Teaching new people

Email #93
Area: Motupa
Companion: Elder Kosi-poku


Excerpts from Mom's email:

Yeah its nice to be back in Motupa and to see familiar faces and everything. Yeah it was a miracle to be able to confirm her and see that. Well in my last area they were planning to do helping hands and everything, but I am sure that it went well and we didn't really do anything special or big for women's day. Yeah I am going to miss all these people and I know I won't ever forget them. The week was a little hard, because it's difficult to find people to teach but the part member families are our best bet for teaching people so those will bring some good things. I told dad the story about the lady we taught this past week. I can't even believe how old those two are it just blows me away how big they have gotten and to think how long I have been away. Its crazy and I am happy I will be able to see Jaren's graduation and everything. I hope that the plans that I have to come back next June will go through because I really want to come back. But yeah time is short and it still hasn't hit me, it still feels like I have a long time left. I do have mixed feelings about coming home and it makes me really sad actually I mean of course I love you and the rest of the family but these people really have made an impact on my life and to have to leave them not knowing the next time I will see them hurts. I hope I can stay in contact with most of them. yeah I came back right as the heat is about to hit hahaha, but yeah having the truck makes a huge difference and not having to walk in the heat is nice.

Excerpts from Dad's email:

Yeah it was a good week, it is hard to find new people to teach for sure and the part member families are a slow, but a effective process. We met a lady this week her name is Pinky, she is around 30 and has 3 kids. She was given the Book of Mormon by the senior couples when they were here and she read it, not the whole thing but parts of it. We went over the Godhead and up to Joseph Smith and the priesthood and she asks really good questions, she also thought that God was a spirit and most people do here so its nice to see the look on their face when we tell them that He has a body like we do. We explain that if we were created in the image of God and your children are created in the image of you and they look like you and if we are children of God then we should look one in the same. Some disagree, but she understood and it made sense to her that to have a relationship with God he must be a person. We talked about how the spirit will testify of truth to her and she opened the Book of Mormon to a scripture that says that an evil spirit teaches men not to pray. A good spirit teaches to pray, and we looked at each other like wow she knows that scripture haha. But it was nice to see that people take part in teaching themselves and the spirit showed her that scripture so when we meet with her this week we will see how the praying went. Other than that its hard to teach people in this area but we're trying. I took some pics before I left, but I didn't bring my camera with me today so hopefully I remember next week. That guy has been investigating the church for a long time and now I'm not sure how he is doing and I hope that the missionaries that are there will see him. I am having fun and hopefully we can plan some cool pdays here in a few weeks, but we'll see most of them have done everything already or don't have the money to do anything. Yeah service has worked for us as well especially fetching water for people, that's the main source of service that we can do here. Otherwise I am doing good and it hasn't quite hit me how much time I have left, but it will when I am down to about a week so it still feels like I have a long time.

Love,
Elder Bryner