Week 57 - Aloha

Aloooooooooha

Little bit of a slower week this week. There was a big funeral that everybody seemed to be preparing for all week long. It seemed like almost everyone we tried to visit or take out with us was busy making preparations for the funeral. And on top of that, Mary and Catherine's grandpa assumed we were going to cancel the baptism because it was scheduled the same day as the funeral, so he just went ahead and told everyone that it was cancelled without even talking to us. So we showed up at the church ready for a baptism, only to find that nobody else was... So that was a little bit of a setback, but everything should go just fine for their baptism this saturday. Hopefully no one else dies.

We also received a referral from a senior couple in the McCully Ward, my old area, to go visit a recent convert that moved to Waipahu. We stopped by her house and I knew her!  Her name is Jessitta and she used to live with one of the families that I was teaching while we were there. We started to teach her right before I got transferred out. I guess she kept taking the lessons from the missionaries and she was eventually baptized! So it was cool to reconnect with her after all that time and neat to see how the Lord's work continued to move forward after I left.

We had a really great lesson with Machat yesterday. We read Alma 32 with him, and then tied that into the verses at the end of James 2. Alma 32 talks about faith, it's where faith is likened to a seed. So we helped him understand that he has to nourish his faith in order for it to keep growing, but faith alone isn't enough. We read James 2 and talked about how we need works to go along with our faith. So we used the faith without works is dead scripture to commit him to setting a solid date with his girlfriend for marriage and baptism. We told him that we can see the faith that he has, but he needs to show his faith by his works. He told us that by next week he'd set a solid date with his girlfriend. So we're pretty excited for that.

Other than that everything is going good. We just had a new branch mission leader called, after the last one had been less-active for the past 4 months and finally moved. The new one seems excited about the work and is eager to come out with us. He also knows a lot of people so things are definitely looking up.

Love you guys and thanks for all you do! Jeramman!

-Elder Merrill