The Other Side of Heaven

Malo e lelei!!

Fefe hake? I hope you all had a good week. This week was an exciting week! On Tuesday we had the privilege of going to the island of Niua with President and Sister Tuione. Niua is the island where Elder Kolipoki (Groebert) served in the movie "The other side of Heaven". There hasn't been missionaries on that island for about a year but this transfer two elders got sent there and so we went with president to meet with the church members there. Man it was so cool! We flew to Vavau and then from there to Niua. Man you should have seen the plane it was SO small. Hahah but thankfully we made it there and back safely. We only spent like 2 hours there but we had a big feast and then we got to take a little ride around the island. The spirit of the people there is so strong! There really is like nothing there but they are all so content. A plane only goes there maybe  once a week if the weather is good. So we had to hold the plane there while we met with the people. Im so grateful I had the opportunity to go visit the people there. It was a very humbling experience for the short time  I was there. It's so amazing to see people serving in the gospel on a small tiny island in the middle of the ocean. Just another reassurance that Heavenly Father is so aware of all of us!

Thursday and Friday we had MLC with all of the zone leaders and STL's. It was fun! WE had the opportunity to go to the temple and then we spent all day Friday together discussing things we can do for the mission. Last night we had a girls night with sister Tuione before the Sisters go back to Vavau. It was so fun! President really wants us to all become one in this mission and so its fun getting the opportunity to know all of the sisters. 

On Monday we had to take some sisters to the airport because they were flying to Vavau. When we walked into the airport I saw lots of Palangi's there so I decided to find one to talk to. I started talking to this girl from a really small country in Europe. I tried to speak German to her from what I could remember in High school but that was a fail. Hahah!  Thankfully she could speak English. She came here to go to one of the islands Ha'apai to swim with the whales. We talked and i tried to give her a book of Mormon but she didn't accept it. I was bummed but I was determined to give this Book of Mormon to someone. While we were eating in this little cafe I saw this Palangi couple so I went and talked to them and of course the women was from Germany  so I had another opportunity to practice my German hahaah! But she also spoke English so that was nice. :) We talked for like 30 min just getting to know each other and then we talked about the gospel and they accepted the Book of Mormon and committed to pray about it. Man I was so excited! I knew there was someone there I needed to give the book too. I also challenged them to find missionaries when they return back home to listen to them. The Book of Mormon I had I had found in Presidents shuttle that we took to the airport. I thought it was one of the sisters but it wasn't so thats why I decided to give it to someone. And it was an English Book of Mormon which we don't really carry around. So, when I saw the Palangi's I was determined to give it to someone. 

Im loving the mission. Im loving the experiences i'm having and the people i'm meeting!! We feel so good when we are doing the things we are supposed to. Keep being good examples to those around you. :)  Ofa lahi atu kamoutolu! Keep reading the Book of Mormon!

-- 

Sista Silivesita

When I saw this  plane I told my comp "My dad would turn around right now".  He would have not like the plane ride!!  :)

Traveling with President and Sister Tuione.

I found this picture on the missions Facebook page of Kenidee and Sister Tuione (the Mission Presidents wife) and it made me smile.  This is so Kenidee.  ❤️ ❤️  😊   

Malo e lelei!

Man I don't even know where to begin.... This week was probably the toughest week I have had here on the mission but also one of the best weeks here in the mission! This week all of the new missionaries came in so we were able to help president welcome them all. We attended the temple and I did my first teaching at the orientation meeting. Man, I get so scared teaching but I can truly testify that the spirit is the teacher. I have never been led by the spirit more before in my life! 

 Sister Saulala and I get to work so closely with Sister Tuione. Whenever she needs something she calls us and we stop whatever we are doing and go to her. I feel like i'm serving two missions. I get to preach the gospel to those in Kolomotu'a and Serve the sisters here in the mission. Its awesome!! 

I have learned so much this past week. I testify that Heavenly Father is aware of EVERYTHING you are going through. He knows you best! 

Last night we got a text from President at like 3 in the morning telling us to to check and make sure our sisters were okay because we had a huge tsunami warning this morning. I guess because of the earthquake in mexico it caused a Tsunami.  Luckily it didn't make it this far. 

Hope everyone is safe and okay! Love you all! Sorry I don't have lots of time :) Ofa Lahi atu!

-Sista Silivesita

1. Me and my comp doing our laundry 

"Belief is truth held in the mind; Faith is a fire in the heart"

Malo e lelei!!!

Sorry I don't have a lot of time to email today! We had transfers and I have been transferred to Kolomotu'a. Im super excited!! Its a big area. I visited there one time and it was super fun. The members are awesome. Im so sad to leave my companion Sister Fotu! She taught me a lot and she is such a hard worker. I know she will do great things in Havelu. My new companion is Sister Saulala. She is from New Zealand. Some exciting news... President has called me and Sister Saulala to be the new Sister APs. Not very many missions have Sister AP's, I've actually never heard of any other mission having one, haha but we do everything the Ap's do. We will work a lot with President and help him with the mission. 

Im super excited for this opportunity! I know how important it is to do the Lords work. I love being a missionary! I know this church is true and I promise when we do what we are asked we are blessed. I love you all ! Have a good week :) Read your scriptures and pray everyday!!!!

Sorry I dont have any pictures! 

Ofa lahi atu!!

-- 

Sista Silivesita

"And whoso believe in me, and is baptized, the same shall be saved'

Malo e lelei! 

Man this week was a good week! Saturday was probably one of the best days of my mission. We were able to baptize our investigator Nima and it was such a great experience! This past week we met with him everyday to continue teaching the lessons and follow up on his commitments. We always plan our appointments right after school and every time we get to our house he just sits there waiting for us. He gets so excited to hear the lessons and we just have so much fun teaching him. On Friday we were on our way to his house and we saw him walking around and so we asked where he was going and he said to invite people to come to his baptism hahah he was just so excited to be baptized and he wanted everyone to come. My companion and I went around to invite the memeber's and they all said " Oh yeah Nima already invited us". Im so grateful for the opportunity to have been able to teach Nima and watch him be baptized. I know he will be a great example to his family. They are trying to get to the temple to be sealed but his parents still have some things to work on. The spirit was so strong at the baptism and you could just see a change in their family. Im so excited for them! 

Nima :)

Tonight we are having a fakafamili with Kepu and his family. Kepu is someone I've been working with my whole mission. Yesterday he came to church with us and told us he's just waiting for his mom  to die and then he will join our church hahah we were kind of shocked. Here in Tonga when you are the oldest in the family it is very important to keep the traditions and do the things your parents did. We will meet some people and everyone in their family is a member except for the oldest sibling because they have to stay in the same church as their parents to show respect. We are hoping that we will be able to help him understand the importance of the gospel and that Heavenly Father will always provide a way. I really pray that he will be baptized and he will do it for the right reasons and because he wants to. 

This was such a good week! I just love being a missionary. I challenge you guys to read the Book of Mormon everyday. I promise it will change your life! There is power in the words of Christ! You will come to know him more and feel his love more in your life. I know he loves YOU! I love you. Have a great week!   Ofa lahi atu! 

 My poor comp was sick this week. Its called "mo" and its like mumps. But basically your glands swell and your face gets very swollen. Hahah it looks like you just got your wisdom teeth out. It feels good when you keep it warm so they wear a scarf around their head to keep it warm. My comp is so funny and she wore the scarf all day! You will see people all around wearing a scarf. Its a really common sickness. 

Elder Chand the district leader is so nice and cleaned the font for us. It takes forever to fill so we turned it on and then we went to choir practice with our zone. Well I guess it fills up a little faster than we thought hahah we had to get buckets to empty it cause we didnt have the key for the drain...

The little boys in our area made slingshots and they were just going around killing birds haha.

These 3 boys play at the church every Saturday so we had them help us set up the baptism.

Last night we sang at a fireside in Sopu as a district 

-Sista Silivesita

Malo e lelei! 

Im sorry I don't have a lot to say about this week. It was a good week though! Its starting to get really hot again. We went from freezing at night to waking up dripping in sweat. Haha i guess the weather here is kind of like Utah, very bipolar. Anyways on Thursday we had Zone conference, that was good! We talked a lot about the importance of repentance and why that is the one thing we are here to teach. The importance of repenting and being baptized. This week I've been studying the Plan of Salvation a lot. My testimony has grown so much just by studying this great plan that our loving Heavenly Father has prepared for us. I think once you fully understand this plan everything else is so easy to do like keeping the commandments, going to church, reading your scriptures, and much more. It's so important to do those things each day to help us progress in this life and the life after this. 

This week we had a baptism. Here in Tonga lots of records go missing. Some people have been baptized a couple of times. On Thursday our Bishop called us and said he had someone for us to baptize. The parents are wanting to seal their family in  the temple so they needed us to baptize him again. So we taught him and then he was able to baptized on Saturday and next month the family will be sealed! We also have a baptism next week. His name Nima. Hes 9 years old and his family just started coming back to church. His parents want to go through the temple but they need to quit smoking.So we will be working with their family to help them come back to church and get to the temple! 

On Sunday we had cookies instead of bread for sacrament. That was a first! It was cool to experience that sometimes you just have to use what you have to be able to remember our Savior and his sacrifice for us.

I hope you all have a great week! 

Ofa lahi atu! 

-- Sista Silivesita

Because the baptism was so last minuet we had to hurry and clean the font all morning 

Saturday because the water takes FOREVER to fill up!

Suliana our investigator from Fiji

That burnt thing im holding is called Manioke you eat it and its really yummy!

We saw this pig on the road. The animals are everywhere here hahah we always see pigs walking!

Malo e lelei! 

This week was a really good week :) We had our stake conference yesterday and so all week there were little activities that the stake would do and it was so fun!

 On Tuesday my companion and I had the opportunity to go to a birthday party for our ward mission leaders dad. All i have to say is Tongans know how to celebrate the right way! hahaha. I will send some pictures, but they spent all night and all day preparing food. They roasted like 7 pigs had 5 birthdays cakes and just food everywhere hahah. My ward mission leaders dads name is Semisi and he turned the big 80. He's not a member of our church, but me and companion had the opportunity to meet with him the week before. He talked to us for 45 min and about things that old people just love to talk about haha and then when he finished he told us that he will never be baptized. We were kind of shocked haha he talked to us for 45 min and then basically said "thats it, you can go now!"  but he is so kind and invited us to his big party. Theres a church here in Tonga called the Siasi Tonga and Semisi is a member of that church. He invited a missionary from his church to pray at his party. So the missionary welcomed everyone and then started to pray. I'm sitting there thinking its just a normal prayer....and then he kept going....and going...and yelling haha and then everyone started singing. After the singing he kept praying, and praying! 30 min later he said okay lets pray over the food. I looked at my companion and I was like what were we just praying for, for the last 30 min? hah and then he continued to yell shout and sing. Im not kidding when I say like an hour later the prayer was over and we started eating. But i loved it! I love experiencing new things here, and learning things they do in other churches.  They had a table in the front where Semisi sat, with the Missionary and some government people. There was another table at the front they they had just for me and my companion. We had our own roasted pig and cake!.... it was crazy! 

On Thursday night they had what they call "Hiva" which means singing. All of the wards were given the same song from the Stake President to practice and to perform for the the other wards. They were also supposed to put together a quartet and have someone sing a solo. Man I felt like I was in "Pitch Perfect'  Mormon style!  It was so funny but so cool! Just a two hour program of people singing. The wards would take turns and some people you could tell were getting competitive. :)

On Friday they had " Faiva kau leka" and all of the primary children performed dances. Each ward was assigned a certain island to dance. Our two wards had Fiji, and Hawaii. Other wards had Mauri, Tahitti, Tonga, and Samoa. We also have the palangi ward in our stake and they performed an american dance. I have to admit I was a slightly embarrassed to be a palangi that night. haha! All of the kids were doing cool island dances and then the palangi ward did a square dance, and the electric slide! My companion was laughing so hard cause she thought the palangi dance was so funny! 

Sunday was stake conference and it was such a powerful meeting! We had Elder Leota from the 70 come and speak and he is such a powerful speaker. On Saturday my companion and I went around inviting everyone to come to our conference, and on Sunday it was so cool to see the people we invited come, especially our investigators. :)

We also had the opportunity to go to the temple this week with our ward! The spirit in the temple is so amazing. We feel so close to our Heavenly Father when we are doing the things he has asked us to. I encourage you all to go to the temple as often as you can. The blessings you receive in the temple are so great and its a great way to take time away from the world to sit and feel our Saviors love :) 

I love you all! Thank you for all of your support and kind words. I feel so much love from all of you!!  Have a great week :) 

Ofa lahi atu!

-- 

Sista Silivesita-

 

The Birthday party

Neini one of my favorite ward members.

Hahahah the Elders had a lady in their area make me a bag.....the lady thought i was an elder and that my last name is "Sylpester" hahah but hey the bag is cute so im gonna use it!

We made a pie last p day and then ate it at district meeting.

Six Months!

Malo e lelei! 

This week was a good week! I just looked at my companion and asked her "okay what happened this week?" So I could write it in my letter and she laughed and said "nothing!" which is true hahah not a lot happened this week but it was a really good week! 

Anyways today I hit my 6 month mark. Thats crazy! A year from today I will be coming home. Time is going by too fast! 

We "tukituki" a lot this week which is like tracting. Its so funny to tukituki here at times because they dont have doorbells so you just yell to them like "Malo e lelei" and there have been times where we can see them look at us through the window and they see that its the missionaries so they dont come to the door hahah. We usually just yell "okay Ofa Atu" and then leave. This week we were able to meet with a lot of people through tukituki, none of them wanted us to come back hahah but we were able to share a lot about the gospel and hopefully plant a little seed in their lives. 

Theres a an old couple that live in our area and the wife is a member but her husband is not. He is a very strong catholic and he loves to bible bash with us. We hadn't seen his wife at church for awhile so we've been going over there and sharing spiritual thoughts with her and her husband and inviting them to church. We always have to lie though when were are there and tell them we have somewhere to be or else he will just bash with us for hours. So this week we went there and my comp was telling them that we had a meeting to go to and she kept looking at her watch to show them that we had to leave in a hurry. Hahah well she wasn't wearing a watch that day because she forgot but the old couple didn't even notice. Man we were both trying not to laugh! Anyways I felt really impressed to give Mosese (the old man) a commitment to read the Book of Mormon. He was really hesitant at first but he accepted and said he would if we would come back and read it with him. So the next day we came back to read with him, and we had spent all morning praying to know what things we should teach him and read with him. Well we highlighted different verses about faith and we were going to study them with him and then have him read 1Nephi 1-4 by himself. The story where Nephi had to get the plates from Laban. We even had a sticky note with a question on it for him to answer after his reading. So the next day we went there so excited to give him the Book of Mormon and read with him because we've never had a chance to actually teach him. We talked with him for a bit and then we went to give him the BOM and he just started yelling at us. Telling us how are church is not true, bashing on Joseph Smith, basically he threw everything just back in our face. Man I have never felt so sad before. I guess it was just hard because we had prayed so hard and really studied what we could have him read because he's so difficult to work with, and we wanted it to be something simple.  We left his house both of us almost in tears. Hahah I guess not everyone here will accept us, but we just have to keep giving it our all! 

Yesterday after church we taught one of our investigators, his name is Hausia. He lives in a different area but comes to our ward with his fellow shipper so we are only able to teach him on Sundays. He accepted our invitation to be baptized, but his parents want him to come back to Vavau ( another island) to be baptized. Were just going to pray really hard that he will be able to be baptized here because if he goes back to Vavau he doesn't have anyone to go to church with, and he really wants to stay here. Anyways yesterday while teaching him we taught lesson 3 and we were talking about the Gift of the Holy Ghost and  he shared ann experience with us how he felt a prompting from the spirit. Last week there was a really bad car accident here and 7 boys were killed because they were drinking while driving. Well those were all of Hausia's friends and he shared that he was going to go with them but felt something tell him he shouldn't . We explained to him that that was the Holy Ghost and after baptism he will be blessed with that gift to be with him forever when he does what he's supposed to. That just made him even more excited to be baptized. It was a really powerful lesson and cool to see him witness the power of the Holy Ghost. 

Although not a lot happened this week it was filled with spiritually uplifting experiences and what could be better than that? I just love missionary work! Through the good and the bad days you are able to see Gods hand in your life. Have a great week! Ofa lahi atu kamoutolu! 

-- 

Sista Silivesita

This is one of our ward members her name is Lina :) She was a less active and we helped her and her family come back to church. She started selling "Lu" to help provide for her family. She always tells us its the blessings from the church that have helped her and her little business. She thanks us everyday for helping her come back to church. 

Lu is a food that they eat here. Its really yummy! Theres different kinds of Lu like Lu sipi (lamb) Lu pulu ( beef) Lu moa ( chicken) the lu is the leaves that they wrap the meat in and they will usually add like coconut milk and then "umu" it. Umu means cooking something in the ground. They just let the steam from the coals cook it. 

1. Helping Lina with the Lu 

2. Preparing the umu

Helping our Ward mission leader umu his dinner. Lu with manioke, and kumala (Sweet potato) 

1. Fafanga with our Bishop, Pisope Kaufusi 

2. Manioke Tama and lolo (oil). I love eating this! hahah its so yummy. They take the manioke and coconut and umu it and then you dip it in the oil. 

3. Role plays with our neighbor hahah

Lina invited us the next day to eat some Lu pulu and manioke!

Okay so this is called "tutu" a lot of the lady's sit and do this all day everyday! You can hear them hitting it all day haha. Basically Tutu is a plant that they soak in water and then they hit it on the wood and it expands into something bigger and then they let it dry. When its dry they call it "Ngatu" and sometimes they will paint it. They give it to people for birthdays, funerals, farewells, its very respectful. If someone gives you one its a big deal. 

1. The Tutu

2. Hitting the tutu

3. What it looks like after they hit it and they are letting it dry.

Sometimes they combine them together to make one big Ngatu