Serving the Lord in Samoa: Funeral

On Saturday we went to a funeral for a guy in one of our wards. It was probably the most cultural event I have ever been to. The high chief and the representative of the family were like yelling at each other the whole time in Samoan and exchanging pigs/food/money. It was super hectic. Then random people would just shout stuff it was all just crazy. It was super cool though. I didn't understand anything that was going on either because it was all in Samoan. Also, they buried the guy without a coffin just straight in the ground. In Samoa the people get buried right next to the house. At the members house I am staying at the graves are just outside my window. I wake up every morning and see their dead parents graves. "It's da best"-Nacho.

Sunday night me and my companion get back to our house and there were 3 random guys there. We asked who they were and they are friends of the member we are staying with. 2 of the guys play professional rugby for Samoa. They just got back from a game in Ukraine and are staying with us for 2 months. They are super cool guys and help me with my Samoan. One plays for the 7's team and one for the 15's team. So ya, I am living with some professional rugby players. They said they would teach me how to play rugby sometime if I taught them how to make brownies. Good trade.

One of the wards on Sunday had their primary program. All the kids dress up in all white for the primary program it was awesome. We also had an investigator come to church with us so that was cool. His name is Andrew, and he is the one investigator we teach the lessons in English for. It is super nice and my companion has let me take the lead on those lessons because I actually know what is going on. Andrew is getting baptized this Saturday so we are super excited! Our mission president really stresses bringing them to the temple right after they are baptized to do baptisms for the dead. We have been trying to get some of his family history figured out and we have an appointment set up at the temple for next week. That will be a super cool experience as well.

The mission president's rule here is the members can't feed us dinner unless we have an investigator there. Last night we were going to do an FHE at someones house and we get there and she is like "ya we aren't having FHE, I just wanted to eat a ton of food and talk with you guys." So me and my companion ate a ton of food with this old lady. Every single house we visit they give us food and Cocoa Samoa. We usually don't really eat a breakfast because we just get fed throughout the day. On Monday we had an actual FHE and I ate a ton of food but forgot I had to bike up this massive hill to our next appointment after. That was not a fun time at all. Then we got there and she brings out these cookies and noodles and cocoa. I was dead, I felt like I was going to explode. It is super rude to not eat the food when they already made it for you though. I would say half the food here is super good and half of it is going to take some getting used to.

Elder Roberts