Falofa Atu!!! :) Hey everybody!! Wonderful as always to be writing back to you all! Hope you all had a wonderful week and that everything is going just spectacular for you all! This week was a great week here! A lot of fun things have happened! A new adventure! I'm here on Niue Island right now! Don't know if much of you have heard of it I sure hadn't before the mission! A tiny little island! There's about a little less than 1000 that live here. Little villages scattered all throughout the island. We have the nicest vehicle on the island that's for sure with our van. I have lots of cool pictures of it all but today during pday we went through all these caves and i kind of dropped my camera! So hopefully I can get it fixed than I'll send all my pics! But for now you'll just have to wait! So we'll go back to where I left off last week! So the last week we had the last of everything, my last seeing any other missionaries besides my new companion for 6 months! haha Anyways it was pretty fun because everyone was so excited for me and the journey that lays ahead. I worked until the end in my last area. Never before had i worked that hard, prayed that hard, and sacrificed all to the Lord. And after all was said and done the very last night in the area we were blessed enough by the Lord to have one baptism.. Clayton!! :) That was a really fun incredible experience.. At the baptism I had a remarkable experience. I got this overwhelming confirmation from the Lord that he was pleased with the work that I did in Tauranga. That moment meant so much to me. And I know that God let me see that one baptism as a gift so that I felt and saw that my hard work did bring salvation and happiness to some soul. That literally made it ALL worth it.. So the next few days was just chaos until I finally got to leave to Niue!:) I came on a tiny plane that was packed because of some meeting in Niue. But a plane only flies there once a week.
When I got here I just saw heaps of bush and cliff faces and just ocean as far as the eye can see! When the plane door opened felt like heat just explodes on ya! Since I've been here it's just a constant sweat! It's so hot and humid here it's unreal! I left New Zealand right when it was starting to get cold again. So I won't have a winter for 2 years now! I saw Elder Halavaka for just a sec as we passed each other and he took his one way back to nz! I guess I'm the senior comp and driver even though I don’t know the language at all! Elder Losalu is a Tongan that I came out with and he's got the language down and knows and loves the people very much. So it's a completely different world here! I mean we've killed a pig and cleaned and ate it and it's head!! Climb coconut trees, catch and eat crabs, the list goes on and on!! Just living an island life!
There are no investigators here though. You just do service and visit and eat with the members all day and hope for someone to find and teach through them. So trust and love of the people here is huge and that's the only way it can happen. No talking to people on the streets anymore, they average like one lesson a week.. It's really hard here actually. I'm used to where we had a teaching appointment every hour of the day! Now we eat every meal with the people, we're allowed to; they see it as an enormous blessing. President gives us permission to play volleyball with the people to get to know them and try to find people to teach. So it's just completely different here. Everything that I've gained and learn feels like it is just getting put in the closet and i don't like it...
But I know this is all for a reason and from the Lord so that I may be able to bless the people here and be an instrument in the Lord's hands... I'm excited but it may be hard! The language is so hard! But I'm trying! The people here are just amazing... There are two branches with 20 or 30 in them each. But they are such incredible people. This really is like the other side of heaven.. It's amazing but I need to keep slapping myself and letting myself know that I'm not on vacation! Ocean everywhere, beautiful cliffs, just absolutely green, SO green!!! Huge trees, coconut trees, dirt roads and little houses. But everyone here LOVES the missionaries! I'm scared I'm going to get huge! They love feeding us!! haha So things are going great here! Today for pday we visited all the caves and took heaps of pictures!! Things are good I just don't want to fall to in love with the island too much!! haha I'm definitely lucky and blessed to be among these people.. I'm looking forward to these 6 months! I miss and love you all!! Hope you have a wonderful week!! Love ya!!! :)
Elder Devey
No comments:
Post a Comment