Typhoon

October 17, 2016

Hey Fam!

Like always, it has been another great week in the WVM. I guess to
start off I should address all the damage done by the huge typhoon
that came over from Japan - to start off, our garbage can blew over. A
traffic cone was knocked sideways, and my shoes got really wet.
...yeah that's about it haha. Everyone and their dog was prepping us
for "the biggest storm since Columbus Day 1977" But when it hit I
would rate it an anemic 4 on a scale of 1-10.

Besides the storm he have had some cool miracles these past few weeks.
* Lily, an investigator we have been teaching for 3 months just told
us that she and her boyfriend decided to get married in November
instead of April, and then we got permission from our Mission
President to baptize her on the same day of her wedding right after
the ceremony.

* Chevy, a less-active we have been teaching for a while just told us
that he lost his job and normally that pressure along with other
pressures he has been dealing with right now would have caused him to
make some really irrational decisions. But he said the first thing he
thought about when he got the call was that he needed to pray and read
the scriptures. Now he has a job working for the bishop. For some
reason I don't think that was a coincidence.

* The Spanish group has also been doing really well recently. Last
Sunday we almost filled up the entire relief society room, which has
never happened before. Granted, most of the people there were Spanish-
speaking members who came to support, but the excitement was still the
same!

By far the biggest bummer of the week was that our mission conference
was cancelled. The whole mission was supposed to meet in Vancouver for
a meeting with Elder Anderson, but last minute they had to cancel it
for the storm that never came :(

Saturday morning the whole mission was instructed to stay in for a few
hours right before the storm was supposed to hit. We watched "The
Other Side of Heaven" and it made me think about how John Groberg felt
when he arrived on the island of Tonga, and how he must have felt when he left. That first week if he were asked to list what had caused him grief, I'd be
willing to bet that the language, the people, the heat and the food.
Then at the end scene when all the Tongans were singing to him as he
got on the boat after three years, I asked myself what he was
thinking about with fondness. Probably a lot of his memories had a lot
to do with the language, the people, the climate, and the food.

I hope you all have a great week!

~Elder Thomas