And amongst all our dinners this past week, one of my favourites was with the Wilder couple. They're an elderly couple, the husband is around 91 and the wife is around 73 years old. The husband was born and raised in Fiji I think, and was a ship mechanic, so he spent a large chunk of his life travelling around the world! His first wife passed away, and so he met his current wife in Nicaragua! So between the two of them, they can speak many languages! It was awesome being able to hear their stories and their experiences with the gospel.
Also, door knocking miracles! In this mission, it's quite rare to be let into someone's house that you door knock into. If anything, they'll reschedule and let you in the next time you come around. So it took us by surprise when this man offered to let us into his home right after we introduced ourselves! He told us later that he could tell it doesn't happen often, because we were kinda hesitant and caught off guard. We talked with him about the gospel though and got to share a message with him. We figured from his accent that he wasn't an "Aussie" or a "Kiwi", so after asking where he was from we found out that he was born and raised in South Africa! Even though his English is really good, he wasn't able to read an English Book of Mormon well, so we ended up ordering an Afrikaans one, and now I wish I could speak his language because it sounds really cool. That's not the end though! We also met a cook islander who also let us in! We also got to share a message about the restoration with him, and he's even told us he's going to try to make it to church! Rarely do we get let into homes, and now we got let into two within a week! Definitely a miracle.
We've seen more miracles through other means too! Sometimes we forget that our plans are supposed to be inspired and that the Spirit was involved with those plans, but once we witness miracles that result because of those plans, that is when we're reminded that the Spirit really was a part of our planning. One of those plans was to go to another area's baptism, then following the baptism go to a member's house that we hadn't seen in a while, then go eat dinner somewhere at 8 since we didn't have a dinner appointment. At the baptism, we met some Elders from the office that had also come to support the baptism, and they told us that later on that evening they wanted to go out and have dinner with us. So after that we told them we'd meet up later, then we stopped by the members house that we planned for. Just 5 minutes earlier they were trying to figure out our phone number, so they could ask us to come give a blessing to their grandmother who was feeling quite ill! Coincidence, I think not! ('The Incredibles' movie reference). After that, we went over to end the night with a dinner with the office Elders. We were "inspired" by our stomachs to go to a Chinese takeaway restaurant nearby. The food was great! Making it our second miracle. Then we had a random Fijian man working security at a shop nearby walk over just to have a chat with us. We thought he was a member, but it turns out, he wasn't! An it was awesome because one of the office elders was Indian-Fijian, so they communicated in their Native tongue! We set up a time to go see him later on in the week! And final miracle - a member walks by, says he'll see us at church at 11 tomorrow, and we were able to notify him that church was at 10 because of a stake broadcast! (Fast forward a few more days, we meet up with the Fijian man and set him on date to be baptised after he felt that the message we shared was true!)
And lastly, it has been the hottest week of the year so far. Leaving houses or flats is like walking into a wall of heat and humidity. Even the shade can't protect us from the heat... it was crazy. And because of the heat, we witnessed a massive thunder/lightning storm last night! It was really cool, the lightning was shooting across the sky almost constantly!
And now I'll close this super long email with an invitation that we got, and one that I extend to all of you, if you want to try it out. We're reading the Book of Mormon and highlighting references to obedience and blessings that come from it, and underlining references to the Holy Ghost!
Thanks everyone for your love and support!
Elder Ho
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