Not All Sandy Beaches and Sunshine

Sooo.....this week was actually a lot like the last one. And the one before that. So let my just copy and paste last week's email and...

Just kidding, this week was great! We had some pretty solid lessons, set up a bunch of baptismal dates, and found some really cool people. Let me tell you about one guy. We just finished a lesson with this 25 year-old man and were on our way to our next lesson. We were navigating through this intricate labyrinth of buias and tin houses, dodging naked children and trying not to lose our shoes in the puddles of...who knows what...when we walked past this guy sitting on his buia. This guy is huge - like, scary huge. He's covered in tattoos and his head is shaved into four mohawks. Not exactly the typical approachable islander. But that wasn't what got our attention the most. He was reading. Not only that, but he was reading THE BOOK OF MORMON! We had never had lessons with guy or even met him before, but we went up and started talking to him. His name means "old food." Turns out, this guy has never been to a day of school in his life. When he got married and was asked to sign the paper, he couldn't write his name. When he was about 30 he decided he wanted to read the Bible. He prayed and fasted for 3 days and tried really hard to decipher the first page of the Kariki ni Bwaai (Genesis). It took him two weeks. Ever since then he has read every single day. That was four years ago. Now, he's on his 4th time reading the Bible. He loves reading. Not too long ago, he saw a copy of the "Mormon bible" sitting on a shelf in his neighbor's house and decided he was going to read it too. He picked it up and read for hours. Two days later, two funny-looking foreigners with name tags came up to him while he was reading and started talking to him...

Needless to say, we started lessons with him. he is one of our best investigators. On our first lesson, he quoted from memory every single verse we shared from the Bible. Now he reads the Book of Mormon and the Bible every day. He gave my companion and I some really nice copies of the Kiribati Bible as gifts. He's the one that's asking for the return appointments. Not long ago, his neighbor came and sat in on one of his lessons. They're both getting baptized in two weeks.

Sometimes crazy things happen like that that you just know weren't coincidences. It's so fun to see! But I do want to emphasize that missionary work isn't all sandy beaches and sunshine (well, maybe that's not the best way to phrase it...).

This week we also set up a dinner appointment with a family in our ward. They are all members except for the father. He is pretty set in his religion. The family asked us to try to set up some discussions with him, so we decided to start with dinner and a spiritual thought. The father agreed to the dinner, but he firmly refused to hear any lessons. That was okay, you gotta start somewhere! So dinner was going really well, with great conversations about soccer and stuff like that. Then he asked us a question. "Where was the Mormon church way back when there were no churches here in kiribati? If your church is true, why didn't you send someone the bring the truth to us?" That is a SOLID question to hear from a potential investigator! Elder Veresoni and I looked at each other for split second, then launched into an explanation. We had the perfect answer to his question: THE RESTORATION!!!!! We were so grateful that the opportunity arose so smoothly...until we mentioned the word "prophet.". He started yelling at us, saying that we had an agreement to not give any "mormon" lessons at dinner. He yelled at us for abut 15 minutes. The family was in tears. We tried to explain that we were just trying to answer his question, but he wouldn't hear it. There were so many things I wish I could've explained to him!!! We apologized for offending him, helped to clean up dinner, and thanked them for the evening. It was rather disappointing, to say the least. But we'll keep trying to be nice to him!

Yep, some cool stuff happened this week! The work is still going well, the church is still true, and the sun is still hot. Missionary work just can't be beat! Have a great week everyone!

Elder Barker