38 WEEKS IN TONGA, PANGAI MOTU

Yup, after 3 transfers I have left Longomapu :/ Still haven't decided how I feel about that.  Me and Harmon have been getting a lot of work done and had just about hit every door, but Harmons gonna finish up in Longomapu and I know he's gonna do a heck of a good job!  My last week in Longomapu was a good one though!  Another success with our Refferals from God!  We ended up picking two areas in common, so we went down and started visiting them, got to this one house that we hadn't met yet, and there was a woman in there, who doesn't even live there but still let us in.  We taught her the first lesson which went WAY good, and she accepted a baptismal date!  That was very surprising but then again not very!  Because we knew that during those 2 hours we were in the area of Longomapu that Heavenly Father needed us to be in, and we knew that there was a purpose.  GUYS, when you are where the Lord wants you to be, there is not a thing to be afraid of, because the Lord takes care of those who fakaongoongo (sorry, I cant remember how to say that in english!) to him!

First advice of the week: always be in search of Heavenly Fathers will for you.  That is the way to true happiness. 

We taught a very ta'emahino (without understanding) man this week. he is either drunk 90% of the time or he just has a very slow mind, I cant really tell.  But this whole lesson with us, he would tell us, "Yeah, the Book of Mormon is true" and "Yeah the church is true" but would keep telling us about his crazy thoughts.  It was interesting, but hey, at least we got a teaching!

I got bit by a dog for the second time this week and I flippin got transferred so I'm not going to be able to get my revenge on that mutt, but the members were pretty ticked at it so maybe E Harmons gonna get some nice kuli (dog) for fafanga one day.

We started teaching this girl who works at one of the stores, who's boyfriend is a member..but..I got transfered... *sigh*

Taught my lovely grandmother this week again (the lady who started sobbing last week) dropped a Book of Mormon this time, if her husband doesn't burn it, hopefully she'll be able to get something out of it!

Second advice of the week:  One thing about Elder Harmon I'm going to miss is his boldness. Whenever we would be trying to decide if we should do something or not, he would say, "Well, what's the worst thing that could happen?"  I love asking myself that question now!  If you are ever considering, or debating whether you should share the Gospel, or invite someone to listen to the missionaries and your feeling some manava si'i (a little scared) ask, "Whats the worst thing that could happen?" and then slap Satan in the face for planting that doubt in your head by sharing the gospel!

Well, I'm in an area called Pangai Motu now and I can already tell that I'm going to LOVE this area! We cover this other little town called Utulei that is a good 3 hour walk away, were the church hasn't been set up, but there are members there who have just married into other churches. SO, me and my new comp Elder Faleao are going to go set up the church and become the first Branch Presidents in Utulei!!

STAY IN TUNE!

Ofas!

-Elder G

 The Bishops wife

 Hanging with a roc

 I'm going to get that dog

 Leaving Elder Harmon

 Mata Tahi

 The rock

Yes, I have found cereal!!

Elder Harmon

WEEK 37 IN TONGA, TU'ANUKU

YO PEEPS. Another very slow week so not much to report on!

I might have mentioned this before, but our bishop here told us that there are 300 people on membership here!!!  With about an average of 10-15 coming every week.  I guess you could say there are a lot of less actives here.  A big problem here in Tonga is the members kinda holding back the work.  My comps have told me about people they will be teaching and will be like, "Well, I believe everything you are teaching, but the members of our church are much nicer than yours." Kinda a hard thing to work with, but people need to understand that as long as they are looking left and right, they are going to always find flaws!

My comp was sick half the week. Nooottt funnn!

At the beginning of the week we were able to run into a couple of those 280 less actives. One of them is named He (Like saying 'Hello' without the 'llo') We went in and starting by asking if he had any questions or anything he was concerned about, and he was like, "Yeah tell me about the Book of Mormon" as he pulled one out from under this stack of jackets on his table.  He told us that he would read it pretty often but he just didn't really understand where it came from or its purpose. So we helped him out!  It was pretty cool.

We met the nicest family I have ever met.  We walked up to their house and they were all like, "Heyyyy!! Come in!"  We were so confused.  But they are way cool.  Turns out they were members, go figure.  They ended up feeding us and then we set up another appointment to come back because it was getting late.  When we came back, we talked for a bit and ended up teaching about The Restoration.  He accepted it pretty good, but the thing that got me was his humility about reading the Book of Mormon.  One of my favorite things is to see how someone who is honestly looking for truth, and then we show them how they can find it!  It's the best!  I can see how much Heavenly Father loves his children who will accept to random white men into their house, feed them, and then humbly accept the invitation to know for themselves.

MISSIONARY WORKS THE BOMB.

Every Sunday the Salvation Army church holds there service in this shack-like building two houses down from our MQ. And it is LIT.  They just sing their rock hymns for like 2 or 3 hours. 

LOVE YALL GOTTA GO

-'Nite

WEEK 36 IN TONGA TU'ANUKU

Malo Mo e Laumalie!

Would you look at this! 2 weeks in a row where I can email! Haha Id say thats a miracle right there!! 

This week has had its ups and downs, but me and Elder Harmon have discovered the coolest thing ever.

Its called 'Referrals from Heaven' (we found this in a book we found in our MQ)  So what we do is we each pray individually for a little bit.  And then we say a companionship pray together and ask for direction and help knowing where we should go that day.  Then we take a look at our map that we made and put on the wall. We split the map up into 8 different sections (each has about 10ish houses in it)  We each pick 3 areas separately and then compare and then that day we go out and visit the areas that we picked in common.  We've done it about 3 times now and each time has been successful!

Thursday: We picked 'Section A' in common, so we headed down there.  We were walking around for a little bit when we saw this one house.  It was positioned kind of weird and kinda hard to get to so both of us kinda just thought of either passing it, or going to it around the other side.  I just kinda started walking away, looking at the next house, but Elder Harmon stopped and was just starting at it. I asked him what he was thinking but he just stood there in silence for like a good 30 sec.  Each of us could think of like 10 excuses to just move on and not walk up to the house, and that's how we knew that we had to!  Satan is the worst and every time he knows that we are about to meet someone that we can end up helping, millions of excuses why not to talk to that person come sliding in.  So, we walked up and it was this young, pregnant girl who lives by herself.  We end up asking if we could talk, and she lets us in.  We found out that she was baptized about a year ago over in Tongatapu and wants to come back to church but is afraid of her dad, because he hates the church and won't hesitate to hit his pregnant daughter if she comes to church.  Makes ya angry huh?  So we talked to her about faith and tried to give her some encouraging words. We have an appointment with her tonight but she is about to have her baby which means shell probably go back to the main island for a while so I'm not sure if we will see again before being transferred. 

Friday: Got 'Section F' as our referral.  So we headed down there and met with just about everyone in that area.  Ended up meeting a ton of people, all of which where pretty dang nice to us and got 6 appointments set up!  Now there's a very good chance that none of these appointments will go through but hey, we're just doing our job!  The funny thing is we meet all of these people, and then ask our kaingalotu (members) about them and we end up finding out that they have all been members at one point or another. I'd almost say that anyone over 40, it's about a 70% chance they've been baptized.

We think that our 2 progressing investigators are both avoiding us.

One of them, we had appointments set up with him almost everyday this week and he hasn't shown up to any of them.

The other just straight up disappeared and won't answer his phone.

You may be wondering how you loose someone, on an island the size of Saratoga Springs, but trust me it happens!

This week was the Wesleyan conference and it was straight LITTT.  We couldn't actually go to it, cause it's out of our area, but Longomapu was in charge of feeding EVERYONE on Tuesday.  That's like 5-7 thousand people. People from overseas come to this thing, it's a big deal for them.  Everyone killed all of there pigs and bulls and horses, it was crazy, and then they were up all night cooking and then the town was dead for like 2 days because everyone was sleeping.

Other random news: I have a couple false names going around the area.  Like 5 people think my name is, Kalavite, and the Relief Society President and her family think my name is Kalaneti, and Bishop likes to call me Mr. Bean smh. I've reached an all time low with that one.

Bunch of random stuff but that's how the area has been recently! Moving along though!!

GUYS! Hit me with updates on your lives!  😘

 The Palangi Homies

 Bishop Iolol

 It's hard to open coconuts

 Creeping on Kolipoki

Laundry days

This is the ocean

 Ohhh Myyy

LOVE YOU ALL

-Elder Kalaneti

WEEK 35 IN TONGA, TU'ANUKU

DAANNGG It has been a very long time since I've been able to send

anything! So sorry guys, the net here in our Stake is down sO much

and not very many missionaries have been able to net out here. LAME!!

But hey, I have a little bit of time right now to send something out!

(Mom, Dad I'll probably just send this to you because it's not letting

me pick everyone, so you can send it out to the family and peeps.)

SO, that girl you saw in the picture mom (that was standing too close

to us) is our Bishops little sister, her name is Sini (that is his

wife who friended you on FB) and yes, we baptized her!

So...quick run down.. we've been teaching her since last transfer, and

things were going way good and we had a baptismal date set up, but

that changed once her parents found out we were teaching her (they are

hard core Weslians) so we just kinda tried to help her out the best we

could without actually talking to her ever, we didn't see her for

probably a good 2 weeks (which is pretty crazy when you live in a city

this size) because her parents grounded her even though she is 19 and

is technically old enough to be making these kinda decisions for her

self. So there wasn't much that we could do. Then one day me and 

Elder Harmon decided to try this thing where you each pray 

individually first, and then together, and then you each

individually pick 3 streets based off of 'hunches' that come to your

mind, after that you go and visit the ones that you got in common. So

we tried that, and we got 1 area in common.  So we decided to get out

and visit/walk around those houses in that area.  We walk out there

and guess who we run into!  Yuppppp Sini.  We walking from their

house at the top of the hill down to our bishops house.  We talked to

her for a little bit and asked how she was doing.  Basically came to

the conclusion that we will just text her BoM chapters for her to read

while she is still grounded.  So, she walked away and we continued on

our visit. We ended up at one of our appointments which turned out not

to be able. We went there and she was watching hers and her neighbors

babies who both wouldn't stop crying.  We literally sat there for like

30-45 min trying to help her calm the babies down but they just

wouldn't stop, so we decided to leave.  We headed up to our house and

was talking to our neighbors, when at that precise moment we saw

bishop and Sini walking up to the church and bishop waved us down to

come.  The cool thing is, if we weren't there right then, bishop

probably wouldn't have had us come over to the church building.  So we

went up there and it turned out that Sini just needed help with typing

something for her homework. So we helped with that real fast, and

then we ended up teaching her in the clerks office.  While we were

talking she was just like, you know what, can I just be baptized this

Saturday? (2 days from then) we were just like, Yeah, of

course!!  So we taught her that night (Thursday), then the next

day (Friday) we had our DL come down to do the interview and then

baptized her on Saturday.  It was way cool to see how that all worked

out and how everything came together for that to be able to happen!

Other news. We had that meeting with Kolipoki!  The guys Tongan is

still pretty dang good for how old he is.  He gave his whole talk in

Tongan which was way good!  He's here working on the sequal to The Other

Side of Heaven. This one will be about his time as Mission President

in Tonga.  Way pumped to see that!

We (me and Harmon) have had BOMB numbers the last couple of weeks.  We

had 6 investigators at our Ward Conference which is a ton!  Especially

since yesterday at church we only had 8 members at the beginning of

sacrament meeting.

We are still trying to work towards the Town Officer in Longomapu.   We

thought things were going good, but he kinda told our bishop that they

have no intentions of switching churches.  BUT that ain't gonna stop us!

The thing, here in Tonga, the LDS church is probably the most hated.

Literally no one really cares if you convert to any other religion,

but if like a member of Siasi Tonga , (church on Tonga) converted to LDS,

all heck would brake loose. The siasi tonga ministers wife would

go and start crying on there front lawn, people would give them the

dirtiest of looks, and they would probably loose all their friends.

Just goes to show the hold that Satan can get on people and I take it

as a strong testimony of the truthfulness of this Church.

I would love to write more, but we need to go!  It took a while trying

to catch up and read all your guys emails! I'm 90% sure we will be

able to net next week!

DAD! Happy Fathers day!  I hope your day was awesome!

MOM! Thank you for caring so much for me! Sister Tui'one called again

today and we told her we would be able to net today!

Thanks for all you guys do to me and all your support. Thank you for

all the prayers and the thoughts, I know it has been helping me. I

love all you guys more than I can say, and am trying so hard to make

you guys proud.

Sorry for no pictures, the internet is too slow right now. :(

OFA LAHI ATU

-Elder Kalanite