Conquering Coconuts & Grace's Baptism - August 18, 2014

This week was a quick one!!!

I will start out with a small story. In our compound there are three coconut trees. For the past six weeks, we have been saying that we wanted to get the coconuts from the tree on our P-day. For some reason we just never got around to it until today. It took forever to get those things down!!! In fact it took us four whole hours!!!!!!

We started by taking turns climbing the coconut tree (The tree is very tall!) and trying to whack the coconuts down. After climbing up the tree, we were panting and our arms and legs were so worn out that it was an effort to lift our arms out to try and reach the coconuts. We would try to extend our arms so that we could give the coconut a good chop but our effort was very puny because we were spent from climbing the tree. We tried this method a couple of times and realized that this was not going to work. We then thought of the movie, “Mulan” and how she climbed the tree with a rope around your back and slowly walked up the pole. So we grabbed some rope and tried that method. We quickly learned this method would not work. Ha-ha!

We then resorted to throwing stones at the coconuts trying to knock them down because climbing was becoming such a difficult task. After doing this for about an hour, we decided to give it up because we were sore and tired. We sat down to rest and think. I didn’t want this tree to defeat us. It was kind of humbling to realize that we could not get a coconut down from the tree.

After thinking about it for a little while, “MASTER J” came to mind. (Master J is Brother Johnson who was my scout master when I lived in California.) During my scouting days, he taught us to lash poles together so that we could make longer poles to build stuff. When we were learning this skill, I thought that I would never ever do this again. But I was wrong! I started gathering all the jump ropes in the house and all of our mops and brooms. I then lashed together a 15-18 foot long pole!!! Well after lashing the pole together, we leaned a ladder against the tree and started hitting the coconuts. Still no success!

Since we were unsuccessful with hitting the coconuts, we took a hanger and made a loop out of it and hung it on the end of our makeshift rod. After doing this we would hook the hanger around the coconut and yank them right off the tree! Eureka! We got four large coconuts and one small one!!! Our plan is to cook something with them. I am sure that it will be tasty.

Now the work! This week is going really well. Grace got baptized last week. (She is 55 years old.) We have been teaching her for about a month and a half maybe a little bit longer. I really enjoyed teaching Sister Grace because she always had great questions and really wanted to learn the gospel of Christ. She bore a wonderful testimony about how she would not only endure but live the commandments while enduring. She knows the commandments are true and they bring blessings.

We have had success in finding people. This week we have a lot of different people that we will continue to teach. Things are really looking good overall. Things are really working out so far for this transfer. The work is racing forward. It is a great thing to see. The Lord is helping and blessing us abundantly right now. He is placing a lot of people in our path and making the work easy for us. It is really nice!

We are still teaching David. (College student, basketball player.) He is dating one of the sisters in the branch right now and is trying to decide if this is a something that he is willing to commit to for his whole life. He will be a great member when he commits. He is well educated, smart and nice. He really understands the gospel. And he reads the Book of Mormon consistently. I really think that he will end up coming around, accepting the gospel and choosing to be baptized. He is a great guy and gets along well with the branch already.

Well that is all I have for today. Have a great week!

Sincerely,

Elder Bitter