Serving the Lord in Samoa: I HATE DOGS

I used to love dogs before the mission but as each day goes by and my life gets threatened by them my love for dogs is much weaker. BUT yesterday I saw this puppy that was probably the smallest dog I have seen in my life it was sooo cute. So I picked it up and started playing with it, then I hear barking from around the corner of the house and that is when I knew it was allll over. The momma dog comes around the corner and as I quick try and set the puppy down and yell HALU (That is what you say to dogs here to tell them to leave) The momma bit me on my shoulder. So yay. It was literally as we were picking up an investigator's family to do a FHE at the mission office together with Mission President. So here I am with a torn up shirt and my shoulder is bleeding about to go see my Mission President and do an FHE. I was not hyped at all. Good news: President ended up being busy so he just stopped in for about 5 minutes and I think I hid it all pretty well because he didn't see anything. The FHE was really good also.

So our two baptisms last week were awesome. Talalelei and Filifili got baptized and confirmed, all is good with them. We are currently working on doing Family History with them so we can hopefully bring them to the Temple next week and do baptisms for the dead. We have SEVEN Baptisms this Saturday. I am super stoked. Fa'avese, his wife and two of their kids are getting baptized, along with Vasa, Tavita, and Eta (the Family with the kids). We got the other brother on baptismal date but he hasn't come to church enough times so he will hopefully be baptized in the near future. We had a really cool FHE on Monday at the big church school here in Samoa with an investigator family and a member family. Me and my companion taught the kids how to play basketball, then we played a couple games. One of the better FHE's we have had. The Lord's work continues to Progress here in LOTOPA.

We live across the street from this really nice complex of super nice houses, it is owned by the church and it is basically all senior missionaries that live there. We play basketball on p day with Elder Cameron and the zone leaders in the morning, and then after he brings us over to his house and his Wife has a huge breakfast for us. It is probably the best thing to ever happen to me in my life. We walk into an AIRCONDITIONED home and eat Bacon, french toast, breakfast sandwiches, etc. Then I washed my hands and they had hot water also. I haven't felt hot water in like 8 months besides when we go to their house. They are from Canada and Elder Cameron is actually super good at Basketball, it is weird. His daughter was the number one college player in Canada I guess so it must run in the family. Anyways good food almost every Wednesday morning.

Our district now consists of me and my companion and the Zone Leaders haha. The mission is running super low on missionaries, so areas got closed in our district, but we are still here. We used to have about 200 and now it is just under 130, so a lot of areas don't have missionaries. Our Zone Leaders are covering 7 wards right now also. Hopefully the Apostles start getting more revelation to send people to Samoa. Next month we have an intake of 25 missionaries leaving together with President also haha. We had a Zone Conference this past week and we literally talked about Faith for like 6 hours. Then ate a ton of pizza. It was a good day.

It has been an amazing week and we are seeing miracles every single day. It is absolutely amazing how the Lord prepares people for us to teach. This is the Lord's work and this is his church. I hope everyone has an awesome week!

Elder Roberts