Malo Soifua

Malo soifua family! (thats samoan)

This week was really good. I just want to tell you about one thing. We had a District Challenge this week where we had to talk to people and count how many Tracts we give out, and how many return appointments we get, and how many songs we sing to people (scary I know, I actually sang to people. Don't worry, nobody's ears started bleeding)

So while we were doing this we had a few miracles happen.

#1 We met a man named Chris who is from Pennsylvania. We taught him about the Book of Mormon and he was pretty excited about it. We are going to teach him the restoration on Thursday. The Miracle is that he is from America haha, but he is the nicest guy. 

#2 We knocked on a door and the guy came out to Bible Bash. He has heaps of questions perfectly phrased to throw us off. Lucky for us I had met a man a few days before who roasted me for not carrying the Holy Bible, only the Book of Mormon. He asked me why I was ashamed to carry the Bible. Anyways after talking to that man I decided I would take my bible with me every where I go (its with me now just in case you wanted to ask) So when this guy came out to bible bash I just opened my bible and invited him to show me what he was talking about. anyways his heart was softened and we answered a few of his questions with scriptures from the bible. Long story short (and it was a very long story, this guy had heaps of questions) we set up a return appointment for Thursday because he wants to do some studies on his own. Hopefully his heart stays soft and we can teach him why we needed a restoration. 

#3 We met Mike. He is a less active who we didn't know lived there (it was funny we started to teach him the plan of salvation when he opened the door and he stopped us by saying "I know.... I am a Member. Do you guys wanna come in?" So we found out that Heavenly Father had sent us to him. His Daughter just was admitted to the hospital the night before. we talked about Heavenly Father reaching out to him and he told us that is seems like every time a big trial comes up in his life, he receives a mysterious visit from the Missionaries. Anyways we committed him to read the Book of Mormon everyday so that he can have the power that the Book of Mormon brings in his life, and then he committed himself to come to church. 

in all we found 5 new investigators during the 4 hours the challenge took place. It was a great day. Oh, about singing to people... Elder Tusa taught me to sing I am a Child of God in Samoan, so that is what we sing when people say we can. This lady opens the door and immediately says shes not interested. Elder Tusa asks if there is anything we can do for her and she says no. The he says "are you sure you dont want us to sing for you" to which she replied that we can sing for her. So we sang it and then she asked for the translation. We sang it again (in english this time) and she said it was a beautiful song and asked us to write the words down for her. So even tho we didn't get to teach her anything, we still got to share the gospel with her in some small way. It was really awesome. 

Thats all for this week. Love you heaps hope this week is the best one yet. Alofa ia oe

Elder Mitchell

Photos

Last Week's Letter

OK OK OK OK SORRY I WROTE THIS LAST WEEK I PROMISE, BUT I FORGOT TO SEND IT. SO HERE IS LAST WEEKS EMAIL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Heyo this week was good

We gave our Zone a challenge for 2 days. They had to count all of the 1) Lessons they had with investigators 2)Pamphlets they gave away 3)Baptismal dates they set 4)Chapel tours they gave 5)Proselyting hours. They got points for each of these things. we counted up all of the points and we are going to give a reward to the ones with the most points. They were so awesome! the missionaries exceeded my expectations by heaps! Most of them proselyted for more than 10 hours for both days! (President asks us to pros 8 hours a day) So that was a miracle from the week.

We don't have much in our teaching pool, so we spend most of our time finding people to teach. We found Rachel this week. Her little sister, Ashley, got the cops called on her, and before they came Ashley walked up to us and asked if we were christian. She told us to visit her mum. (they were fighting and she was trying to use us against her mum hahaha) anyways we knocked on the door a few days later and Rachel answered the door. After telling her all about our rules and why we are here we invited her to listen to our message. She seemed excited to hear it but couldn't that day. So hopefully we can meet up with her soon (she is the most solid potential investigator we have so that why I mention her) 

We work with heaps of Less Actives. There is about twice as many LA as Active members in our stake. So heaps of work to be done. A lot of them are part member families as well so a lot of Baptising to do as well. 

Also I went on Trade-off with Elder Shortland from New Zealand. Long story short I got him bitten by a German Shepard. It was my fault. He is really proud of his battle wounds tho so its ok. the dog bit him 3 times on his ankle, bum, and stomach. 

So this next week we have trade-offs with the Assistants and with another District leader. I get to go to my old area Bungarribee! Brother T already has planned to have dinner with us and I am so excited to see all of the ward again! This week is probably going to go by super fast. Love you heaps!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Week of Trade-offs

So there weren't actually that many trade-offs this week, but there were 2, which is more than I have ever done in one week before. I went to the city to do trade-offs with the Assistants. I was with Elder Thornton from Adelaide, and Elder Tusa was with Elder Sibbett. The assistants area is one street. The street is only about 400 metres long. One one side there is a huge shopping centre and on the other is Macquarie University. What they do all day long is walk around in circles on that street and talk to everyone they pass. The find about 40 new investigators every week. It was pretty crazy. So what we did was walk down the road, and when someone passed us we would turn around and walk with them and talk to them until we ran out of road (they were pretty quick conversations) and the goal is to get a return appointment or some contact info before the edge of the area. So that was pretty fun and we talked to so many people.

That was on Thursday, then on Friday I was on trade-offs with Elder Niesner from Canada. He is in my old area so it was fun to see some of the people I used to know. We were able to show him where a lot of the old investigators live (because someone threw everything out of the area book) I learned a lot from Elder Niesner. We also got to teach an investigator that I had met when I was in the  ward. He was not interested then (his wife and kids are all members tho) but now he is going through some hard times and he has a lot of Faith. He loves listening to the lessons. He is going to be baptised soon. Not sure when.

Other than that not much happened this week. Not that I can remember anyways. This week flew by I feel like I was just emailing yous yesterday. I hope you all have a great week love you heaps:)