Week 82 - Lakwe

Iakwe friends and family!

This week was an awesome week. We saw the Welle's, our Chuukese investigators, three times to make sure everything was set for their baptism. All three of the kids (Aki, Lani, and Lea) were baptized on sunday! They brought a bunch of their extended family to attend the baptism. In sacrament meeting they announced the baptism right as the family was walking in, and it was like a line of never-ending small brown people. There was like 15 or more non-members that they brought with them to church and to the baptism. Everything for the baptism went great! For his closing remarks, our bishop had all of their family stand up, and then challenged them all to meet with the missionaries and receive the ordinance of baptism for themselves! He said "I'm going to speak out of love, but be bold. This is the true church and gospel of Jesus Christ and you all need to be baptized by the authority of the restored priesthood of God". Hopefully their mom recognized the spirit that she felt and bishop's words will motivate her to prepare for her own baptism.

We also met with this super cool part-member family. The mom and daughter come to church every week, but the dad never comes and is a non-member. We talked to him before and he told us to come by on saturday for service. We showed up for service and are helping him restore a special edition '64 mustang! He knows literally everything about cars. He's a professional mechanic and has been working with cars since he was a little kid. He also knows a lot about how to make cars fast. He used to race cars and told us he's had over 250 tickets in his lifetime. He also joked about how he's trying to convince his wife and daughter to put nitrous in the car "just in case". I guess they're against it though because the car is going to be for his daughter when she turns 16.

Another cool experience we had was at dinner one night. We were eating with one of the single mothers in our ward and her family and she told us that he oldest daughter hadn't been baptized yet and wanted to take the lessons! So we talked to her and she said she wanted to start meeting with us every week so she can get baptized! I'll let ya know how that goes.

But overall a great week where the Lord truly blessed us.

Love you!

-Elder Merrill