Don’t you love the title of this email.  It’s testing my Christ like attributes soooo much right now haha.

Talofa oa mai oi. In case you wondered I transferred to the Samoa mission haha.  My companion is teaching me all sorts of Samoan words.  I probably need to be focusing on Tagalog words for now but there is so many Samoans here on the mission so it’s fun to learn some.  That’s the cool thing about this mission.  There are soooo many people from different places and different languages here.  Mostly islanders.  So there is always Samoan Tongan bisaya etc being spoken.  So we are always picking up little phrases from different languages. The other day I wrote a text to show my kasama and it had English Tagalog and Samoan in it.  It was pretty cool.

Wow tomorrow is July!! How did that happen? Yesterday was my 5 month mark. It doesn’t sound that super impressive but next month I have been out for 1/3 of my mission.  Don’t worry I’m not trunky. I just like counting. I count like everything. It is just crazy how fast time flies.

So I’m not sure if my talents are being forced to be shared or what but ever since

I played the piano for the baptism last week bishop has taken advantage of me.  EVERY SINGLE MEETING he calls on me to play.  I walked into sacrament meeting and one of his councilors came up to me and asked if I would play for sacrament meeting. I almost just died right there.  But thanks to you dad I couldn’t say no.  I told them I could only play the top hand and they said ok, so I sat down and did it.  I’m just super thankful that I can do at least top hand. And I guess I’ll just keep doing it whenever they need me.  And when they get tired of how bad it is they might stop calling on me haha.  It’s super stressful though.  Darn talents.  

  So these past few weeks our numbers have really been struggling and it’s really hard but we just keep trying to work harder.  The coolest thing happened the other day though.  We got punted from like 3 appointments so we were just walking around OYMing and trying to find people to talk to.  We didn’t really know where we were going, we were just wandering and we saw some really cool flower things on a tree. Anyway the coolest thing about being a foreigner is you can basically ask anyone anything and they’ll be happy to talk to you.  So we asked what the things on the trees were and I just was talking about how we don’t have those in America.  Anyway they gave us some and they are actually used as a dye.  For food coloring or ya just for dying anything. But then the coolest thing happened. The guy next door started talking to me and it wasn’t even a very good OYM.  I was struggling but they invited us in and just kept talking and asked us all the questions that are answered in the first lesson.  It was pretty exciting.  So we just taught and he said he’s going to invite his friends for us to teach. Were a little bit scared because sometimes we are not the best at answering all the questions.  But it’s exciting to have that opportunity.  We’re going to them tonight I think so I’ll let you know how that goes next week.  

We had zone conference this week so that was fun. It was long and there was a LOT of new rules that got established but hopefully it will help us out in our work.  I love gathering in a group of missionaries because you can have so much fun but then go and still feel the spirit super strong.  I don’t know how mission presidents do it cause that’s a lot of teenagers to deal with but President and Sister Tye are awesome.  They are probably the best out of all the missions.  Cause they are fairly young I feel like. And they are just fun. 

 On the way back we were riding on a jeepney and one of the elders was just messing around telling me to OYM the lady next to me..so I did just for fun.  And I did it by myself!  And I got all the information we needed by myself.  In Tagalog. haha don’t mind the bragging right now but I felt pretty darn cool that I could do it by myself!  Maybe my Tagalog isn’t that bad....joke.  It is.  But it’s getting better at least :)

We had a baptism this Saturday.  Well my old area did.  It was one of our old investigators and it was the cutest baptism ever.  His whole less active family was there.  I just was so happy it was crazy.  His mom gave me the biggest hug and was holding my hand the whole time.  It was great!  I still kind of feel like it was our baptism even though it wasn’t.

Also one more funny story. On Sunday we watched a little video clip about a jar of nothing.  I’m not sure if you’ve seen it but it’s pretty good.  Anyway it kinda made me cry which was no big deal but then bishops daughter turned to me (shes 7) and very loudly was like aw naiyak na si Sister! (Sister is crying)  And everyyonnneee looked at me so that was a little embarrassing haha. But all in all this has been a good week.  A long and exhausting week. But fun as always.  The main thing I’ve learned this week is how nice it is to have such a supportive ward.  My ward now helps out so much with missionary work.  Well they try.  And it’s really cool. That’s the way things get done. Because no matter how good missionaries are they can’t do everything.  They need people to fellowship and find referrals and work along side of them.  It really helps to have someone who will go out of their way to sit down next to our investigator or less active and just really strive to make them feel comfortable.  It makes all the difference.  So don’t be shy about it.  Just share that love and friendship.  It’ll be good. I promise! I love you all!  Keep on keepin on.  Enjoy your summer!

XOXOXOXOXO

Sister Van Tassell