Serving the Lord in Samoa: 6 Months!

1/4th of the way done. These last 6 months have actually gone by pretty fast for the most part. I am excited to see what the next 18 months have in store!

This last week has been crazzzyyyy busy. We have had so many people to visit. We cover a village on the other side of the area from where we live, its the village on the mountain. We have 6 investigators with baptismal dates in that village. So we basically start out the day walking to the mountain and then spend a lot of our time up there.

Update on our investigators: we have scheduled 8 baptisms this month, and will most likely be 9. We have 3 next week with a 15 year old girl, and her 2 little siblings who are 11 and 9. At first I was worried the 15 year old didn't want to be baptized because she was raised catholic and didn't want to change, I guess her mom has been talking to her though and reading the Book of Mormon with her and now she is wanting it. THERE IS POWER IN THE BOOK OF MORMON! We are teaching a family!!! This is my first full family with a mom, dad, and kids that will all get baptized. I am honestly so excited. They all came to church on Sunday. We went to go pick them up and I saw the dad getting ready for church, and I WAS SO HYPED. The mom and 8 year old daughter have baptismal dates but he didn't and when we first met him he was very hesitant to let us talk to his family, he was strong Methodist. Him coming to church was definitely a surprise for me. They all loved church though, it was fast and testimony meeting. After the meeting I quick talked to Bishop and asked if he could just fellowship them for like 5 min. Ya he talked with them in his office for like 45 minutes and the dad came out a changed man I guess. Apparently he wants to be baptized according to both bishop and the wife. But we unfortunately had to leave to go to our other ward, and then he went to his parents village and comes back tomorrow. So hopefully we set his baptismal date and they all get baptized on the 24th! The only problem is they need to get married but that is easy money here. Also the mom is pregnant and due on the 13th so everything is kind of on hold with really quick visits. Which brings us to our new investigator who I am super excited about...Asafo! So we get a call from a member Sunday night with a referral. She told us they were doing Visiting Teaching Visits and met him, he apparently wanted to start lessons and wanted to get baptized, but he is also not married to the woman he is living with. The woman is pregnant with their first child. He really wants to get married though. Then She told me where they lived....literally the house on the very top of the mountain...I legit almost cried. Anyways, we went and saw him Monday, brought him to the visitors center to do a tour, he is getting baptized on the 31st. Also, we met with the stake president today and he is getting married next Wednesday. We are also doing an FHE with the couple and bishop and his wife at the mission office together with President Hannemann so I am really excited for that.

My new companion is awesome, I have been speaking lots of Samoan so that's good. Just imagine what you think living with a native Samoan would be like, and that is exactly what it's like haha. It's a good time. Also, I did my first baptismal interview yesterday. It was a Tuesday at 8 am, probably the only time I will do one then. I asked him the question about if you have committed a serious crime and he talked for so long and he was mumbling a lot and I didn't understand anything. Then he was just looking at me. I was like uhhhhhhhh. I just asked him the question again and asked him to say yes or no and he said no so hopefully all is well. I also asked if he has ever been to jail and he said no.

Other fun things: A member gave me a whole box of quaker Oatmeal, I was sooo hyped so now we have lots of oatmeal at our house, my ankle is doing better, still not 100%. WE ARE GOING TO THE TEMPLE ON FRIDAY! I am soooo excited. We are doing baptisms for the dead with Noa, she got some names to do. Last fun thing, last Wednesday we got a text from Tu'i (Woman we baptized in February) saying she was in the emergency room and wanted a blessing. We quick asked president for permission to leave our area and he said yes so we went together with bishop and it was such a spiritual experience for reals. We got home pretty late that night but I am glad we could help her.

Hope everyone has an awesome week!

Elder Roberts