What a Week in the Wilderness

So, Pictures will have to wait until next week, but the place here in Sao Nicolau is beautiful.  I hope by 

the time I leave here that the rains have started and I can leave it green, because it will be suuuper 

beauitfuler.  So we are in the middle of 2 mountains.  There is pretty much no flat.  We are on the one 

slope, and the other elders are on the other.  It is a lot richer here and nicely developed.  Clean.  Very 

clean.  The people are less acepting though.  It is a bit more of a struggle.  

There is no church here.  What I mean to say is that there is no ward, branch, or even group.  There 

are about 10 members, and no leadership because we dont have a group leader. I have already met 

everyone fairly well, and know all their conversion stories and stuff.  The members that are still strong 

are not going anywhere anytime soon.  They have all been members for more than 10 months.  There 

havent been baptisms in a while.  The area has been open for a bit less than a year and a half.  

We have some good potential in investigators but none of them came to church.  There were 16 people 

at church on sunday which is about average.  We made some good plans for the month though and to 

get the frequency up a bit, and to baptise some good people.  The church needs lots of prayers of faith 

here.  We are doing a ton to find new people.

I didnt think I would every really enjoy knocking doors, but it is actually pretty fruitful, and enjoyable...ish.  

We did a decent bit of that this week.  We really really need more people to teach.

My Comp is sweet.  Elder Barrus.  He came out with me.  This is the first time in almost a year that I 

have felt like my comp is pushing me to be better instead of just a lot of me pulling alone a lot of the 

time.  Not to say that I havent felt that at all, but not very frequently.  It is a great help to me and something 

the Lord judged that I needed.  His will be done.  We did a bunch of fun stuff this week like contacted the 

ministers of some other churches and stuff, and we will be talking to them this week.  

Yesterday, Elder Barrus also broke some glass and cut his hand yesterday and so we went to the hospital.  

The probably should have given him stiches, but thats okay because the hospitals here are not super 

organized.  That is why God invented superglue.  It isnt super bad though.  Yay for glass!

So a big thing that has been dwelling in me is the talk from last conference about the question:  You 

can dance the dance, but can you hear the music?

Many times in the gospel we dance the dance.  We do the stuff, but we dont do the music.  We have t

o keep practicing to hear the music and to have the true happiness come out of living the gospel.  So, 

I would love some answers from everyone.  When I...      ... I hear the Music.  That would help us a 

ton to be able to hear the music because it is a bit of a struggle here.

Love You All!!!

Elder Sampson