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