Adventures of Isaac the Great

 It still seems that we can't go a single week without being fed any KFC which has accumulated to probably about 5 of the 20 kilos that I've gained so far. On Wednesday we did some GQing and there was one person who I had a good feeling about but didn't say much as far as inviting him to learn and after we left, i committed to asking the next person to give an answer that would imply that they might want to learn to meet back with the missionaries. The next person we met shared with us his story about recently discovering God. On Saturday we visited some members who haven't been visited in a long time and we found out that the parents had been away for their 10th wedding anniversary but their son was still there. We talked to him and from area book learned that he was the one member of his family who was unbaptized. For the most part people are fairly kind when rejecting us or telling us that they aren't interested in learning or listening to us. and kindness is som...

 On Monday last week we had a lesson with one of our friends in a less active family. They haven't been to church in about 8 years. Ww were able to have the first councillor in the bishopric there who is also a friend of the family. On Tuesday and Wednesday we had exchanges.  Tuesday we did a lesson on the restoration and we visited an inactive member and reinvited him to church. Wednesday we had an appointment with somebody who had never heard of the church. Unfortunately he approached our discussion as a studier of religion rather than an actual investigator. Later we had a meeting with another friend. He's been working with missionaries for several years but he has been in and out of jail and has many issues with drugs. With him, we went over the plan of salvation and about halfway through teaching him I felt that we should invite him to be baptized and the other elder I was with felt the same thing. We hadn't even considered inviting him to be baptised before the lesson...

Just this morning we went to the edge of the beach to watch the sunrise. It was really nice to be by the water (even if we couldn't get in) On Tuesday we went to the Elder's Quorum president to return some dishes and on our way back to the flat we saw one of our friends that we've been trying to get in contact with. We were able to do some service for him as well as set a time to meet with him again and have a proper discussion.  On Wednesday we had our transfers and I stayed in the Cranbourne area. my new companion is elder Latu from south Auckland. We were also able to read the introduction to the Book of Mormon with another friend and he decide that he would give the "Book a chance"  Just like our friend  if you haven't read The Book of Mormon closely or recently I would invite you to do so with REAL intent and to follow the invitation in Moroni 10:4 and reaffirm the truthfulness in the Book of Mormon . Thank you for reading my letters. Love, Elder Westover...

  Every once in a while from now on  I'm going to start writing not just my experiences but something that I'm grateful for as well. This will not be a scheduled event but more of something that I do when I feel impressed to do so. Because I do not have a computer to type on I am using the voice to text feature on the phone so if there are any weird spelling or grammar issues that is probably why. I also noticed that it repeats sometimes words that I say. I will try to delete these as best I can. This is the last week of this transfer which is very weird to think about and right now all I can think about is things that have happened the past few weeks, so I'm going to do my best to just say things that have happened this last week. Unfortunately all of my flat except for me has been sick all week although on one day we did a mini exchange and this time I was with Elder Aulick. Because we were sick and didn't know if he was still contagious. So, we did tracting which led...

  Not too much has happened except in my last e-mail that never sent, we did a service for one of our friends named Jane and she needed us to catch 2 sheep because one got injured. We have several people we have been teaching but our main focus is on the part member and less active families. We have a baptism scheduled for the 16th with one of our friends. His name is Enoch. We are really trying to reactivate his family so he can have the support he needs.  We gave out 2 book of Mormon's this past week one to the sister of one of out friends and another to our neighbour today. The best part of my week is seeing our friends at church because it means that they are actually trying to learn and it makes me so happy to see them wanting to grow. On Friday we had a youth devotional with elder Christofferson which we watched over zoom. I took more notes in the one hour that he was there than for any other speaker before. He had the youth ask questions and he answered them. One questi...

Today (I'm writing on Wednesday so I don't forget) was probably one of the worst days of my mission. The morning was very slow and nobody seemed to want to talk to us. Even one of our friends slammed the door on us. As the day started to end, both me and Elder Taua wanted the day to be over and we had a long as bike ride so we were ready to accept defeat for the day and return for our flat. But we remembered that earlier that morning we had received a referral. We decided to stop by the house because we were in the area and we are told to respond within 24 hours to referrals. We said "hello how are you" "good how you" "good, good, that's awesome that your doing well, my friend and I were just in the area and we share messages on Jesus Christ, is that be something you would be interested in" and typically when we mention Jesus Christ people shut the door or say "I'm busy right now" or right now a really common one is "I'm ...

Unfortunately I don't have my journal with me. Right now we are at the chapel playing some basketball. And all the days and weeks have started to meld into one. Because of that, I'll share a quick synopsis with you about this week. Monday I found a violin at one of the second-hand shops. It had no bow or bridge but it did have 4 strings so I think that it was worth it. Now I just need to find a second hand violin that has a bow and a bridge.  Tuesday we had district council as per usual. After that we did some biking and we went down to a place where I hadn't been yet. Our appointment that we had for the day fell through so we rode down to a big pond and did some personal study on a bench. We then rod our bikes to a member's house and we found out that one of them was having surgery the next day and that she wanted a blessing. Then we went back to our flat for Fafaga. Wednesday was a hard day. First, we had to get our car serviced, and the service station is out of our ...