Two Tickets To Paradise for Peela & Papa: Family History, Volleyball and Christmas in June

Family History, Volleyball and Christmas in June

It’s another beautiful day here in Fiji. We have had 3 gorgeous days in a row. Wow, it is so nice to have the sun shinning. I can’t believe how much brighter my attitude is when the sun shines. I’m sitting out on our porch with a jacket on if you can believe that. Elder Peterson is inside struggling to get his New Testament lesson done for this week. I think it is a hard one to teach and he has really had a struggle. He will do a great job I know because he always does.

As for me and my lesson, I have had a very easy semester. The YSA’s in my Family History class are finally having some success in finding names and they just want to be on the computers, so I think I am done preparing lessons for this class. I don’t mind at all.:) My numbers have gone down for the class a bit, but the ones who are there are really interested and doing a great job.

Vere, Joei, Sister Kama, Rachel, and Kumar are finally seeing some success in their search for family names. Indian names are very hard to find.

Mere, and Tina are hard at work searching, search, searching

The Family History couple is so happy to have us use the library. They have been asked many times by their advisors in Auckland to get the youth and YSA’s involved in Family History. They haven’t been very successful in doing so until we started our class. Brother and Sister Senekuraciri (that’s their names) asked us to please take a picture of the YSA’s after our baptism on Tuesday and have them hold their “Family Story” booklets. We did this a few weeks ago and sent them the picture. They were so excited and sent it to Auckland. Their advisors called them right up and gave them many (how do you spell Koodoe’s)? Then, I guess Auckland sent it to their boss and their boss sent it straight away to the First Presidency. Pretty cool huh? Who knows, it might show up in some magazine or church site. That would be very fun for the Senekuraciri’s for sure.

We had 4 or 5 YSA’s turn in their mission papers last week and then a few more this week. Willey will be leaving for Washington sometime this week and we are sad about that but he is so ready to go. He will be running that mission before to long. His ward is really going to miss him.

We have another YSA leaving in July and several leaving in August and Sept. I think they are all trying to get their papers in and get their calls before the temple closes in Oct. Otherwise, they have to go to Tonga to receive their endowment. I hope we get the chance to go to Tonga to the temple before we come home. I’m not sure what the protocol is but we will see. The temple will really be missed around here. We are trying to find something to replace our spiritual Tuesdays with something else.

Because I have a little extra time on my hands, I decided to start a Book of Mormon Scripture Mastery Challenge. We have several YSA’s who are preparing for missions who have only been in the church for a short time. They didn’t go through the seminary program to memorize the Scripture mastery verses. I didn’t learn them either while I was in seminary so I wanted to memorize them. I think this will give me motivation to really work hard to learn them.

I made a chart where the YSA’s interested can sign up to take the challenge. I found an app for my iPod that helps memorize them. It starts out with the whole verse and then you can push + and it goes to the next level. On this level, there are blanks where words or letters should be. By the time you get done, the whole think is blank and you know the scripture. I have memorized 3 scriptures this week. Well, almost 3. This last one 2 Nephi 2:27 is kicking my butt. I’m not sure why but I’m getting there. If I can learn even one scripture a week I will be happy. After the challenge is over, we will have some kind of party for whoever completed it. I think this will help them in a fun way to memorize the B of M scripture mastery.

These past 7 months, I have grown to love the scriptures so much. My Testimony of them is so much stronger. I look forward to getting up at 5:30 every morning and spending an hour or longer reading and studying the Book of Mormon. I love the Peace and quiet in the morning and it starts off my day the right way. I am reading in Alma 35-39 and Alma’s council to his sons. I love how he talks about Missionary work, The Atonement, The Plan of Salvation, Prayer, Repentance, record keeping and Genealogy. I love the verses 37:6-8 that talks about how the Lord works through “small and simple things” to bring about his eternal purpose. Isn’t this so true. The gospel isn’t hard. It is simple and all we have to do is try. Papa and I are pretty simple people and being out here is sometimes hard, but in the long run, it will be but a small and simple part of our life. Through our small and simple acts of kindness and through our small and simple testimonies, we can inspire someone else to take small and simple steps to become a little better and come a little closer to our Heavenly Father.

Thursday I took the afternoon off from the Institute and went home to bake cookies for the Nasori Stake YSA dance. Their theme was "Christmas in June". They asked me to help bake christmas cookies so that's what I did. I made 14 dozen cookies. I knew I couldn't possible frost all those cookies without the help of my grandkids, and I knew I couldn't get them here in time, hahaha, so I had cute Asenaca and Elenoa come to our flat and frost. They were so excited and we had a great time.

We had a fun activity night last night. We felt a little piece of home as we played volleyball with the big volleyball and taught the YSA’s all about “Oreo dunking contest”. It was great fun. We did learn however, that the big ball doesn’t work very well outside when the wind is blowing. Hahahah.

We went through 10 cartons of Milk and around 20 or more sleeves of Oreos, but who's counting right. They were in Oreo Heaven. So much fun.

Even our cute Missionaries got into the actions. We love being around these wonderful young Elders

We live right across the street from the Samabula primary school. We love watching the kids play all day. As we were driving past the other day, we saw this boy just hanging out at the top of this poll. WHAT??? How in the heck did he get up there. We couldn't resist taking a picture. He posed very willingly.