Elder Lamoreaux: Thanksgiving, Elder Halleck, Hurricanes

We had a fun week this week with everything that happened. First off we had the wonderful opportunity to meet with Elder Halleck, a member of the seventy. We came to our mission and held a conference on the 3 main islands with all the missionaries. Elder Halleck is such an example of Christlike love. It was motivating and uplifting and inspired me to always give my all to the Savior. One of my favorite quotes from the conference was "give your all to the Savior, He deserves nothing less. He gave His all".

Another fun part of this week was that I got to have American food for the first time in a while. The senior couple missionaries on Tutuila made a thanksgiving dinner for all the missionaries. It was amazing to have all the traditional thanksgiving food like stuffing and turkey and pie and octopus. The only thing that was missing was the mashed potatoes... I didn't even get to see any pictures of mashed potatoes. :( I ate myself sick and was not able to proselyte the next day. :(

Haha no JK the real reason I wasn't able to proselyte the next day was because we had a visit from Hurricane Tui. Luckily the hurricane did not hit directly on our island so we only got half of it, but the wind was still enough to uproot trees and stuff. No one got hurt but we did have some flooding and downed power lines and such. But we are all very thankful that it was not any worse then that. The fun thing is that this is only the beginning of hurricane season. Hurricane season does not end till April so I might get to have a few more hurricanes out here.

I also got a transfer call this week and I will be getting transferred to the Mesepa International ward. Yeah, I am going to be preaching to white people. ':/ I will be covering a couple of branches as well so I will still get to teach the Samoan people. Also I get a car in my new area! :D Actually a van. But its only a 12 seat van so its nothing like what I would drive at home. ;) This transfer the boundaries of some of the mission areas changed so one of the branches I will be covering is the Amanave branch where I have been proselyting. Also my companion is getting transferred to Tafuna and being made a district leader after only being in the mission for 3 months! What a stud.

We had a really cool experience with an investigator this week named Lui. Lui knows that the church is true but is having problems with the word of wisdom. He has definitely come a long way from where he was at though. He used to earn money down in California by selling illegal drugs. He was living like that for years and then after spending a lot of time in prison and after going into a coma for 2 months we decided it was time to change his life. He then moved to Samoa and now we are working with him to stop smoking and drinking tea and coffee. During the past few weeks he has stopped using tea and coffee but he is having a hard time stopping smoking. We met with him Saturday night with a lesson plan to set a baptismal date for him to give him the motivation to stop smoking. As we started teaching both my companion and I felt that our lesson plan was not what we needed to teach him. We taught him about repentance and shared with him the story of Alma the younger's conversion. After the lesson I felt prompted to ask him if he would like a priesthood blessing. He said yes. The blessing was one of the coolest ones I have ever heard. One of the things he was blessed with was that the desire to smoke would be totally taken away from him and he would never have the desire to smoke again. I am very excited to see Lui's progress.