Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022- A Samoan fireside

 We have a wonderful friend who is the landscaper for the house behind us. His name is Ula Pula. I have done posts about him before. Anyway, he is the Ward Mission Leader in one of the Samoan wards here. He had arranged a missionary fireside for his ward and his main speaker got COVID and couldn’t be there.  So, he came and asked us if we would each speak for about 10-15 minutes each at his fireside.  We had to do some scheduling revisions, but we said yes.

We went to work at the VC, then our coordinators came to relieve us while we went to go speak. Bro. Pula gave us these beautiful leis that smelled incredible!!!  Little did we know, however, that the whole fireside would be in Samoan!!! Even the songs!  And….even though the words were in Samoan, we didn’t even recognize the tune! Apparently they have many hymn that are specific to Samoans!

We were nervous that no one would be able to understand us, but he told us they would…so we forged ahead! My talk was about Love, Share, Invite….and only took barely 10 min.  Roger’s was great…about his father and mother’s conversions to the gospel and his was about 15.  Then Bro. Pula spoke, followed by the Bishop and both of his counselors….all in Samoan!  It was kind of funny that as they were speaking in Samoan, sometimes they would switch to English for a sentence or two, then back to Samoan! I don’t know if they even realized it.  

Afterwards, they had some refreshments. They served a kind of Samoan stew over rice!

It was a little different, but good! Guess they don’t know about brownies as refreshments! Ha!

Then we ran back over to the VC to finish our shift! Whew! What a day!