5-5-13

May 5, 2013

Hey there,

This week was mega sick.  It was like opening up the Sunday newspaper and finding two Family Circus comic strips instead of just the usual one.  Those little kids can be quite a hoot sometimes!  I’m going to go home and read the last two years’ worth of Family Circus comics—I can’t wait.

This week we finished teaching Sauaga and he was baptized, but Metuli was gone one day and we couldn’t finish his lessons, so he’ll be baptized next week.  Sauaga’s baptism was the sickest thing ever.  Since that ward (Vavau) doesn’t have a baptismal font, we all loaded into the back of this dude’s truck and went down to the beach.  It was a glorious Sunday morning, with the sun rising over the coconut trees and the smaller little islands off the coast.  So yeah, then I totally got to baptize Sauaga in the ocean—it was the dopest.  I took some pictures, so hopefully I’ll get those to you soon.  That was one goal I set for my mission—to baptize a person in the ocean.  So I was really stoked to finally get the opportunity.  One of my companions will do Metuli’s baptism next week.

But yeah, so that was definitely the highlight of the week.  I only have a few more goals left that I have to achieve before I finish--one of them being to eat a dog.  So let’s hope and pray that I can accomplish all my goals. 

This week we also picked up a new investigator named Faalau.  She lives over in Saleapaga, which is like a 25 minute drive from where we live in Lotofaga.  She wants to get baptized, but she works in Apia and is only around on the weekends.  So, we’re hoping to have her ready for baptism sometime this month.  So the work is going good.  We’re hoping to have a few more baptisms this month. 

My comps are doing good.  They’re nice and new and fresh and, subsequently, subject to a lot of awesome pranks.  Like one night a family brought us our dinner and it was mostly good, except for these two cooked pigeons with bloody feet.  Nobody wanted to eat those.  I don’t mind pigeon, but these ones were weird looking.  So anyways, that night I tied it up on a string over Elder Levave’s bed and had it swinging around so that it was almost kissing his lips.  He pretty much spent the whole night snuggling with it—kind of like the time Scott slept with the old deer carcass on one memorable April Fool’s Eve.  It brings back all sorts of lovely memories.

Also my other comp, Gasio, is a bit of a prankster himself.  When we first started being comps, he told me he was half Tongan, half Samoan.  And then we had our Sunday dinner with Uila, the Tongan lady we’ve been working with, and I was explaining to Uila that Gasio is half Tongan as well and uila got all excited.  But then later that day Gasio was like, “I’ve got a confession to make…I’m not actually Tongan.  My parents are both Samoan.”  But it was okay because earlier in the week I pranked him by telling him I was from Czechoslovakia and that now it is called the Czech Republic and Slovakia and I went into detail about it for like a good ten minutes about life in the Czech and that I didn’t move to the states until 2009.  So it was sort of like a confession session and then I had to confess, “Well, I’m not actually from the Czech Republic…I’m from Utah.”  It was like something from a soap opera. 

So yeah, it’s good.  My comps are tight.  Elder Levave for some reason thinks I go by “John” and I haven’t really had the heart to tell him otherwise.  So now I’m John.  It’s cool though.  Most people just call me “Jo” cause Johansen is too hard to pronounce.

Also we planted the watermelon seeds and they are sprouting like a steeze bone.  So I’m stoked on that.  This year should be a good crop, I reckon. 

But that’s pretty much it for this week.  It was all way good.  I’m loving the mission.  It’s all the sickest to the days.

 “Snap on your blades and hit the pavement.”

--Elder Eric “Also King of Helpers” Johansen

PS:  My eye is fine.  It only hurt for like a day and then it was alright.

PPS:  I’m cool if you wait til mid summer to sign me up for school, but I want to try at least one semester of Snow and if I don’t have the cash for another semester I will transfer to UVU.

PPPS:  Please send me some stamps.  Not 400, but maybe 20-30 pleeze.  Thanks, Chim