving on my American driver's license, but I am at the point that I needed to transfer into a full Fijian license. This process requires going to the LTA which is the same as a DMV in America, and taking a written and driving test. This process can take a long time because they almost always fail you a couple of times before you can pass the test! They are very particular at the little things and so it really can take such a long time. For example when I was with Elder Christensen he took the test 5 times and never passed. Even though he has been driving his whole life. Well this past Friday was the day I was set to go take the test in Suva and I show up and see that it is an Indian man who is going to be doing my test. We start out by going to the car and doing the driving test. He was pretty cranky for the first few minutes and I was just speaking English to him. Then he asked a question about missionaries and I took that as my opportunity to start speaking Hindi and to explain to him that we are the Hindi Elders and can speak Hindi. He got such a shock, like most people do, and became super interested and happy! We were planning on driving around the whole tip of Suva all the way to Suva town and so forth, but less than one minute after I started speaking Hindi he told me to take a right turn and then another and then to pull back into the LTA. His whole whole demeanor had changed and he was laughing and smiling and we were having a great time. The driving test only lasted about 10 minutes total!! He called me to the back room and said that I was finished and I was surprised because I still hadn't taken the written test! He filled out all the paperwork and then said,"Well you're all finished Samuel! Go get your license at the front desk!" I was so surprised!! I have heard from other missionaries how it is a nightmare to try and get their license finished but it only took me 15 minutes total!! And then the coolest part is, when I was leaving after I had grabbed my license he called from the back room saying saying loudly,"Samuel, Samuel, Have you already eaten lunch? You should come have lunch with me today." I wish so badly we could've gone with him, but we had to get back to our area for some lessons, and so I explained that to him. The funny thing is that this whole conversation was in Hindi and there were a ton of people sitting in the LTA watching the whole thing, they were all looking way surprised and funny because they'd never seen a white kid speak Hindi before! It was just awesome, because what I thought was going to be a miserable day turned out to be one of the favorite moments of my mission! 

Tomasi and Fatulia both got confirmed this Sunday which was just awesome! Marica was picked up by her uncle the night before to go stay at his house for a celebration going on there and so she wasn't able to be confirmed. But their mother is awesome and we pray everything is going to work out next week:)

The investigators are doing so good right now. Like I said the past two weeks were crazy busy, but this past week was awesome because we got to spend a whole week with our investigators just teaching lessons and being real missionaries. I love this work and am so happy! 

Love you all!

Pictures: 

1-7: At Navua beach yesterday as a zone! It was so much fun! The one doing the splits is my companion Elder Ishibashi! He is such a good guy and we have so much fun together. HAHA that one is such a quality picture lol! 

8: This is Violet our recent convert. She is super cute and really smart. She reminds me a lot of Sadie! 

9-12: Found this beetle at our house haha! It was HUGE! 

April 16, 2018 Ii hafta bohut jaluum ra

Sorry it has been so long! Things have been crazy! We have had 2 cyclones in the past week and a half and with that we have had 3 areas in our zone get flooded out! That is what most of these pictures are from! We actually had to travel back up to the village 2 days after the cyclone to get the stuff that so that Elder Haderly could catch his flight the following morning because of an emergency transfer! The APs told us that we couldn't reschedule the flight and so we set out to find a way to get to the flat which was still 5 or so miles away due to water flooding the roads!! We ended up getting a boat ride from the police to a point where we could walk for an hour until we got to a point we couldn't go any further. We tried to build a raft but that didn't work out and so we said a group prayer and then just started wandering out into the water because we all felt like we should. Once out there we saw a boat in the distance and called it down. He took us up to a side of the hill where we then got out some machetes and hiked a crazy hike up the backside of the hill while 2 elders stayed behind and made sure the boat didn't leave us! Ahh it was a crazy day!! One thing I learned is also taught in Moroni 12 when we read that we do not receive the witness until after the trial of our faith. We said a prayer, but then we didn't just sit back and wait. Even though we didn't know what we to do, we did the only thing we could do even though it didn't make sense, that is walk out into the water knowing very well that it would get too deep soon. But that is the moment that we saw the miracle:) 

We had 3 more baptisms in the past couple weeks! Marica, Tomasi, and Fatulia. They are all from Waila ward and just are awesome. The hard part is that they got baptized now 3 weeks ago, but still haven't been able to be confirmed. The day after the baptisms the cyclone came and church got cancelled and then we had General Conference the week after, and just yesterday we had Ward Conference and so they weren't able to be confirmed then either. They are patiently waiting for next week when they will finally receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost! 

Another amazing experience has happened recently! I don't know if you all remember Justina. Jason, Mohini and the rest of their family, but they were a family that me and Elder Shin found during my second to last week in Suva. Before me leaving they had told me that their family lived in Waila and were members of the church, but we never knew who they were. Well just on Saturday we got a call from a really awesome family named the Singh's who live on the street over from us. They needed a blessing. We went and found out that they were members but had not been to church in over many years. They had asked for us to come over so that we could give them a blessing to have the strength to come back to church and make it back to the temple. They mentioned how they recently found the desire to come back to church through their family who had actually just recently started to investigate the church in Suva. I didn't even make the connection until after we had given the blessing. I mentioned how I had just come from Suva 1st ward and they interupted and said that is where their family is investigating the church!! When I found out it was Justina's family I was so overcome with happiness. We all gave each other hugs we were so happy! Justina and Jason, as well as Mohini who is Jason's mom and 2 others in the family will be baptized next Saturday on the 28 and I am so happy!! Who would've thought that by knocking on one door the ripple effect would do so much visible good that we would be able to witness even in just 2 months. Not only the 5 in Suva but a whole family who lives the street over from where I didn't even know I was going yet! And yes, the Singhs came to church all together yesterday and it was so amazing to see them get welcomed right back into the ward family with love. God is in control and it is so cool to see:)

Their is so much change happening here with missionaries getting shifted around! It keeps us really busy along with a lot of other times consuming things that are going. 

Oh and just one funny slash sad story before I need to go.

Right now their are 3 missionaries being trained in our mission and all 3 of them are in our zone here in Nausori! They are all doing so good and probably much better than I did at adjusting to Fiji and all that that comes with. But one of them this week instead of brushing her teeth with her toothpaste accidentally used her cortisone cream instead. It was sitting right next to where here toothpaste was and had been using it for all the bed bug bites she had been getting. She was throwing up blood for the next 3 days and she didn't tell anyone!! We finally found out on Friday and then took her to the hospital right away. She is doing way better now. To her credit she is handling everything like a champ. For all the things she is going through she has never complained once.

Things are so awesome! Sorry I just wrote a bunch of random things and stories going on here. I love it here so much!! Life is so good!! Love you all! Have a great week!

-- 

Elda Hess

April 8, 2018 random pics from throughout the week