Sister Nadira Tupuola Email #53

by JElu - September 10, 2018

Hello Family!!
This week was GREAT! I never run out of things to write about! We saw tons of miracles and met a lot of people! We went on two exchanges this week with sisters serving in Carson and Dayton. As a Sister Training Leader I am to conduct the exchange and show the sisters how to better do missionary wrok. We focus on certain missionary skills such as talking to everyone, How to begin teaching, exact obedience, having effective studies ect. And I overall make sure that they are adjusting well. It's been awesome getting to know each of the Sisters I am over. The exchange usually lasts 24 hours at a time. Our first exchange this week, I was with Sister Morey who is from Taylorsville Utah! She has been out on her mission for 3 weeks! She is half Tongan. She came to my area for the day while Sister Squire went with her companion, Sister McCray to their area in Dayton. (Which is about an hour away from Gardnerville) We had so much fun and tried to find out if we are related! Apparently she is a Lomu and goes to the Lomu reunions so we must've passed by eachother.

We watered Dianas plants (a person we are teaching)
we roleplayed different street contacting approaches
we received a referral from Church Headquarters to go give a man named David a Bible. We went and gave it to him. He has gone through a lot and appreciated us coming.
We felt promp to try David's neighbor who happened to be a less actve family, the Laylands. They just got back from a funeral. Their grandpa passed away. Angel is a single mother of 8 kids and they are going through a lot. Angel will be going into surgery to get her gall blatter removed and so we offered to help out in any way with dinners. We contacted to relief society president of our ward about the situation and they are going to bring dinners for their family. We shared with them Alma 38:5 and talked about how turning to God in times of trial is the best thing we can do in hard times.
We met with Pammy who is a 7th day Adventist. And she kept trying to argue with us. She needed bible proof of everything that we said. "Where is that in the bible?" or "I have a hard time believing what your saying because its not in the bible." I never felt so angry in my life as a missionary haha because when we would show her scriptures in the bible she said that we translated it wrong. We explained how we believe the Bible to be the word of God, as far as it is translated correctly. We taught the great apostasy and how the bible began to be mistranslated many times. What she was saying didn't even make sense. We talked mainly about why the Sabbath is on Sunday, the Book of Mormon and life after death. It was so frustrating and it was hard to feel the spirit.

Exchanges with Sister Veikoso!

I got to go on exchanges in Carson with Sister Veikoso!

We did service at Catmandu. We just played with the cats and then cleaned the offices. It was fun!
We knocked on a door looking for a Hermando and he wasnt there but his wife and his daughter was! We met Griselda and her daughter, Alena and they were super nice! They are from mexico. They have met missionaries in the past. They are religious but don;t practice. Griselda said its too late for them to be taught the gospel because her children are all rebels and that we showed up late. haha we told her its never to late! and shared our testimonies of how the gospel has blessed our families. She asked us why Gays go to hell and we were able to teach her about how they don't go to hell. God will judge them. and then we shared how we are taught to love everyone whether or not we agree with their beliefs. She loved that. We ended up giving them a Book of Mormon and our phone number. They said they don't read but we gave it to them anyway haha. The seed is planted.
We met a rude lady that came up to us and started making fun of Sister Veikoso's teeth. We ended up just getting on our bikes and rode away as she still kept trying to talk to us. that woman was crazy.
We met Alan. He was tanning outside drinking beer. He said his wife is a member of our church but he doesn't believe in organized religion. He said he believes in "the humanity of man" whatever that means haha.
Carson has lots of hills and we survived biking them!

TERRY!

(highlight of my week!!!)

Okay so I was with Sister Veikoso in Carson when we met Terry! We had our service appointment fall through so Sister Veikoso decided to go visit a non member they had met a couple weeks ago. We go and knock on his door. He answers and we start talking to him about his wolf picture that he has in the front of his home. After talking with him for a while about animals and football, Sister Veikoso asks if we could share a message. We sat on his porch and asked about his religious background. He was studying with the Jehovah Witnesses until he realized they were really wierd so he stopped. But he grew up Presbyterian and enjoyed going to church. We ended up teaching the whole restoration, the importance of baptism and the priesthood. We were adjusting our teaching to his needs. He asked a lot of great questions like, "why do we need other scriptures? isn't the bible enough?" or "Why do we need to get baptized" The lesson was going all sorts of places but the spirit was really strong. He said he believed in everything we were saying. We gave him a BOM and invited him to read it. We read with him in Moroni 10:3-5 and invited him to find the truth for himself. We also invited him to church and then we showed a short video of the message of the restoration. As we were watching the video I felt prompted to extend the baptismal invitation. So as we were about the end our message I said, "Terry, As you come to know that these things are true for yourself, will you prepare yourself to be baptized by someone holding the proper authority of God?" he smile and said sure! and then I told him that we will be holding a baptismal service on November 3rd, will you prepare to get baptized on that date? and he said yes! We set up a return appointment and left him with our testmonies. He said he was taught to say amen when he agrees with something and he kept saying amen haha He is an awesome guy. And I am excited for the sisters to continue teaching him! He has definetly been prepared! It was a miracle!

Karl Kelley!

Karl is doing awesome! We have started his "New member lessons" which are required for him to be taught. Its basically just going over all the lessons again. He enjoys having us over every week.

Janet

we were given Janets phone number from the Elders. She is a non member who is in need of service in her yard. So we give her a call to set up a time to come and after 10 minutes of me talking to her she goes, "hold up, Is this a man or a woman that Im talking to?" Sister Squire and I just die laughing. We told her we are the Sister missionaries and yeah it was so funny.

Moving truck!

Sister Squire and I saw a moving truck as we were biking so we stopped and asked if they needed help. They said yes! so we helped them for an hour. They are catholic and moved from California. They really appreciatied us stopping and said that we were sent by God. They have been stressing out with the whole move. And have been trying to move everything themselves. They are an older couple that don't have any kids. We were just glad we were there to help!

Margie!

Margie is a less active and she came to church again this week! We meet with her regularly and she happy to be back at church! (shes the older lady in the picture with glasses and white hair)