Pigs and Samoan smiles

Little Samoan girls spying on zone meeting

 This week Elder Partridge and I visited The Upolu South Zone for their zone meeting.  We followed the zone leaders to pick up all the elders in their zone and then to the church building.  The churches here are all surrounded by a fence because there is a problem with people stealing from the church buildings.  The zone leaders didn't have the right key and all the leaders that had a key were at the temple.  So we ended up going to a different building.  The Relief Society was having a meeting and some of them brought their children.  While we were having our meeting two cute little girls kept peeking in and gigling.  They consented to let me take their picture. 

We traveled on a rainy day and their were big rain puddles on the road and in people's front yards. 

pigs playing infront yard in rain

Pigs on the farms aren't locked up here.  They wander around like dogs in the states.  I had to get a pictures of the pigs playing in their front yard as evidence.  One of the elders in our mission sent a picture of him holding a baby pig next to his face.  They are really quite cute when they are little which gave me  new understanding of the movie Charlotte's Web. Chickens aren't locked up here either. We have a rooster that wakes us up every morning and eats bugs from our front and back lawns.  

We have been on our mission for five months now.  This week  three new senior couples are coming to our mission.  Elder Partridge

and I will be going to Pago next week to show

church building

the Jordans' around.  They are from West Valley City, Utah. While there we can load up on

American food, which will be nice.   The meat in Samoa isn't very good, it is quite tough and they don't sell very many convenience foods.  Last time we went to American Samoa we brought home some cheddar cheese since the cheese here is all yellow, some canned chicken and yeast.  We usually have to go to three different stores plus the market to find the food we need to cook with.

Favorite hideaway

We love working in the temple and driving around the island.  It is beautiful in Samoa and the people here are very humble.  You can really see why Heavenly Father loves the people that are on the islands.  This last picture is of our favorite place to drive on Saturday.  It is very peaceful driving along the ocean and as you can see, it is very beautiful.

Our mission has just finished reading the Book of Mormon looking for scriptures on faith.  We begin our new Book of Mormon program in August looking for repentance and baptism.