Mata Kovi ("Bad Eye")

Almost everyone here has gotten sick this past week with "Mata Kovi"--their eye turns red, starts to hurt, and then swells up. Literally every house we went to they'd open the door, kind of laugh cover their eyes and apologize cause they have mata kovi. Unfortunately, our investigator, Pulotu, got mata kovi too. She was super excited to come to church on Sunday and even had her little son tell us he's going to primary, but when we went to visit her on Saturday--she walked out with super swollen eyes..and we wanted to cry! So we're hoping she'll get better these next couple days and come next week! The kaingalotu (members) who were getting better from mata kovi but still had red eyes all showed up to church with sunglasses on. It was hilarious.

This week was a little rough cause we had a few investigators drop us because their parents don't agree to us teaching them...even though they're "adults" now...so we're going to continue working toward them and their parents.

We taught this man and his wife (Koaneti & Solati) this past week. He's a preacher for the Wesleyan church and is super knowledgeable about the Bible and knows quite a bit about the Book of Mormon. The first question he asked us was, "who is Jesus Christ to you? And why is he important to you?" I think he was checking our credibility before he would listen to what we had to say. He told us he believes the Book of Mormon is scripture because it testifies of Christ and
ended up agreeing that that means Joseph Smith is a true prophet...so we tried to help him see that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has to be the one true church of the Earth. And no matter how many ways we tried to explain, and even though it made total sense to his wife, he kept saying that all churches were true and all we need to do is believe in Christ and follow the Bible. We tried like everything. Then after a little bit he told us he just can't leave his church because he's a preacher and he's going to become a missionary this year. We then shared with him how it's important to have faith to follow God's will...The whole time we thought his NEED was to help him understand that there is only one true church but what he really needs is the FAITH enough to follow the knowledge God gives him. God gives us knew knowledge and enlightens our minds when we have enough Faith to act upon the knowledge he gives us.

So yesterday, the Bishop changed in our ward. I really liked the last Bishop, we got pretty close with his family so it's going to be sad not working with him anymore, but the new one is the stake president's brother-in-law, he's also the relief society president's husband, and he's super nice so it'll be good!

Hope you all have a wonderful week! It was so awesome to hear your voices last week. Love you all so much!
Sister Reid