Listen! Follow! You Will Receive Blessings!

I don't know what's happening this week other than that Satan is trying really hard here to stop our work. We've had a lot of success actually, but non of our baptisms seem to be working. Normally Pierre should have been baptized yesterday. At the beginning of this last week we were talking to him and he said that he might just want to push his baptism, that he didn't need to get baptized on the day we fixed. We kept talking and teaching, and we even had him do a baptismal interview. In the end, he still decided to wait. As for Kiai, due to the same reason her baptism was pushed for today, it's being pushed for next week, if at all. The problem is that we don't want to baptize someone who will become inactive as soon as she's baptized. She still wants to be baptized, so we'll see how that turns out. Also, now that Louis is baptized, we started teaching some of his sons. We set up a date for this thursday with the one who has progressed the most, but their mother isn't okay with the other two getting baptized yet. Anyway, something not so good happened in their family yesterday. I won't go into details, but it looks like we're going to wait for the baptism. I guess that's not too bad, though, because another brother has been progressing more and more too. Tupiti is the one most ready, but his little brother, Teremu is close. Yesterday we were teaching the two kids the commandments. I didn't know how well they would understand, but it went really well. We actually taught every commandment in the lessons and they could recite each one perfectly. We spent two hours over there, they wanted to keep going even after we had taught all the commandments. I hope things will start to work out better for that family. 

It was pretty cool teaching those kids the Plan of Salvation. At this point, only Tupiti really wanted to be baptized. We went through the Plan. We had to adapt from the way we normally teach so that they could understand. By the end, Both kids wanted to be baptized. After seeing all the blessings of God's plan, how can you reject it? It was then that we fixed their date for baptism. 

A funny moment in the middle of the lesson as we're teaching all the kids of Michel:

Vaea* (age 5): Je suis mormon, moi, pas catholique!

haha if only he was at the age of accountability!

Something strange happened, that I never thought I'd see. We fixed a baptism with Tita. I've been working with him since I came here and he was never progressing. Then all of a sudden, baptism fixed! I think that it was at least in part thanks to Thomas, the one who was baptized right before I came here. He has a really strong testimony and was in a similar situation to the one Tita is in right now. Anyway, we didn't even invite him, he just showed up to the lesson. You could tell that Tita wanted to impress him a little, that he looked up to Thomas who had overcome the same struggles. I think that, at least in part, Thomas's testimony and the change he made helped Tita to push forward. I can't forget, the Spirit was there, too! Anyway, Tita is now working to be baptized the 1st of September. 

Other than those big things, Aimee's husband's heart is softening little by little, we're finding some new amis, things are progressing little by little. It's sad to see that these baptisms are falling through, but it's cool to see the progress also.

Alright, that's it for this week. Things are good, the mission is great! I know that God is always there, and I know that we will be blessed if we listen to the Holy Ghost who will tell us all that we should do. I've seen the Holy Ghost in use a lot this week. Listen! Follow! You will recieve blessings!

Elder Lewis