Dream Trip

Wow, I've had such good weeks here in Tavararo that I forgot how it feels to have a bad one, Until this week. 

We lost Matua. We had a faatamaaraa with him and his wife but it got cancelled because he doesn't want us to come anymore. That's sad. He was starting to progress. We'll keep trying, one day he will accept again. 

We fixed the baptism for Palila*. She definitely wants it. The thing is it's fixed for pretty soon and she still has a lot of stuff to take care of before that date. We're praying that everything goes well and that she'll be able to make it for the 20th. We also fixed the baptism of Hehu*, the twelve-year-old for the same day. That one isn't super sure either because we still need the parental permission and we need to make sure that he really understands the gospel and is willing to obey God's commandments.

We started teaching this guy more regularly. He didn't show much interest in the lessons at first but now he's accepting us more. He just doesn't quite understand, and that's a little frustrating. We spent two entire lessons talking about prophets. We tried explaining their importance, that God communicates to us through them, that they are the ones that wrote the scriptures, etc. and he kept coming back to the fact that Jesus is his only prophet and that he believes in the other prophets but not really. In the end we gave up trying to explain that and went on to a more basic topic, faith. That went a little better. At the end of one of the lessons I said the prayer. I guess I said something that he didn't like very much becuase the next lesson he had Elder Malca say the prayer and specifically told him what NOT to say in the prayer. He also had Elder Malca end the lesson with the prayer(because he didn't want me doing it). Haha I don't know if that was a very spiritually uplifting experience or anything but it's kind of amusing. We'll see if that leads anywhere.

We found a solution for Jacqueline so that she can be baptised in two weeks. She wanted to get baptised as soon as possible and we were really excited. But when we talked to her she said that her husband who is an inactif coming back didn't want her to rush things. She said that she wants to get baptised on her birthday, which is in August. Nooo! Hopefully the spirit will tell her that she needs to do it sooner.

Okay, now for the DreamTrip. We were eating dinner with a family and little did we know but they invited this DreamTrip guy to come buy. So instead of us giving our spiritual message, everyone left the table to hear this guy talk. What is Dream Trip? It's this club you can join to go on trips for a lot cheaper. There are a bunch of discounts and you can invite friends and stuff. We thought the guy would just talk for a little bit and then we could share our message, but he kept going. He talked really fast, and I feel like people talk really fast when they try to sell things and that makes people think they're getting a good deal.  So this guy was trying to sell this DreamTrip and everyone was just consumed in what he said. They were awed at how cheap it was. We were just waiting to give our message (which never happened) so we listened a bit. It wasn't bad, actually. 

But my companion and I couldn't help but but compare this DreamTrip to the gospel. Yeah, I know, we're definitely missionaries. We compare everything to the gospel. But everyone is so excited about this cheap voyage. Why don't we have investigators like that? What's the difference between this guy sellng a trip and us offering Eternal Life? Maybe it's just the way we present it? It's sure that if everyone knew all the blessings of Eternal Life they would be rushing to get it. There's no fee, it's free. It doesn't last two weeks, it lasts the eternity. You don't have a limit to how many friends and family you bring, everyone is welcome. I wish people took more seriously the gospel. I wish they had a desire to have the gospel blessings like they do for temporal blessings. 

Anyway, Eternal Life is definitely worth it. I'm glad to be here helping people to have these blessings and I've seen the gospel change the lives of everyone that it touches. If that testimony isn't enough for someone to accept it, I don't know what is. 

Elder Lewis