Week 17 - Kiritimati, Tabakaia 1st (Companion: Elder Afatasi)

Email dated: January 11, 2016

Hey!

Good to hear you have calling already Mum, and dad will have a calling soon?  The Ward sounds pretty cool, already getting dinners with members. Dinners here are never a problem, but this month we decided to mix up the families we eat with and it was such a great idea. I just keep falling more and more in love with our area.

Weather here, has been so hectic with storms, wind and rain. On Saturday night the weather was so bad that on the jetty at the KPA, there was a huge wave that wiped out a car and two shipping containers into the ocean killing two people. and today we saw one of the shipping containers craned from off the beach and it was beat-up. 

This week has been a lot better, we've got a couple of new investigators that we are teaching and they are all golden. Some of the investigators that we have been teaching for while and have struggled to come to church, came yesterday! they were super mama (shy) but we got their less active sister helping them come to church so that's a bonus.

We have a marriage on Tuesday for Eretii and her partner and then she can get baptized this Saturday. Eretii, when we first started teaching her was super sceptical about the restoration because she was raised Catholic but then she started reading The Book of Mormon and now she is progressing so much! She's super smart as well and she understands the doctrine so well.

Katua, who we started teaching a week ago will be baptised this Saturday as well, and I actually received her referral and contacted personally. We were at the government building and Elder Afatasi was busy. This less active women was like, Elda, iai te referral ibukim (there is a referral for you) and she pointed at her younger sister, Katua, so I was like sweet, well meet with you later today. Turns Katua has been going to church and Young Single Adult activities for a while in Tarawa but was never taught or baptized. so she is golden investigator.

Okay the power went out until now and P-day is all most over so I'll have to close it up here, love you guys heaps.

Love Elder Berends.