Serving the Lord in Samoa: New Companion!

Last Saturday we got a call from the Zone Leaders and they asked us to say a prayer and Pu'efua and I just look at each other like wow it's actually happening. My new companion Elder Vaitala, and Pu'efua just switched places. I miss Pu'efua a lot and I know I learned a lot from him. We spent 4 1/2 months together here in Lotopa. Our last night a member bought us McDonalds which is always clutch but then our Zone Leaders came by so we had to split it all up. I am excited about my new companion though! He is a native from Savai'i. He doesn't know a whole lot of English so I have been speaking straight Samoan for the past couple days and I can already see the difference it has made. Me and him have been getting along really well and we teach actually super well together. I am excited for the future of this area with us.

On Monday we had zone conference with President and it was soooo good. President Hannemann is the man. I am sad he will be leaving this summer. Basically we are changing how we do all of our Lessons. We are only doing Book of Mormon with our investigators. So we are supposed to visit every single investigator everyday and read the Book of Mormon with them. And when we do lessons we read a chapter out of the Book of Mormon and then teach the lesson using that chapter. It's actually really cool, I really like it. Our investigators seem to like it as well.

So good news and bad news about our investigators. Bad news is Moore is not getting baptized anytime soon. I was devastated. We talked with him and he just said he can't do it. He can't get over his smoking and it's just not him. He said it was better for him to stay in his own church. I was so sad. We tried everything with him but everyone has their free agency. His son will still be baptized in March though so thats good. We are projected 7 baptisms for march right now. President really wants to kill it this month since there are 5 Saturdays to do baptisms. The goal is 300 baptisms for the whole mission every month. The rest of our investigators are good. We have a family we are teaching that has 3 kids not baptized who are all set for the 17th. We also are teaching a girl is who just so Golden but wont be baptized in our area so that kind of stinks. We are doing all of her lessons and everything though. I am super excited about the work here in Lotopa.

Thanks for all the Birthday wishes from everybody. It felt like a pretty normal day except with Trix and Reeces Puffs at the end. Probably the most expensive birthday party I have had. Jaka (the member we stay with) woke me up at like 11:30 at night and sung happy birthday to me and bought me ice cream. We had cheesecake with the Zone Leaders also. I am blessed.

Other fun things: An Alkaloa (a centipede like 8 inches long and really fast) ran across the floor while me and Pu'efua were getting ready for bed. I was soooooo scared. We killed it with a crutch though and then burnt it. It was soooo big though and it just went across the floor so fast. It came from underneath my bed so that is not at all what I wanted. Last week right when I was done emailing we went to play some basketball and I jumped for a rebound and landed on someones foot and it got twisted up super bad. Within like 30 seconds there was a golf ball size lump on my ankle. Not what I want. It was hard to walk the rest of that day but the next day I could walk normal without pain even though it was SUPER swollen and purple/black. It was honestly a miracle I could walk fine. It is still kind of swollen and discolored but all is well.

This week was amazing and I am looking forward to another week!

Elder Roberts