Week 77 - Fightin' Fires

HI,

Had another killer week here in Kona. We taught this guy from Honduras named Nahuun. We met him one day while we were walking down the street. He was out by his truck, so we decided to go out and meet him. We didn't see him for a while, but were driving by this past week and saw his truck outside, so we decided to stop in and teach him. We found out his brother that is living with him is a less-active member. Then we taught him the Restoration. When we got to Christ's Earthly Ministry, he said "I need that, I haven't baptized yet". We told him we could help him with that, then invited him to church. He had to work this past sunday, but told us he'd be there for sure this next week!

On a sadder note, there was a family in our stake that had a fire in their house and lost two of their sons (6 and 11 I think). The whole stake has rallied together to support them. The mom and all of the extended family bore their testimony yesterday. She talked about how the gospel brings her peace in trying times like this. One of her sons that passed away gave a talk last week in church and after his death, the news published it all over Hawaii. His talk was about families and the plan of salvation. It's really cool to see how his young testimony is blessing so many.

We were talking about it in ward council, and the high priests' group leader, who has been a firefighter for 40 years, shared a really neat insight. He told us that 95% of firefighting is prevention. Or in other words, the best way to fight a fire is to never have one. He related that to the gospel and said the same thing about our spiritual safety. It's better to take precautionary measures to protect your spirit beforehand, rather than waiting for disaster to strike. It goes along perfectly with the saying "an ounce of prevention is better than a ton of cure". 

We've also been working with these less-active sisters in our ward. They didn't come to church for like 30 years. Then they started coming back last year, but fell away again. We've been meeting with them every sunday and they've come to church the past two sundays!

Please keep praying for missionary opportunities and the courage to recognize and act on them when they come! Love you guys.

-Elder Merrill