MUMFORD AND SONS

I just wanted to have a moment of silence for the fact that I'm training another elder on the mission, Elder Giacalone who will be my 2nd son. The only reason this is important at all is because I will be able to take the most legendary picture ever with him and Elder Nabaruru and be able to label it "Mumford and sons" LEGENDARY!

hahah Anyways pretty crazy week this week because I had to go all the way down to Suva to pick him up. Not going to include too much in this email because it was mostly traveling but I'll throw some pics in here for you guys!!

So this is me being excited about leather chairs and taking pictures with our prophet and some other trainers before we met our new companions!

Also this is a selfie that we took on a 14 hour boat ride of death from the lower island up to here. So overcrowded and so horrible.

Then this is Elder Giacalone who is from Tennessee. We are pretty much meant to be companions and have everything in common. even lacrosse... sooo lets just say it's a blast!

WELL just wanted to open my email by acknowledging that from what I heard Bolt is still the fastest man in the world... But wanted to make sure that everyone knows that I went on a pretty lengthy ten minute jog this morning and did a fair amount of walking lunges, meaning I'm on my way to racing bolt in 2020.... 

In other news, Great week this week! Seriously probably the hardest week of work so far on my mission. It was mostly tracting but we found a lot of good potential families so it was nice we were rewarded for our hard work! However after the hard week of work I somehow lost my scriptures last night. I literally don't know where they went.  We think they might have fell out of the car but just not sure. Such a heartbreaker to lose those scrips.  But hey the work moves on..

Anyways on Monday I did my first Baptismal interview which was way exciting! His name was Sandeep. He lives up here in Lobassa and was taught by our Hindi elders here who are called to speak the Hindi language. So his English isn't the greatest. I was a bit nervous to do the interview because of the language gap and it was my first time doing one. It really is a lot of pressure being the one who decides if someone is ready to be baptized! But all those worries were put at ease when we actually did the interview. He was so ready it was amazing. Literally just perfect answers for all the questions and you could just feel his desire to be baptized. He is the only member in his family and he is doing all this to try to find God and follow Him so that he will be on the right path. Man it was just an awesome interview!

On Tuesday they held the baptism for him and it was just an awesome ceremony.  The spirit was just so strong throughout.  One of the coolest things that happened is he showed up to the baptism in a nice shirt, some jeans, and then these nice red football cleats.  You might think that's kind of weird at first.  I know I did but I asked Elder Halbert why he did that and he said, "Oh he didn't have any church shoes but he just wanted to wear the nicest thing he had to look nice for the Lord on his baptismal day."  Man that really moved me.  Such a humble nice moment!

Wednesday we had exchanges with the Hindi Elders in Labasa so I was able to go out and proselyte and try to speak the Hindi language to people all day.  No really I just felt like the most useless person in the world in the lessons.  Haha.  I learned how to introduce myself a little bit in the language but after that was just useless because most don't understand English.  So needless to say it was an adventure! 

After that nothing too crazy in the week.  Me and Elder DeMoors just really put our head down and went to work.  We were able to teach 40 lessons this week which was way fun, just heaps of work and heaps of tracting.  It was a lot of fun but just not too much to write about.  Oh but we were able to teach a lady from Rabi this week which was way fun so I was able to teach her in all Gilbertese.  But man it is such a brain workout to switch back and forth from Gilbertese to Fijian and I always end up mixing up words a lot but it didn't turn out too bad.  LOVE THIS MISSION! Not much else to write about except to let you guys know the church is true!  That's all there is to it!  Love you all!

Elder Mumford

Pictures from the baptism of Sandeep and his football cleats!

Exchanges with Elder Halbert

A cool little fish market we found with cool boats!

These are all some really cute member girls. They were all on break from school so they were home watching movies and me and Elder De Moors figured it wasn't a movie day without some candy so we went to the store and bought them heaps of candy and brought it back for them to snack on! The look on their faces was just so priceless and it was so fun to sort of feel like an older brother to these little girls for a few minutes! Also one of them was wearing the freshest shirt I've ever seen of Snoop Dogg and Johnny Deppp lol love it.

WHATS UP PEOPLE

Just to start off this email I just wanted to make everyone aware if you weren't already aware that the Fijian mens rugby 7's team just took home the first gold medal in Fiji history, actually the only medal in Fijian Olympics history... They just added sevens rugby as a sport to the Olympics this year, and lets just say it wasn't even a competition. Fiji went undefeated winning 43 to 7 in the final. Just unreal.... Their nickname is the "FLYIING FIJIANS" And they are probably the sickest thing ever. We were in town the moment that they won Gold and everybody that were driving cars just put on their hazard lights and layed on their horns for a good 20 minutes or so. Man its a pretty big deal here. You guys have Michael Phelps and we have 7's rugby. TOSO VITI TOSO (go Fiji go)

Ok sorry now that that's all over, we had a good week out here in the mission! haha We started off the week with a great district meeting on Tuesday, where I gave a little training about becoming committed to the gospel and how its the same as when you jump off a cliff into the water. You are either all in and committed or scared and standing still. There's no in between.  So if you are not already just dive in both feet into the gospel, its more fun that way!

On Wednesday we finally got our truck back which is such a blessing considering how big our area is.  It's been great to try to catch up on the work! The guy at the car shop called me on Tuesday and told me that the car wouldn't be done till next week and lets just say I layed down the law a little bit over the phone and they made sure to have it done as fast as possible. haha The Lord's work is no joke. You just got to tell it how it is!

On Thursday and Friday we had the chance to go out and do exchanges with the Elders from Nakawakawa, who are in our district. The Elders in Nakawakawa are kind of a little bit how we were on Rabi in the fact that they only get to come in every 2-3 weeks or so for p-day and email because they live so far away. So it was way fun to go and be able to do exchanges in their area with them. We made the 3 hour drive out to the village they live in and man it was just a fun trip. It just reminded me so much of Rabi. Little to no electricity, a tiny, tiny flat, and just a small little village. We all slept in the little flat that night and because there are so many big rats (some of which bite) we had to keep the lights on all night to keep them away from us. How cool is that mom? hahah The next day we did service with them, which was the muddiest service of all time. It had been raining for 5 days so the road was SOOOOOO flooded so we had to dig ditches to drain it, but after we got rewarded with some "bathing" in the river! Because their water was out for some reason we got to go bathe in the river and lets just say it was SO FUN. haha

The last big thing of the week was yesterday for church or should I say churches. We had church at our usual little branch and then after we had to go to 2 different little villages and bring the sacrament/ preside at both of their little sacrament meetings. At each one including at our branch we were asked to give talks last second, so hey I guess that's one way to get good at the language is to just be forced to stand up and give 3 talks off of the top of your head in the same day... hahaha Crazy but it was fun!

Pretty great week this week! Just want to let you all know there is no doubt that this work is true. This is the true church and I love it! Love you all!

Elder Mumford

me just chilling in a sweatshirt

Some of the water we had to drain 

And me about to do some good old bathing in the river!!!

BAPTISMS YES

What's up my homies! Just hope you know I love you guys so much and I hope everything is going well back home. I really hope you are enjoying the Olympics and stuff, man I'm jealous! But anyways I just had probably the craziest week of my whole mission. But I ended it with 4 Baptisms, making it the best week of my mission as well. I just love this work so much, ITS TRUE.

So on Tuesday this week we put our truck in the shop to get it reregistered and then we got a call two hours later that they were going to have to fix the bumper first before they could reregister it meaning the car would have to be in the shop all week, leaving us completely truckless with SO many things to do this week. Man was I scared but hey being a missionary out here just makes you think on your toes, so that's what we did. We had 4 investigators set to be baptized on this past weekend, so since we didn't have a car that was the only thing we could focus on and literally didn't have time for anything else, because both of these villages are an hour car ride from our flat.. We had to finish a lesson with them as well as plan baptismal programs, do their baptismal interviews and other things like that which made us way busy, but to our surprise everything went smoothly this weekend. Honestly just a true miracle! Honestly it was only because God loves these people so much he allowed us to pull it all off. It was such a good testimony builder to me that we really do have God out here everyday in every aspect to the work, there is no other explanation then that!

So as for our Baptisms. We did two on Saturday as well as two on Sunday and they were both such different experiences but man they were both so amazing in their own ways. On Saturday we had two of our Baptisms. One was the 40 year old lady "Va" as well as her 75 year old dad "Penna" who is actually one of the biggest authorities in their village... Needless to say its pretty cool to have been teaching him. But because he couldn't walk very well he wasn't comfortable with walking into a rocky river so we had to get them a truck and truck them all the way to the city (like a 2 hour ride) where a baptismal font was. I was the one who baptized them because my companion doesn't really want to get wet. lol idk So anyways we got them there and were getting them all dressed and we found out the pants we brought for him were a size 32 and he couldn't fit them...... so the only backup was my sulu.. meaning I had to give him my sulu and go and try to fit the pants... Lets just say I'm not a size 32...... literally I was wearing skinny white jeans that looked like I painted them on and they only went down to my mid calfs to do the baptism.... hahaha but you got to do what you got to do. Va's baptism went well but when I baptized Penna he couldn't bend his legs at all in the font to go back into the water so I had to basically pick him up and put him into the water and then lift him up all by myself because he cant really stand up without a cane..... GOOD THING I take my morning workouts pretty seriously;) hahah but wow that was a scary but fun experience. After both of them shared their testimonies and you could just feel so strongly how well they knew that they were being baptized that day by proper authority... so amazing!

So Sunday was equally as special but not even a little bit the same. We baptized Nai and her son Lawrence before church so that we could confirm them during church. But the thing was they got there a bit late so we had to hurry a little bit. The reason they were late is because it was just POURING RAIN. For a little while we didn't even know if they were going to be able to make it to church but they did! Yet another miracle! Anyways we got them dressed and only took a few pictures because it was raining so hard and we didn't want our cameras to get wet. But anyways, just the 5 or 6 of us who were there left the chapel and walked over to the river down the street. Seriously like we might as well have already had been swimming when we got to the river because we were so wet... But the river was at the bottom of this huge dirt hill and because it was raining so hard it was just all mud. The most slippery mud in the world, we all slipped into it so many times it was just hilarious hahah, not sure if they were baptized in white or brown clothes... hahah but we finally got down to the river and did the baptism and man it was such a cool experience. I can't help but think this is maybe a little bit what it was like in the Jordan river long ago, when Christ himself showed us the path we needed to follow. It was so cool because although when you compare the two baptisms they were so unique and different but with all 4 you could feel Heavenly Father's love so strongly for them because they were all making covenants with His son Jesus Christ. It was an amazing experience. After we had church and we had the blessing of confirming all 4 of them as members of the church and giving them the gift of the Holy Ghost. A gift that would change their life forever. It really was just a week of miracles and a week that it felt good to be a missionary and be able to help our Heavenly Father bring souls unto Christ! Sorry if this email doesn't make tons of sense, I just wrote as much as I can because I'm just excited about it all! I love this work and know without a doubt its true! I love you all!

Elder Mumford

Pictures of our two baptisms

Us by the river after the baptism

 I bet Caleb and Landon are proud! #swag

Me and my 3 best friends, Elder Whitworth, Elder Levassa from Australia, and Elder Danielson, a pro rugby player  from Australia. I don't think of myself as white anymore. I'm just a Polynesian. 

Picture at a restaurant we went to with Elder Whitworth and Elder Willoughby, who both came to Fiji with me!

More pics of me and Elder Whitworth, who is seriously like one of my best friends in Fiji.  We plan on rooming together in Provo.