That's all for Now: spiritually self reliant

Sent: Monday, August 01, 2016 4:32 PM (MDT)
Tuesday, August 02, 2016 9:32 AM (Vanuatu)

hullo there

this week felt really fast but each day was really slow. since saturday was the 30th we thought sunday was the 1st. so we fasted and then got to sacrament meeting anddddd it wasn't fast sunday. kinda awkward but it's all good.

life is good here in this.. place. i dunno what to call it. to be honest i don't know what to talk about right now.

ooooh ok i know

so this week was a celebration week. like last sunday was 'children's day ' and saturday was vanuatu's independance day. so this whole week there was just. a lot of celebrating. and in the hopes of getting a ridiculous number of refferals, our leaders decided to have a 'market stall' so like. at show ground(a area/town/village/place??) there is a community park and a bunch of people made stalls out of branches, coconut leaves, nails and fabric. really legit. and we met a lot of people there and it was really awesome.

we're getting a lot closer with/better at teaching and talking with less actives. theres one village that's nothing but less actives. so we have lots of people to teach whenever we go to that village so it's pretty great. they're pretty receptive. teaching them about how to be spiritually self reliant. yes you can feel the spirit and want to change when the missionaries are there. but, it's not worth anything unless you do something about it when the missionaries aren't there. reading. and praying. and desiring after good things when the missionaries aren't there. conversion is obedience and faith over time. the gospel isn't a one time deal. it's a lifetime deal.

one of the less actives we're teaching is really cool. his name is robin and he's really chill. we got talking about slingshots and such one time before a lesson and he said he'd make me a slingshot. so. guess who has a slingshot now. *childhood me jumping for joy* it's really useful for scaring bad dogs away and passing the time when we're walking down the really really long road between villages.

we finally met all of the members in the whole branch. which is really positive. in this area there's not a lot of new investigator kind of proselyting but a lot of re-activation/ re-inviting less actives kinda proselyting. which is nice. when we teach/ have discussions with less actives we have a lot more doctrinal questions that we can clarify and help them with than those of investigators. everything in the gospel is super simple. but everything connects to everything. obedience connects to the plan of salvation, baptism, enduring to the end, the restoration, the atonement, ect. and same for every other doctrinal point. simple but complex.

last thing. so our apartment is really old missionaries wise. like. missionaries have been in this area for a long time. and so there's a ridiculous number of really old liahonas(the best by far of the church magazines)((also the only one that's accessible here)) and being able to read the articles, words of apostles and prophets that i maybe haven't heard before or havent seriously considered before is really awesome. one quote that i found is really awesome and sorry for any/all of you who haven't been inside the temple yet, this probably won't make as much sense to you. anyway.
"real personal sacrifice never was placing an animal on the altar. instead it was a willingness to put the animal in us upon the altar and letting it be consumed" - Elder Neal A. Maxwell

really good stuff.

that's all for now.

good week and goodbye for now.

Elder Hyatt VI