Manuia lou aso fanau

Happy Martin Luther King Day Ya'll. Forgive me for misspellings or odd sentences because we are emailing from our iPads today and the auto correct is stupid sometimes. 

So you are probably wondering what the title means....well this week was President's birthday! We had interviews this week and he was coming to our zone on his birthday so we wanted to make it special for him. Sooooo, not too long ago he told us a really cool story about his mission in Samoa and how they were able to establish a church on an island that missionaries had been banned to go to. (The chief said the next missionary to set foot there, would be killed). Long story short, President was able to get past that and ended up building a shack as a church there. Someday I'll tell you the full story. But we were ordering a cake a couple weeks ago from Walmart and we found this awesome beach cake that had a shack on it! So we asked to change it a little bit and add some things he had talked about in his story and we made it HIS shack. So we were really excited about that. We decided to have the theme of how much his mission had affected him and made him who he is, and show our gratitude for the role he plays in our missions and help making us who we are. So we each wrote a little note to him about that and Sister K and I laminated it and made it look all nice. Well, we also know a family that is Samoan so we also wrote a note in Samoan on it and then we learned how to sing happy birthday in Samoan!!! So the title is how you say happy birthday :) It is actually pronounced "mon-o-wee-uh low ah-so fu-now." Haha so we were able to get everything prepared and teach the zone how to sing it. It turned out so good! He wasn't expecting it at all and kept telling us we weren't even supposed to know about his birthday. Also one of the elders had a member make a piñata of  Phoenix for president so that was also fun :) It turned out really good and his wife texted us later and thanked us for putting that together for President. It was fun because he ended his last interview and walked past the kitchen to go make closing remarks. Well, Sister K and I hid in the kitchen and then when he walked past, we wheeled the cake out behind him and followed him in and then started singing. It worked really well :) it was fun to be able to do something for him like that. 

We met with a lot of less actives and recent converts this week so there isn't much news for the week. We met with one of our investigators though. He sure is the cutest old man I've ever seen, he's also a little sassy pants so we get along well :) haha. We went over the restoration with him again because he doesn't understand why he has to pick a church. It's weird though because he understands that Jesus went to John the Baptist because he had the authority to baptize. But somehow it still doesn't click for him when we teach authority. However we finally got him to pray! It went well and he usually says no because he will get embarrassed or something.

I've been reading the war chapters lately and I've learned a lot from them. There is an older lady that we are teaching the lessons to. She has been a member of almost every church, and she is very old, so she gets confused sometimes as to what is true. So we are trying to help her. Well she says it's hard for her to read the scriptures, so I retold one of the stories for her that I had recently read, but I modernized it a bit. So that was fun to help her understand that she can learn from the scriptures and make it so she can understand it too. So anyway, the things I have been thinking about this week are how we need to fortify ourselves. Captain Moroni is continually helping the Nephites fortify their cities and be prepared for when the Lamanites attack them again. So my thoughts have been lately, "How do we fortify ourselves? How can we make those weaknesses we have, strong?" Obviously it is through the gospel and the savior, but sometimes it is hard to apply and know. Because I read my scriptures and pray all the time, but what more could I be doing to fortify myself against the adversary and the natural man? So I invite each of you to pray and ask Heavenly Father what it is you can individually be doing to fortify yourself so that when temptations or trials come, you are spiritually prepared to fight. I love you all and hope you have a great week!