Also something really cool, we stopped by a little catholic church where they have a thrift shop and gave them some clothes. We just talked with some of the aunties, and they said they really need more man power and other things to help, it's just getting too hard for them! They were super surprised that Mormons asked if they could help lol! But they were so thankful! It ended up we'll be going there once a week to help with the thrift shop, and also to do home visits to some of the kapuna's dropping them off dinner! And that was the best part. They have had just other volunteers from their church helping do all this for a long time! But now that we're going and helping "In our white shirt and ties and tag and all" All of them are so surprised haha! Rumor has spread through like our whole farm town that we'll help people out! So it's just been awesome! That church really loves us now.

Working with the Tongan Ward

We had a really great week! We are making progress in our Tongan ward. We were visiting our part member list and came across the name of a girl named Cierra who is a recent convert in a part member family, the only one https://hookupdate.net/nl/beste-muziekdating/ who is not a member is her other sister Celena! When we went to go teach them Celena listened in on the lesson and was curious, so we talked to her for a bit and she said she will come to church with Cierra this week and we can teach her! So fingers crossed that she'll come. We also committed Cierra's younger brothers "who are in love with us" to remind her everyday to come to church hahaha!

All day on Sunday the boys just wanted to stay with us and learn more about Jesus, so we took them with us to our gospel principles class and they helped us teach some less active members and investigators! Surprisingly enough, having them there with their great spirits actually really helped the lessons! When the less active members heard little kids answering questions about Jesus and the restoration they really liked it! So we got two little missionaries in our hands now haha! Let's hope they bring Celena to church.

In our other ward the work is still going good. We have a lot of investigators who are young and the hold back is still the fathers. We've made a lot of progress! They are allowing us to come and teach them, now we're helping them to come to church! As soon as we can get them coming weekly they can all be baptized!

Elder Fakahau is doing really good, this week we talked about how serving a mission helps those we love at home. I told him if he wants to help his family, a friend, or someone else who is close to him, to work harder and be even more obedient, because as we serve with all our hearts the Lord will watch over our families while we're gone. Because the gospel DOES bless families 🙂 He's been a little fireball ever since our conversation, haha! He's helping motivate me even more now! It's great.

The Ricciardi Letter

By Danny Humphrey Background This letter was originally written to an Elder Clarke on June 17th, 1994. The son of a dear friend. I have updated this 16 year old letter with additional stories from my time as a missionary with Elder Ricciardi. The work any missionary does anywhere in the world is of critical importance to the development and conversion of the individual missionary. In other words...you. [Additional background note from James Ivie to : I have attached a file to this email of a “letter” that a buddy of mine wrote just over 20 years ago. He wrote this letter to the son of a friend who was struggling on his mission. Years later he began to hear of missionaries who had read the letter – some found it left behind in an apartment, some in the MTC, some had it mailed to them from an older sibling, etc. It took on a life of its own. A couple years ago a general authority called my friend and asked if the letter was really his (yes) and if he would (1) expand on it a little, (2) allow the Church to vet the accuracy of the letter, and (3) allow the Church to contact others who were mentioned prominently in the letter, particularly an Elder Ricciardi from Italy. The letter is about my friend's mission experience, and in particular the important things he learned from his trainer. Danny has expanded the letter a bit, added a couple paragraphs recently, and we've heard of small pieces of it being used by General Authorities. Most recently President Uchtdorf used a few stories from the letter in an address to the missionaries at the MTC in Provo, and the talk was reproduced in the Church News. Pretty cool. Anyway, Danny had told Autumn about the letter before her mission and told her that when the time was right I would send it to her in the mission field. I formatted the letter and gave it headers and corrected some spelling and grammar problems and sent it to her a couple weeks ago. She and her trainer read it and cried a lot – and learned a lot. I hope that you have time to look at it, there are parts of this that I think every trainer should know and understand, and every new missionary for that matter.]