Had a grand 'ole time serving the Lord this past week! Topping off our week was Miko's baptism on saturday! You can probably read back on my emails from a long time ago and see that we've been working with Miko for a long time, ever since I got here. I think she was the investigator I've been working with the longest, so it made it that much better to see her be baptized! It's really amazing the transformation she's undergone in her conversion process. She started out as this trouble kid always getting into trouble at school and with the cops. She started to change her life by keeping the commitments we gave her, but after a while her adopted mom she was living with wouldn't allow her to be baptized or come to church. We still tried to see her, but eventually she moved away and we lost track of her. We found her almost by a miracle, started teaching her, and the Lord provided a way for her to be baptized by having her move back with her birth parents. As we taught her she attended church regularly and brought her inactive sister along with her every week. Both of her inactive parents, who I think were sealed in the temple, attended her baptism. They used to be very active back in the Marshall Islands, her dad was even a young men's president in one of the branches, but I think when they moved here they fell away. We made sure we scheduled her baptism on a day that her parents could attend, and they showed up! I guess the spirit must've worked on them because they said they felt something and told their daughters they're going to come back to church! They showed up yesterday to see Miko be confirmed and we hope they continue to come and raise their family in the gospel!
Halloween for me wasn't very eventful. Our mission president said the only costume allowed was to switch name tags with your companion, so that took most of the Halloween spirit away. Plus in Hawaii trick-or-treating isn't really a big thing. We saw probably a total of 5 families out on the streets the whole night. Even the elementary kids we saw getting out of school, hardly any of them were dressed up. Apparently the big party's in Waikiki, basically the one place we're not allowed to go, so for our Halloween we got together with a couple other missionaries and played Monopoly. Try not to be too jealous.
But we did have a trunk-or-treat at our branch night on Thursday. That seemed like an even bigger deal than the actual Halloween night was. I don't think it will ever cease to amaze me how fast you can make friends with little kids when you have candy. My companion and I were the coolest kids on the block! That is, until we ran out of candy.
We also had a really good lesson with Machat yesterday. He's been reading from the Book of Mormon and really understands the importance of baptism. We read Mosiah 18 with him this week to try and get him to commit to an earlier baptismal date. After we read he said that he felt like he should be baptized sooner, but would have to pray about it first.
Overall, just a great week. Love you guys!
-Elder Merrill
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