October 18th, 2015

Another week in Burewai. It was a fun week but really hard. It rained so much this week and all of the rivers were flooded. We had train the trainerson Wed. for the Nausori Zone. All of the trainers and trainees go to Suva for a training with the APs and President and Sister Layton. It was very fun. Things in Burewaii are still very crazy. I have found myself getting used to weird things like naked kids running around the village, stray dogs fighting chickens, seeing people shower outside their flat without any covering, and numerous other things. It is weird that I think these things are normal now. Everyone here is so nice though. If you walk by a house everyone invites you in for lunch or tea or anything. The tea that we always drink here is just hot water with a lemon leaf in it. It actually tastes pretty good after you add a couple scoops of sugar. The culture is way different but I am getting used to it. They are splitting our area soon which is pretty sad. I like all of it. I don't know which side I want. The Nasautoka side is like 70% bush and it is really fun. I love all the people on that side. The other side is where Burewai is and that is like 95% bush. That side is on the ocean and they speak a different dialect which is hard to understand. There is also a lot of black magic on that side. Everyone tells stories about that stuff and it is really daunting. Apparently there was a missionary in my area a little while back that got cursed and had some weird dots around his stomach and he was close to dying. He got really sick but then he got a priesthood blessing and was fine. It scares me to think about this stuff but I know I have the Lord on my side so there is no need to fear. My trainer is awesome. He is one of the youngest trainers in the mission. He just barely finished up follow up training and so we're both still trying to figure things out. We have 5 investigators with a baptismal date!!! 2 of them go to church and are looking really good but the family that we are teaching don't go to church which is frustrating. It's like 1 1/2 hour walk which is hard for them. Lots of the people we teach have anywhere from and hour walk to 3 hour walks just to get to church. It is really hard. The branches in our area turn up about 13 people every week and the 1st and 2nd counselors usually never even go. We also have a few units in our area and those are pretty much just a family having church in their flat. The work is good here though and I love being a missionary.