Inviting the Spirit through the Book of Mormon

So now i'm being better about writing in my journal so i'll just share
snipets from each day in my letters.
Monday - Errands. Famle Haos Naet. FHE at the Saksak's house. It's the
1st counselor of the branch with his son, The clerk, and 2
missionaries with their call waiting to go. It was great. We read the
story of Helaman and the 2,000 stripling warriors. I liked reading
what made them so great. They were 100% honest and obedient. They
learned well from their mothers and wanted to protect their fathers.
It was great to read about these young men because a bunch of them
were there to do it with us. Also something cool happened at the end.
One of their uncles, Harry was there. He's an old man who uses
crutches because one of his legs was amputated. He comes to church
every week. During the lesson I sat and thought about him and felt
compassion and wanted a way I could help somehow. At the end we were
about to leave when he asked for a blessing because of his sore neck.
I was glad to do it. He is making me a CTR ring right now with melted
australian money and a CTR logo.
Tuesday - RAIN. This full week is constant raining. Our clothes were
totally soaked through haha. Our member present kept singing the part
in "Praise to the Man" where it says "sacrifice brings forth the
blessings of heaven". Decent day. My favorite lesson was with Erik, a
recent convert. We read in Alma 22 about King Lamoni and Aaron. I like
it because it shows the power of the priesthood and missionary work and
especially teaching with the spirit. I want investigators like him,
who would give everything they possesed and give away all their sins
to recieve eternal life. Also today in Tagabe a massive downpour
started. We took shelter with some other people under a the copper
roof. I was feeling anxious to waste time. I prayed in my head for the
rain to stop and to still have a successful day. Almost immediately the
rain stopped. Then I thought about the part of my patriarchal blessing
that says you will see miracles on your mission.
Wednesday - We taught Moses! But first we taught Lucy out in Plantina.
It was a good lesson about prayer. We read the story of Enos and his
wrestle for forgivness. I love his example of prayer. Also we went up
to Rango Rango and Emile, the husband wasn't there but we read the
Family: Proclamation with her and the kids. They're great converts.
They are a long ways away from the chapel but they come every week.
After Maripol talked about how glad she is that they joined the church
and how much they've been blessed and changed. Ok, now onto Moses.
He's the chief of a nearby village called MCI. He was super interested
and very bible savvy. He wanted enough time to pray and read the Book
of Mormon before our next appointment. Elder Whitney's down in the
dumps because he's going from one threesome to the next and our 3rd
companion. Trying to help him out.
Thursday - We taught Amos! First we went to John a recent convert who
is more or less a less active already, he came to church to be
confirmed. We read Alma 47 about Lehonti and Amalickiah's trickery.
Then compared it to satan tempting us and how after many try's and
lying and deciet Lehonti died. It's a good eye opener. After had a
good discussion. Also taught Lembunu. She's well already from her
sick. Also went out to Roger and Candie and Marcella again. Great
lesson about the Plan of Salvation. Used lots of verses from the Book
of Mormon. They're very sincere and kind and love us to death and we
always have a blast there but...... they're strong catholic and they
have an altar thingy in their yard. We'll see what happens. After we
taught Amos. He was a referral from Carlo, a RM. He is really good and
has good questions. A mission is so demanding mentally. My mind feels
like it never has a break.
Friday - Busy day. We went up to Rango Rango again and found
Kalsimpalo. After taught someone we contacted, Marie. 2 of her friends
were there. Great lesson. They were super interested and wanted a Book of
Mormon before we had given them one. We passed the 2 guys on to the
sisters. Read Mosiah 18 with Lembunu about Alma changing and baptising
many. Also talked about the baptismal covenant to prepare her. After
taught Franko. He's great. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Chirst.
Good lesson. Set a date with him. After my favorite lesson of the
week, Beni. He's a recent-ish convert haha. He expressed some desire
to serve a mission. But then he got a girlfriend and..... yeah. Our
branch mission leader, Harry asked us to go see him. We read verses
from Alma 26 with him about Ammon's feelings, experiences, and
thoughts on his missionary work. Awesome lesson. I love this chapter.
It shows how glad missionary work can be and some trials. I bore a
strong testimony of the work. He said he had something to talk to me
about on sunday.
Saturday - Happy B-day elda whitney. Baptised Lembunu today :). She's
really sweet. I'm worried a little about support though because it's
just her in the family. The young women here are great, they should be
able to help. Starting a few minutes before the baptismal service it
started to rain really hard and through the talks. As I got changed
into my white clothes before I prayed that the rain would stop to
allow the baptism to happen. After the last talk and before we went
out the rain completely stopped until we were going back into the
chapel after the baptism. Also contacted a girl named Elizabeth. She
was great too and wondered why so many people worshiped only at
church. She talked about joining the church already. Also taught Sam
again. He's awesome. He's 17 and a great listener. He's really
interested and humble. Amos had good questions again. Lastly, Moses.
Planned to teach the Plan but ended up talking about the Priesthood.
Sunday - The end of a succesful week. Church was great. Esron Vano
taught about the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden and in Lehi's
dream. He was a great missionary and is so knowledgable and speaks
with the power of the spirit. Saksak also gave a good lesson about
applying lessons we learn in church into our lives. Taught sam again,
good as always. Also taught Carlos, who was baptised last week. He's
so great. Great convert. Read the story of Alma again and covenants
and he totally grasps the seriousness of it. Also taught elizabeth,
very clear and good lesson. My favorite though was Beni. We didn't
teach him but he came up to me and said he had met with the branch
president that morning. He had confessed and wanted to repent and
change. He seemed glad too. Reminded me of one of my all time favorite
scriptures that helps me to be humble and talks about this what
happened. Alma 29:9.

I really liked this week because of how much we read the Book of
Mormon with people. It invites the spirit so well and is just plain
entertaining. It's so important for them to read this book.

Aright gotta go, love you lots!

Ale wan taem!

Elda Sia

It just gets better and better- news from Etas

 I Olraet?

This area is awesome! Busy. Very big. The best part is the members.
They're really strong and they like to help. Our branch mission leader
is great too. Also a RM who finished right when I got into Fiji, Esron
Vano moved into blacksands and is going to church with us. He's like
the legend from the mission. He's from PaamaVanuatu. The youth are
the best. We haven't had a single lesson without a member present yet
haha. They love to follow us, sometimes in groups. We had 2 baptisms
this week, Gidimo, and Carlos. They're both really awesome. I did
Gidimo's and a prospective missionary did Carlos's. After Freddy
baptised him he said "Welcome to Zion" haha awesome. I like my new
companion Elda Whitney a lot. He's from Brisbane, Australia. We get
along really well. Elda Anderson just got here yesterday. 

 So this week was really good lesson wise. I've
surpassed it number wise before but every lesson was really good. Elda
Whitney and I had a good flow going. Also we got better at making them
discussions, not lectures. We contacted some referrals and received
some as well. 13 new investigators this week. We went and taught a man
named Roger and his wife Candy and his mom. We taught the restoration
and it went really well. Before they had come and found us on the road to
ask us questions. They asked us some interesting ones but it ended up
really well. At the end his brother, lorenzo came over skeptical. He
started asking us questions about heaven and hell and paradise. We
explained that it would take a bit to explain if they were willing.
After explaining everything and sharing some verses with him he was
confounded for lack of another term. He was on the offensive but we
just followed the spirit and shared truth. The spirit is amazing. All
the lessons have been really good. Lily and Suzana, 2 we contacted
were so nice and want us to come a lot more. It's so nice here. Because
of the help we don't have to do our own street contacting as much. We
just get referrals of people the members know are good. The house is
small but has everything I need. Ice box microwave and hot shower!!!
Sorry for the withdrawals, I bought a new set of scriptures and bought
them not in combo form. We walked up to rango rango this week. Took
just about 3 hours and we didn't find our appointment at the house or
any of our backups. It was scenic though. It's up on a mountain and
very rain foresty with big pastures at the bottom of it. Also had some
natural springs that I drank from. 150 people came to church
yesterday! So awesome. I taught elders quorum because the teacher
didn't show up. Anyways, random ,but it was a good week! Thanks for all
the packages! I felt really loved opening them. Thank you so much for
the support. Love you all.

Elda Sias


 

Memories of Gaua

                                                      Baptism of Jeremy and Dustin

                                                   Me with District President Ian Mahit

                                            Norbert with his white spot medication and buffness

                                                       Vincent climbing for coconuts

                                                  Clearing the ground for the new chapel

 We bought 8 kilos of meat, put it in a cooler and preserved it with salt.  It worked!  We ate meat until we left....

                                                               Me, feeding  a cow bananas

                                                             Joji, Vincent and Nixon

                                                                  Mashing breadfruit

                                    Getting some natural spring water on our hike to the lake

                                         Swinging on a vine  at the lake-  not into the lake, haha

                                                  Our investigator Josef and his daughter

On to Blacksands....

Ok so news again. Turns out I won't be serving in Etas and I won't be staying with Elda Bacon. Etas will go to 2 different ones and Elda Bacon will be training in Palon, my first area. I will be serving in another area here in vila called Blacksands. I'm stoked. Etas is good but this is....... better haha. It's the highest baptizing branch in Vanuatu. Thats because it has branch mission leaders and meetings and everything. So awesome! It's the strongest branch of the church here. Our house is in a huge grass field with the way nice chapel on it and........ the basketball court! I get to shoot hoops now for my exercise every morning. This is probably the most succesful and busy area. Oh yeah haha. BUT, theres more. I haven't found out for sure how it's going to turn out companion wise but it's going to be a threesome. Me, Elda Anderson, and either Elda Whitney or Hubbard. I was in line to train again but president had other things in mind. He wanted to try me with Elda Anderson. He is an missionary from Santo.One other will be joining me to help out a little. Elda Anderson has over a year on the mission and the other 2 possibles are new. I'm going to be the senior companion . I do feel good that president trusts me in this assignment.  Pray for me to be able to lead this companionship in a MASSIVE area. Very excited.

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Transfer!

Family,

I get to e mail again yay! Ok so I guess your probably wondering why I am e mailing right now. Because Elda Bacon and I just got transferred. Basically President Klingler has set a new standard for missionary housing and he determined our house/living was inhumane more or less haha. He told the Senior zone leaders that he wouldn't send his sons out there so he won't send his missionaries there. He is really great and really cares about us. I sure hope they can get a house built out there soon because Gaua needs missionaries. So as for us we are going to serve in Etas. Which is an area in Port Vila AKA civilization! I'm very sad to be leaving Gaua but I feel very lucky to be going to Etas. It's a pretty coveted area. This area is one of the two area's of the Senior zone leaders. Because of their increasing busyness with the increase in missionaries here they don't have enough time for both area's so we get Etas :). We'll be going to stay with all the missionaries (The homies) staying in the huge house in Mele. It's going to be a blast. It was sad leaving Gaua. Mama Veka, the mom who we lived with was absolutely bawling. She is so incredible, she looked after us like we were her own children. Said goodbye to all our friends and converts. One of them, Jeremy came to the airport to chill with us and see us off. At the end of the month President Mahit will be coming again to set up the Branch presidency, that will help. Pray for them, I will be. It's going to be way weird going to vila. Every time I go there it doesn't even seem real and it feels like I'm in New York City, culture shock. So this week we've been preparing to move out and transfer so there's been lots of time to reflect. I'm over 7 months, going for 8. Weird. I feel like I've grown a lot but no where near where I'd like to be. I love being on a mission. Very tiring and trying. So eye opening. I feel like I have a perspective I didn't have enough of before. My testimony has grown so much. Yesterday I was studying and I got into a study about gifts of the spirit. I read 1 corinthians 12-14, Doctrine and Covenants 46 and Moroni 10. They list all of them and their purposes. Very eye opening. We all have our strenghts and weaknesses. If we want to overcome weaknesses we try for a gift of the spirit that helps us come out of that. I read my patriarchial blessing after. In 1 corinthians 13:13 I think? it says charity is the greatest of all. After reading that and my blessing I am so glad that heavenly father gave that to me. Now I just feel I want to enhance it so much more. Right now I'm really trying hard to be as humble and loving to others as possible. I see that helping me now more than anything. Gave my last talk on sunday and I decided to talk about prayer. To end it I talked about my experience in the temple when the spirit whispered to me "i love you and i will protect you", after I shared how that same day my dad had prayed for comfort about his mothers recent passing. After the spirit led him to the scriptures for his answer. I'm really glad I get to stay with Elda Bacon. We get along so well. We're buds fo-sho. I LIKE HIM A LOT. (dumb and dumber accent) So with the new area happening I'm again praying for help learning an area, join me if you would. Anyways sorry if this ones devoid of lots of stories but luckily you'll be hearing from me every week again. And..... I'll be eating meat! gain weight? anyways love you all and thank you so much for writing and everything.



Elda Sia

The Latest From Gaua

Missionary work and building up the church in general

Ok first, I got the first package you sent forever ago. Elda Albrek, the senior missionary in Santo found it in quarantine haha. Enjoying the protein bars. Anyways here I go. It'll be random and out of order again. So the other day we were making our forever long walk back from Kuition. We were walking on the road when we saw a mama with his small boy. I saw the boys face when he saw us. His eyes got huge, without wasting a second he screamed and ran away crying. I saw him running away up and down 3 hills. That was his reaction to white people haha. We weren't doing anything scary just walking haha. I think we were the first white people he had seen. And now we'll go to when I got scared. On this same walk back from Kuition it was very dark towards the last leg of the walk. We were walking and talking when in the middle of the road I saw something peculiar. I froze. I asked "do you see that?" I stared for a while and stopped in my tracks. I was legitimitely scared. Then I realized it was a truck parked in the road and the lights were from the reflectors. I was scared of a truck. There's 2 trucks on this island. I'm becoming "manbush". Also, one day Elda Bacon and I went down to Lemanman to find the guy who could come and witness Tabi and Elisabeths' marriage and come with the license. He was there for the big lavet. The prime minister of Vanuatu was here giving a speech. After he was finished he came over to us to meet and and we talked for a bit. I got a photo with him but I forgot to bring my camera again. After he and all the chiefs went up to a stage for their feast. We got invited to eat with them. So good! We also saw some water music. It's one of their custom dances where they basically use the ocean as the drum and make really cool sound effects like dolphins. So then the marriage. Tabi is our neighbor and good friend. His wife Elisabeth is great and is an investigator of ours. President Mahit, the district president in Luganville was supposed to come and perform the marriage for them. . After they ended up going to find an anglican preist to do it. I felt pretty apostate sitting up on the stage with them during it. The preist wore a kkk looking thing and preached and yelled a lot. But at least they're married now. That day was pretty frustrating. I would describe it as someone poking you in the face repeatedly every ten seconds. Just one day though. So we found a man that the missionaries had taught before named Moken. He is so awesome he wants to get baptised so bad. He just needs to get married first. His wife Lydia said she wants to have us come and teach her first and she'll decide on getting married and baptised at the same time. She is so awesome. Last time we went to their house Lydia wasn't there. Moken was talking about how they're so happy now and he says he keeps finding her reading the Book of Mormon. Great couple. Refreshingly educated. Their boy is the best. His name is Limon. Whenever we're about to leave he'll say I love you in english haha. Also we found a guy named Joe. He's really humble and ready to learn. We've taught him a few times and last time we went he told us everything he had read in the Book of Mormon and told the story of it knowing the names and teachings and everything. So refreshing. It's hard to find people that can read. Moken was really glad when he found out we were teaching him because he said that he and Joe had made a pact a few years back that they were going to meet with the missionaries. We were definitely led to him. Also, Jeremy, our albino friend is progressing like crazy. If we don't miss our flight again he'll be getting baptised the day after we get back. He and dustin, a 14 year old boy. They're both so great and will be going to youth conference now. We met this awesome couple. Meri and Jon. They are so kind to us. Whenever we go down we'll drop by their house in route to the end of Kuition. When we head back at the end of the day they'll have a super good meal prepared. They gave me their WWII relic to use. It was a US Navy fork from when the US was stationed here. They love the US army here. All the older guys talk about being scared of the big planes because they hadn't seen one before. The other day we realised it was thanksgiving. We were planning on asking the Zone Leaders in Santo to send us some meat on the flight coming to Gaua that day. They were lazy. But at Meri and Jon's house they ended up making us a super good meal WITH MEAT! So work down in Kuition is great! It's super far away but there are a ton of people ready and who want to join the church. The only problem is they're too far away to come to church. We've been working with this a lot. There's a member here, Filip. He should be the leader here in the future. He's working so hard with us, finding people and using his power as chief to find land for the church. We got approval to go down and teach a sunday school every other sunday. If and when the attendance gets large we can start sacrament meeting and sometime get the land and chapel. It's a long way to walk but they're amazing here. So many said they were wating for us to come or to come back. We've been working a lot with the district and Elda Albrek to get this moving. Lots of time, thought, and prayer. Also good news, our unit here in Gaua got approved to become a Branch! We'll see what happens because to be a branch president you have to be married. Charles isn't. Stevan would be the one to take his place. Charles is a great guy. We're assisting him in his work  ,Inviting all the youth back to church, seeing all the less actives and working with the ground the church has already bought down by the airport for the building of a real chapel. President Mahit is planning to come but Elda Albrek had him wait till we got back so we can show him everything thats going on. Ok so a miracle has happened. I love vegetables. They're like candy to me. We're just going to peoples houses all the time and they fill us up with "island kakae". Pineapples, watermelon, bell peppers, onions, green onions, taro, manyoak, yam, kumala, passionfruit, snake bean, so good. We have a watermelon garden. It's right next to where we sit in front of the house and eat watermelon and throw the seeds. Thats how rich the ground is, if you just throw seeds they'll grow. As far as our people we're teaching we are so set. When I first came I was pretty concerned, very little. We have so much now. Somewhere around 65. It's raining a lot so the roads are just giant puddles of water and deep quicksand-like mud. I had my first fall. I slipped and got pretty dirty. Also I stepped in a giant cow turd because they always tie up their cows close to the road. It was fresh and I almost slipped because of it haha. We're also working with Jansen still. He's so awesome, we need him for the work to progress. He sold his land to the church for the chapel but no one had done anything. We taught an old guy named steven, he's from one of the islands in the south, futuna. He is interesting. He knows the Book of Mormon super well but won't come to church. He was paralyzed for 2 years. We taught him and his 2 granddaughters who are SDA. At the end of the lesson, steven said "you're going to leave your church and go get baptised with them" pretty bold haha. Also we made passionfruit juice. So good! Also we made spaghetti! We found some real pasta noodles and tomato paste. Added water to the past with onions and garlic, very good. We've also been making fried rice when we can find eggs. Also fries! We get kumala (a sweet potato) and deep fry them in oil and put salt, They're like fries but a little sweet too... They're  way good. Also kava is the worst thing ever. It's the biggest stumbling block in this work and in their society. We're teaching a man named Josef who lives with and married one of Jansens' daughters. It's going really well, he has the coolest dreds, he looks like a rasta. I could talk about it all day but work is going really good. Plenty to do. VERY involved with missionary work and just building up the church in general. In gaua it's very cut off from anything, even missionary news. Apparently some bickering and stuff is going on with the other missionaries and other small problems. Elda Bacon and I are away from it and got extended some more time again. They were talking about transfers and the senior zone leader told me the   mission president said, they need to stay. Anyways very random, hope you get anything out of it haha. Not enough time to word it well or work on english. And by the way about the Christmas call. It won't be skype. We'll be calling on our own phone because we'll be in Gaua. No skype but that does mean we get to talk longer. Anyways gotta go, off to play basketball for the first time in a long time.

LOVE YOU LOTS, YOU'RE IN MY THOUGHTS (rhymed)
Elda Sias