Living the Dream

Bula Tale! 

We had some serious ups and downs this week. But that's the mission! Right? :)  

We started our week with Zone Training Meeting (ZTM). So lovely! Our leaders are so wise. One of the stories that hit me the hardest was from one of our Zone Leaders.  Earlier in his mission he read a patriarchal blessing of an old blind woman who had just joined the church.  It said that she would have joined the church much earlier in her life if one young man had decided to go on a mission. But he didn't.  And she had to wait till the very end of her life to receive the truth and the blessings of the Gospel. Wow. That story put things in perspective for me. Each one of us has a special mission here! How bad would we feel if we got to Heaven and met the people we SHOULD have shared the Gospel with..... if only we were worthy, or had more courage, or had been willing to sacrifice a bit. 

We had an exciting week of new investigators and referrals and OYMs.  I love OYM's you meet so many entertaining people.  So many wonderful people. We also started teaching a golden family! :) And we had a really neat experience the other day as we were teaching Rufina.  She had two neighbors sitting outside close by as we were teaching about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we were explaining about Baptism I felt like I needed to talk to all of them, not just her. They were kind of listening.  Then I asked if they had any questions about Baptism or the Priesthood and  for some reason I looked straight at the other couple. Then the wife got really emotional and talked about how they had already been baptized and wanted to know if they could enter heaven. So I gave a brief explanation of the Restoration, the plan of Salvation and The Gospel of Jesus Christ in like 2 minutes and the words just flowed in Fijian! We gave them pamphlets to read and they are sooo excited to hear more and even took S. Mataoa's Book of Mormon to read! ha. We're excited to follow up with them this Wednesday. The Lord is truly preparing souls to receive the truth! :) 

One of our disappointments this week was with Mere and Kata who are two sisters who were supposed to be baptized this week. They are SO ready and love the Gospel but their Mom told them this week that they can not be baptized now. :(  It's so hard to see that. We are encouraging them to keep living the Gospel and not lose hope. We love them so much. 

I had a super stressful, scary dream this week that I went home to America and I was so lost and confused and I was just bawling and frantically searching for anyone to speak Fijian to.  I woke up sweating and almost in tears. Man, I think going home is going to be rough. I love these people SO much.  I love this language. Right now, I struggle teaching in English.  I still have a long ways to go in Fijian, but I feel like I kind of just woke up and realized that I can speak Fijian this week. It's not super pretty Fijian but I can communicate. My poor Spanish though...... ha. 

This week I was reading a conference talk about Family History work, then started filling out my "My Family" booklet. Man, as I was filling it out and thinking of all of my memories of my ancestors, I felt so close to them and so grateful for all the righteous decisions they made in their lives that have affected mine. I always thought that family history work was not for me because  it's been done pretty far back, but I realized it's never really done. There is always more to learn about our ancestors. I really want to know the conversion stories of all of my ancestors. I love this quote from Henry B. Eyring's talk "A Priceless Heritage of Hope."  ......."Whoever you are and wherever you may be, you hold in your hands the happiness of more people than you can now imagine."  SO TRUE eh? I wonder if all of my ancestors truly understood how many lives the small decisions in their lives would eventually affect. I hope that we will always be selfless in our decision making. Think about all the generations to come when we make the small everyday decisions in our lives. 

I LOVE this Gospel and this work! :)

Loloma Levu,

Sista Matheson :)

 My adorable Tahitian Companion..... Sista Mataoa!

 One of our investigators..... Rufina! Her niece is my recent convert in Taveuni (Elena).  Fiji is such a small world!

 On the way to Koroipita

 Koroipita. (The closest thing we come to a village here)

 One of our Less Actives. She's the sweetest funniest lady. Ha. 

Lautoka is Pretty. :)

 One of the super cool bridges in one of the many super cool shortcuts!

Some of the Sisters at Zone Training Meeting.

Another super sketchy bridge.