Hi family!! 

This week our whole district was able to finally fly to Tonga!! We had a little zone meeting with President and Sister Tupou, which was our last time spent with them and we had final interviews with him as well. They will be released next week which is so so crazy. I love them so much and grateful for all of the things they have taught me. But we are looking forward to meeting our new President and his family. 

The past few days have been a little rough, Sister Vimahi and I BOTH sick. I thought it was just the lack of nutrition we've been getting lately but turns out it's food poisoning. I don't think my stomach liked the American food we've been getting lately at President's house and again this morning from our members who served us all American food. I never thought I would not be down for a bowl of cereal and pancakes for breakfast. So sad! 

Another highlight of the week were two of the families that we recently started working with. With our new fafanga program, our Bishop added two families, one less-active and one non-member, who asked for a time to feed us. We were able to go meet them for the first time this week the day they fed us and teach them. It was a very neat experience because they were all so so humble and grateful to be feeding the missionaries. One is an older couple who wants so badly to go through the temple and be sealed but the husband has been away from church for awhile and a convert to the church. They came to church yesterday! Another family is a lady who's kids are all baptized and come to church but is Catholic and she accepted our invitation to teach her as well as her mom who is already baptized, but went back to the Catholic church. We are so excited to continue to teach them and help them come unto Christ.

Ofa lahi atu!!

Sister Petalisi

Early morning to catch the 1st. sunrise in the world!!

Hi family!!

So lots of changes have occurred since I last wrote. 1. I have a new
companion, Sister Vimahi, and I love her! She's from Cali. 2. We have
a new area! The elders left in Tongamama'o right next to us so
President asked us to cover their area as well as ours. We practically
cover half of the island now. It was a little rough at first trying to
cover that much area on foot, but we are getting the hang of it,
slowly. It's been fun getting closer with another ward on top of ours!
3. We started a new program in our ward which has so far been so on
point!! Lately, we've started seeing a lack of progression in our ward
and so we started a new program that was inspired by one of the
sisters in our district here. Every morning and night a member family
feeds us and this is a huge thing here because they see it as a
blessing for us to eat their food. But since we care more about
teaching people then eating food, we started a program to help the
members hopefully change their focus. Every evening feeding there has
to be someone there for us to teach, whether a less-active or a
non-member, and if there isn't then we bless the food and at the same
time open our fast and let the members eat the food and we teach them.
This way, every night there is a teaching. Every day this week we have
had someone for us to teach before we eat!

This week we were supposed to fly to Tonga to go to MLC, but the plane
couldn't land because of wind the first time so we were stuck here. We
tried again on Thursday to have a mini MLC for the missionaries in
'Eua and Vava'u and ended up spending the entire day at the airport
waiting for our flight that kept getting delayed. And then finally it
was just cancelled altogether. It was a bit of a struggle to have a
good attitude about it. Especially when the storm hit which made the
work a little hard. I honestly don't know how this island isn't
completely flooded already! Looking back on it though, we've been able
to see so many BLESSINGS that have come out of it and how the Lord has
intervened for a wiser purpose. We realized that there was probably a
reason we needed to stay behind and it was because we were able to
teach the daughter of our bishop (who was feeding us that night)
and her husband, Tupou and Liana. She grew up in the church and served
a mission, but married her husband, a non-member. When we taught them
the message of the restoration, he was pretty open to it and when we
shared the account of the 1st vision, she started crying. I'm sure it
brought her back many memories and reminded her of the testimony she
had shared so many times with others. With what she shared with us we
could tell how much she regretted falling away and marrying outside
the church and how much she wants to come back and be sealed in the
temple. She was able to share with us and her husband how she received
a testimony of the Book of Mormon growing up. It was so BEAUTIFUL! The
morning after the lesson, they flew back to their home in Tonga they
go back and forth from. If we had gone to Tonga, we would probably
have been stuck in Tonga because of the storm and wouldn't have taught
them that night. I'm so excited, between us and the missionaries in
their area, to continue to teach them and help them be
converted/reconverted to the gospel!

This week I've started reading more diligently "Jesus the Christ" and
for any of you that haven't started it or finished it, READ IT. It's
so good. I regret that I only started reading it at this point in my
mission. The words are a bit big for me, but I have learned sooo much.

Another blessing of the week is that the HUGE rat that's been
pestering us is finally out of the MQ for good! After a little crazy
night where we woke up in the middle of the night because it was in my
BED we became a bit more driven to get it out. But now, all is well.
Rat is out. There are again blue skies here.

Love you all!!
Sister Petalisi

Friends and Family,

So a few changes happened this week! Sister Reid left Eua to work in Tonga and I got a new companion, Sister Vimahi. I love her! She's a Tongan sister from California and pretty much fluent in the language because she kind of grew up speaking it so that's a huge plus! I'm hoping to improve a lot in the language this transfer. She's almost done too. Two of the elders left 'Eua and they are getting no replacements so President is having us work to their area as well as ours. Our area is HUGE now and we spend most of our time walking. 

Don't have much time to write, so this is all I will be sending home this week, but just want to let you know that I'm doing okay! We were supposed to fly to Tonga today for our MLC meeting, but the plane wasn't able to land to come get us so we are just staying here which is a little disappointing. Especially since it may be President and Sister Tupou's last MLC before they finish. We get a new one next month President Tu'ione I think is his name. I am excited to see what might change in the mission with the new President. 

Love you all!  The work is really hard out here but I love it. I'm trying! Have a good week!

Sister Petalisi