KADAVU - Week 11

No Grit No Pearl

Bula Vinaka!

Hey everyone! It's me again. It's been a great week! A lot of hard work! And the branch is really improving! Everything just feels like it's moving forward right now, which is a great feeling. Life is going great still out here on Kadavu!

On top of all the other great things that happened this week, we were able to have our baptism! His name is Tevita and he's 9 years old. He's way fun. His mom is awesome too! They happen to live in the only village that has forbidden missionaries from going inside, so it's kind of a challenge to visit them. But we'll usually just stand outside the village, call a kid over and ask him to run to their house and call them over to us. Haha. The baptism went great! It was a beautiful day. The water was an amazing light blue, the sand is white, and the smiles were nice and big. It made everyone happy. My companion Elder Feliua'i Lene did the baptism. It put a nice cap to a good week.

Today for P-day we got to hike to a really sweet waterfall! We didn't get to swim of course, but it was still a beautiful hike, and we got to see the member that came with us jump off into the water! We also went and played some football. MAN I miss football. Haha. My companion is getting pretty serious about wanting to play when he gets back home so I'm showing him some of the ropes. It's a blast showing Fijians what football is like because they always laugh at me when I try to play rugby with them, so it's nice having the roles reversed for a bit! Haha.

So for a spiritual thought I just want to talk about my subject line: "No Grit No Pearl". This is a saying that our mission mom (the mission president's wife) said to us in our last Zone Conference. It is a really cool one. For those of you that don't know much about how pearls are made (I didn't... Haha), basically, when a piece of dirt or sand or anything, grit, gets into a clam, it forms a protective casing around that grit to prevent it from causing irritation. She related this to us, and the trials we face. We meet many rough times in our life, of all different shapes and sizes. It's all grit. But if we tough through it and have faith in the Lord, we will come out in the end with a beautiful pearl. My mission as a whole has been a lot of grit, but it feels like the pearls that I come out with pay me so much more than I expected. Heavenly Father loves us, so he sends us rough times to make us stronger. What are some pearls in your life?

Ok well, that's about it for me! You guys are the bomb. I hope all is well! Until next week, keep on keepin' on!

Au lomani Kemuni!

-Elder Jaxson Jeremy Miller