Sister Kelsey Betteridge

Hello everyone!

I feel like it's been awhile since I last emailed and so sorry I didn't last week! But I'll do my best to give a good update..

1. Happy 4th of July!!

2. We have a new mission president, President and Sister Tu'ione! We have yet to meet them here in 'Eua. But we will be flying to Tonga tomorrow for the temple and MLC and we are so so excited. President and Sister Tupou will be missed here they are so wonderful and I love them and their cute little family.

3. Pangai ward was ON FIRE this week. We had 7 new investigators and 5 baptismal dates set from those. 4 of these were siblings of a missionary that just recently finished and came home last week. He is the only member in his family and now we are preparing 4 of his siblings for baptism. They are so so cute. We started teaching on Wednesday and since then have met with them every day to teach them. Another is family with one of the older woman in our ward, a 14 year old girl named Susana and it was her first time hearing the message of the restoration, but it was a beautiful lesson and when we invited her for baptism she was so so happy. We are taking it slowly with her because the hardest thing with most of those we are teaching is making sure their parents and grandparents are okay with it.

4. Other than that, the majority of our teaching pool is less-actives. Thanks to our new ward plan centered around the meals the members feed us, we have been able to see 2 of the less-active members we are working with in Pangai come back to church! They are both preparing to go through the temple for the first time and hopefully by next month when our stake in 'Eua takes a trip to the temple!! One is a single mother in her 20's and the other is a married man in his middle age, whose wife is active and has been a huge support to him all these years.

5. Last week we had a really good experience cleaning up a non-members yard in Ha'atu'a. We rounded up some brooms and a few neighborhood boys with lawn mowers and showed up at their house in the morning. The woman in the house that lives there came out and helped us and Sister Vimahi was able to start talking to her about the gospel while we all swept, weeded, cut the grass, and burnt the trash. By the time we were done she set a time for the Sisters in Ha'atu'a to go back and teach the family.

6. Last week was a little wild. Sister Vimahi fell into a pile of mud trying to climb over someone's gate so our phone broke and we got locked out of our MQ and ended up surprising the Ha'atu'a sisters late at night after trying for forever to get into our house. But now all is well, new phone and new lock on our door.

7. We had a stake fireside last night on living healthy and preventing diabetes, a very big problem here. A palangi doctor from America spoke at it and he was accompanied by a team of other doctors. We all had a change of heart and Sister Vimahi and I committed ourselves to taking our morning workouts more seriously.

Well I love you all! I hope your week was just as good as mine! Here are some pics