Ariados vs. Spider-Man (Cubby letter 12/31/2019)

Thursday December 26

Today was pday, we switched it with monday because of the holidays. We had planned to call home in the morning, considering that would be Christmas time at home. But all the networks were down, so there was no internet/texting on the island. That was a little disappointing, but we moved on, I made pancakes. But remember that Sister that was admitted to the hospital? A member of the YSA came up to us and told us that our Sister was having surgery in 5 minutes. To say the least we were quite surprised, since all the testing they had done wasn't showing anything to my knowledge. We tried to contact our mission nurse on Tarawa, but again no connection. We have a satellite phone, but we couldn't really get that to work. So basically, we couldn't contact our superiors before the surgery started. They had post poned the surgery til we got there, and everyone was kinda looking at me to see of we were actually gonna let them operate in the first hospital I've seen a mouse in. I talked to the surgeon and asked how bad she needed surgery and he said something along the lines that it needed to be done within a few hours. I asked him why they had waited for us and to start as soon as they could. Anyways, so we waited for her for awhile, and then when she came out, I had to talk to all the doctors and send reports back to Sister Kirk. We had dinner in Tabwakea after everything had kinda blown over, and we slept in London. 

Friday December 27

The sick sister's companion needed a break, so we switched them out. Then in Tabwakea, everyone called home briefly, I think mostly to explain why they hadn't called home on Christmas. We were also charged with making the sister a soup to eat. Although when it was made apparently it was too salty and it was rejected. I think the Sister ended up eating baby food. The baby food here is made of custard, so I kinda wanted to try, but I wanted to preserve my dignity more. We had more stuff to do in Tabwakea, like taking out the garbage and whatnot. We also remembered that we have a baptism tomorrow, that due to this whole surgery thing, hadn't been planned one bit. So we really just spent the rest of the day doing that. 

Saturday December 28

The baptism was scheduled for 9 am, at the request of the memebers so that they could go to that and also attend some primary function in Tabwakea. Well none of them really came anyway, so we probably could've done it anytime. But it went well, our presiding officer and baptizer showed up, with the girl's best friend to give a talk about baptism. One of the sisters had  actually taught her a bunch before she moved from Tabwakea to Banana, so she came as well and spoke on the Holy Ghost. We did the baptism in the ocean which was cool. After that ended, we decided that it was a good time to visit our sister in the hospital, and when we got there, they were about to get released. And they couldn't call us, because the service went back down. But we got there just in time. There are two phone services over here, ATH and a newer one called OceanLink. The mission uses ATH, but their's is the network that keeps going down, when Ocean Link stays steady. So we went to the store and bought OceanLink sim cards to keep in case of emergency. We went back to Banana and weekly planned, which was needed because we missed all of our times from Tuesday till Friday, so we had to make plans to visit all of them. After that, we had some time to go and schedule times, but around 7 we went to a botaki. This was a member's botaki that we are pretty close with. It was their son's first birthday, which is pretty big culturally. We stayed for a bit and ate some pig, and then left.

Sunday December 29

We finally slept in Banana again today. We had church per the usual, but it was exciting because our person was getting confirmed. Also we had an investigator come to church for the first time. Church went normal, Elder Bartley and I gave talks. After church we ate and then Elder Bartley fell asleep and I started packing because the APs told us I was flying out on Wednesday. That took up a decent amount of time, but we went to work afterwards. We set up some more times, and I talked with someone from the Bahai faith and she told me that they don't celebrate Christmas and they don't think the new year happens til March. I mean at least they don't think Christmas is in January. We had dinner to end the day.

Emilio Bacchus (Cubby letter 12/25/2019)

Hello

Do I ask questions as frequently as Tyler Kurtz? No. Should I? Maybe. But will I? Probably not, this whole journal format thing is way too easy. 

Anyway the scripture I enjoyed this week was 2 Nephi 26:24. It states that the Son of God does nothing save it be for the Benefit of the world, because he loves the world. I found this applicable to missionary work and discipleship. If we do nothing save it be to fufill our purpose on earth, our actions are going to be a lot different. 

Tuesday December 17

Not too much happened today, we had "zone conference" which is really mission conference, but we phoned in. The first five minutes of it went smoothly, but then something weird happened and we were back to the usual fuzzy picture and muffled noise. So we didn't get that much out of the conference, per the usual. Me and Elder Bartley stayed around because we had to give a training, the first ever conference training from Kiritimati. The London Elders stayed with us because we had driven them from London. The Sisters decided to be more productive and catch up on some much-needed sleep. Nothing besides that really happened, they didn't announce transfers because those aren't until Dec 31st. Anyways since it's Christmas time all the trainings were more like sermons on Christ. Our subject was the Atonement of Jesus Christ and we mostly just used scriptures. They included: Luke 22:39-44; Alma 7:11-13; 34:9-14; Mosiah 3:7

Wednesday December 18

We had district council in the morning, 2 of the Sisters didn't come because they were sick. It was an alright meeting, the language training was fun. It was like one of those games  that one person starts a story and then it just continues in a circle. The guy next to me just finished training, so he's not quite that good at the new language yet, so he had to ask me what I said everytime. I did aslo use complicated language terms/concepts on purpose. We had a couple lessons planned for the rest of the day, but most of the day was just contacting investigators and setting up times. We've had a lot of weird busy work to do lately, so a lot of our people didn't have times. We had dinner with this guy named Ratieta, he's a youth. Him and his sister are the only two members in their family, but she wasn't there so he cooked by himself. It was pretty good, we had raw milkfish. 

Thursday December 19

At the beginning of the day we went to London to the main government building to meet one if our investigators. We helped her fill out a form so she could become a registered citizen. She still has to go to a court hearing to really get it in, but the process has started. She has to become a citizen so she can get married so she can be baptized. After that we had some lessons, one about reading and praying about Ana Boki Moomon and another about the law of the Sabbath. Another one we had was like a half lesson. This lady we had a lesson with has basically just refused to pray during lessons, so we finally told her today that if she refuses to pray, there's no real point of us teaching so we would stop coming. She finally admitted that she doesn't pray because she can't find what to say while she is praying. So we taught about how Moses wasn't a good speaker too, and we worked out a deal. When she prays, she'll open the prayer, think about what to say, and if she didn't think of anything, she would just close it. So that's what we did and she prayed, but just opened and closed. The gap between the two was about a minute long and she said afterwards that she said some stuff in her mind but didn't speak it. One step at a time I suppose. To end the day we had a dress rehearsal of some dances and songs we've been practicing.

Friday December 20

We woke up in a very ununified manner today, more than usual. But after the process was done, we organized a baptismal interview with one of our investigators who is probably going to get baptized on the 28th. Today wad payday, which is essentially a holiday that happenes every two weeks, so there wasn't a lot of people to talk to today, and I think all of our lessons fell through. We did weekly plan however, which was beneficial. 

Saturday December 21

An interesting day for sure. We didn't go to Tabwakea yesterday to bring the missionaries their needs, so we went today. We also had to pick up Elder Baker from London and take him to Banana so he could interview our investigator that has a date for the 28th. That went well and she passed. After every payday there is a stand that gets set up in Banana with a bunch of discount goods and a soft serve icecream machine, so we took the other elders to get icecream. We went back to Tabwakea after that, and that was around 2:30 or 3:00 and that is when the District Christmas Botaki was starting. Of course it didn't actually start until 5. Most people from the Banana branch came, and we were all dressed in Black shirts and tie dye lavalavas. Mostly the Botaki was the different branches performing dances and songs and what not. Our Elders quorum did the Haka and now I have bruises on my legs from slapping them so hard. We sang two songs for our "choir" portion. We also sang a song for the youth in our ward to do a traditional dance and it was nuts. First, Kiribati dances are actually pretty technical, so I was impressed. But the best part is that after it was over, the first councilor in our branch was feeling it do we did it again. So for a background note, sometimes when a song or a dance gets really intense and the I-Kiribati people are feeling it, some people actually go nuts. Like yelling or just going crazy. It's hilarious because they seemingly can't really control themselves. So tonight when we did the dance the second time, a bunch of people were feeling it and some people in our branch were going crazy. Like some pretty shy people would do something ridiculous and then they would be super embarrassed afterward. Anyways after the Botaki ended we ate and went home. 

Sunday December 22

Just kind of your normal pre-Christmas Sunday I guess. We only had one hour of church, because there was a fireside at 5. What that means for our branch is that the transport starts picking people up at 3:30. But before the fireside, we got 1 lesson in. We read 1Nephi Chapter 8 with them and then explained Lehi's dream to them. But the devotional was good, it was just all of then first councilors of all the branches. It wasn't too Christmas centered, but it was good. We didn't have dinner with our Branch because of the devotional/transport issue so we piggy backed with the London Elders, since I am friends with the family they were eating with from my time in London. We slept in London

Monday December 23

We decided not to take a pday today citing the inevitableness of no work on Christmas day (we have two lessons though) and that we wanted to call home on Thursday, considering that is Christmas for most of our families. We met our pal Teretia at the government center at 10 so we could help her figure out how to become a citizen, because her mom didn't register her when she was born. So we were there til about 1. It was worth it though because she got it. Now she can choose to get married so she can get baptized. We were stressed out at first though because she didn't come at the time she said initially, but when we saw her pull up it was one of the most relieving moments of my life, I'll rank it just below  10:00 pm on Dec. 2 2017. We had some lessons planned, but again, all but one fell through. It was a good lesson though, it was a first lesson. We mostly just talked about how we could come to believe something. It's hard to teach that sometimes, because people don't want to let you know that they don't believe you, so they pretend to agree. Or they are apathetic and don't have an opinion anyway. 

Tuesday December 24

I was really excited for today. There was nothing unusual planned, it was going to be a day of just pure missionary work. Those days have been rare recently, but they are my favorite. However our mission nurse, Sister Kirk, had different and much grander plans for us. She called us around 10 am when we were leaving the house, telling us that we needed to take one of the Sisters to the hospital. She has been pretty sick for awhile and apparently last night was showing symptoms of appendicitis. So we were also given a decree that we must stay with her until she was done at the hospital. So that took us to about 4pm. She had to wait in lines, get tested, etc. Afterwards I had to communicate all the results to sister Kirk which took probably another hour. So at 5 we headed back up to Banana, having missed all our lessons. So taking that into consideration, when we stopped at the American store to get gas, we bought a bunch of foodstuffs so we could party for Christmas. We had dinner at Karaiti's house, he's a member that really likes us, so we eat there a lot.

Wedenesday December 25

Not your average Christmas, but one I feel good about. We had a short district council, we talked a little about our investigators and then we all shared scriptures about the Savior. Afterwards, we got in contact with Sister Kirk, the mission nurse, and she told us that she wanted our sick sister to get her blood tested. So we went down and caused a ruckus at the hospital because we had orders from Sister Kirk but they had a lot of staff on holiday. We went back to Tabwakea at the request of our sick sister, for enough time that Sister Arredondo, who has heritage in Mexico, to make us some tortillas, salsa, Mexican rice and beef. Shortly after, it was apparent that our sickling needed to go back to the Hospital, due to the strong signs of Appendicitis. So we were at the hospital with her waiting and sending updates to Sister Kirk from about 2 to 8pm. We went to a little Christmas botaki after that, and then we came home.

Also Classified as a Heptologist (Jacob letter 12/15/2019)

Hi

It's the I-Kiribati version of Elder Stanfield.

I can't spell in Cyrillic. 

I've written a haiku in the 2-5-2 format

Help me

Medical crisis 

Pooping 

Tuesday/Wednesday 10/11

So Elder Bartley and I both have been sick these past two days. So nothing really exciting at all has happened. I was sicker on Tuesday than on Wednesday. I had a fever that kept going up and down but I couldn't get it to break. Also Bekanako. On Wednesday the same thing except no Bekanako because I didn't eat anything on Tuesday. I would go on to also not eat anything on Wednesday. The fever finally broke Wednesday night, and I sweated a whole bunch. But laying inside all day for two days makes it hard to sleep at night. Wednesday to Thursday night was not the most peaceful sleep I've ever had. Needless to say I am more than ready to become a missionary again.

 

 

Thursday December 12

Woke up and felt great today, finally. We had MLC today at noon, so that had us in Tabwkea. That was about 2 and a half hours long. It had good content though, as MLCs usually do. It's  one of the few times we actually get to hear from President because he is so busy with his two countries, which provides for essentially two missions. We planned Zone (They call it zone but it would be more appropriate to use the word mission) conference. Usually when we plan who is going to give trainings and what they are going to be on, I can suggest stuff with no fear because I will never have to give a training so long as I was on Kiritimati. That previous statemant was apparently a false assumption on my part, because I suggested a training and then they assigned it to me and Elder Bartley.  Not much else happened today besides that we missed a bunch of lessons so we had to go to our people and reschedule times.

Friday December 13

Quite an uneventful day. We went down to Tabwakea again to run a bunch of errands. The Elders in London lost the key to their house a while ago, and because they did not know that we had a spare key, they smashed the pad lock keeping their door locked. So, we had to go find a new Pad lock me and Elder Bartley. So that was on errand, and the Sisters needed money so we just absolutley had to take them to get some, despite that their bank accounts were also empty. I'm not surebhoe missionaries run out of money so quickly all the time, I get the same as them and I feel like Whiz Khalifa because my money is loooong. We met with one of investigators, Naomi, and we have her three Baptismal dates to choose from, so there'll be a baptism soon, we'll just see if I'm here for it. We actually have a bunch of other investigators that are pretty ready for baptism, they just aren't married yet. We had dinner with an RM who served in Oklahoma and she made us Chili and potatoes, which was really good. Sometimes it's refreshing to eat another starch besides rice. 

Saturday December 14

Today was a little more action packed, we've gotten our schedule to be full again after 2 day of n work earlier in the week. Before we were about to leave the house today, a group of branch members brought a bunch of tie dye materials over to the mwaneaba and started tie dying a bunch of lavalavas. For the Christmas botaki on the 21st our whole branch is wearing them. This got me thinking about how versatile mwaneabas are. You can have church in them, have dance parties, and also apparently do tie dye. I think the Restored Church should abandon the current style of chapels as meeting houses, and just use mwaneabas world wide. Eventually we left and started doing average missionary things, meeting with people we know, meeting people we don't know along the way. We met a lady who was so shocked that I have neither smoked, drank, chewed, nor drank kava that I'm pretty sure she doesn't believe that I don't. Anyways we had 4 lessons scheduled today, and we taught three. One was a very distracted lesson about the word of wisdom and chastity, the other a very short lesson about the Doctrine of Christ, and we taught the shyest man in the whole world that God is a God of miracles. At one of the lessons, right when we showed up we saw a three year old kid drink like 3 cups of tea. As you may expect, about 15 minutes later, he was going nuts trying to destroy our lesson. We had a dance practice with the ward to end the day. We're doing the Haka and I slapped my legs so hard there are purple spots on them.

Sunday December 15

Pretty alright Sunday. There was a pretty large amount od people at church, even though a good 30% of them came after the opening song. The young men were the ones to give talks today. One kid was pretty funny, he talked about how we should trust our kids and let them go places when they want to. It's almost like there was a conflict of interest there. But since there was only young men speaking, sacrament meeting ended about 15 minutes early. After church we had a couple lessons, one was with my favourite investigators, Nuunebwa and Taabi. We taught them the gospel. Like most people here, when I asked them some deep, introspective questions, it was the first time they had thought about it. So it was good. We met with this other lady who we had given Ana Boki Moomon to and she read the testimony of Joseph Smith. For maybe the first time, I heard someone plainly say that they did not initially believe what Jospeh Smith had to say. Usually people read it and just kind of forget about, but this lady was actually considering what was true. So I was excited about that. We had dinner like usual, and then we drove down to sleep in London.

The Might of a Squirrel (Cubby 12/8/2019)

Tuesday December 3

We slept in London because the District President requested a dinner with all the missionaries last night. I think it was because he wanted to explain to us that the District is still young and needs our help. I think the Senior Couples were kind of a mental crutch for the people here, so I think they're freaking out that there isn't any anymore. We went back to Banana though to get to work, and it was a pretty average day. We taught the law of the Sabbath to Teretia and her family, plus a less active youth. They all commited to come to church, which we know Teretia will. One of the Sister's people moved to Banana, a young girl that is somewhere in her teenage years, I'm not sure how old. It was a slightly frustrating lesson because she was quite bobotika. We had a lesson fall through, which was disappointing because we were pretty excited for it, it was a first lesson and the person seemed pretty solid. We tried a new finding technique, we call it the Elder Bartley Impresses All The I-Kiribati People By Killing Them In Volleyball While Elder Stanfield Contacts the Players When They Aren't Playing technique. After that we ate and then we started learning a dance with the branch. It's not really a dance because it is the Haka.

Wednesday December 4

We woke up quite early today to pick up the Senior Couple that is visiting Kiritimati for a week. We lead them to their Hotel and we talked with then for a while and roughly planned the week. They are Elder and Sister Walker from New Jersey. I made an assumption and thought that they were from Utah and I was wrong. Me and Elder Walker have things in Common like not understanding women and the love of making fun of rich people for wasting all their money. We had district council afterwards, which was pretty successful. We had our I-Kiribati sister give language training which was fantastic. The younguns in the District still can't go the whole council without speaking English, but we're working on it. We had a pretty flat day after that, all of our lessons fell through. 

Thursday December 5

Our first normal day in awhile it feels. It felt good because we got all of our studies in, left the house early and spent probably 20 minutes eating lunch. To the average missionary with an unhealthy obsession with not wasting time, that is very satisfyingly. We had 6 lessons planned for today, with a hope for a seventh, but we ended up only getting 3. I realize that the phrase "only 3 lessons" doesn't really exist in the daily lingo of Moldovan Missionaries. But our lessons consisted of: Reading 2 Nephi 31, the Plan of Salvation, and again, the Plan of Slavation. Shout out to the new Come Follow Me: The Book of Mormon, because I've already started studying it and it actually had a huge influence over how I taught lessons today. That combined with me and Elder Bartley deciding to make our lessons today more about the Atonement of Jesus Christ, had me talking about the First and Second Death a lot more than usual. We had dinner with a younger couple, and they both work, so it wasn't a huge feast like it is with some other people, but this lady made this "soup" (in Kiribati, if anything is mixed together, they call it a soup. So a salad would be like "the soup of lettuce.") out of corned beef, instant noodles, and onions that defined the meaning of synergy. For some reason it was way better than it should have been.

Friday December 6

Friday was an interesting day. We went down to Tabwakea to bring needs to missionaries and what not and I got to call Ben for his Birthday, and we also had a training/discussion thing with rhe the Walkers. There subject was: The Book of Mormon an Instrument to Gather Scattered Israel. So basically it was just about gathering Israel, so we studied a lot out of 1st and 2nd Nephi, and the Walkers gave us a short summary of Jacob 5. It was pretty good, and afterwards they talked about some other stuff like how to get along with your companion and the importance if being a missionary etc. After that they took us to a Restaurant in London. Everyone got their food  somewhat fast, except it took three of the orders like an hour because the restaurant's stove ran out of gas. But we had to wait for then because we were the ride back. Anyways, after that all of our lessons fell through. There was supposed to be a Branch activity that started at 7, and we had to go because Elder Bartley is teaching the Branch the haka. But, it didn't end up starting till 9pm. And it happened pretty much at our house, so it's not like we couldn't have gone.

Saturday December 7

On Saturday we were incredibly busy. The branch had a service project planned at 8, so instead of just working out from 6:30 to 7, I finished my workout at 7:30. The service was to repair a member's roof, which involves tying woven mats made out of coconut fronds to some small beams. It was pretty fun, I learned a new knot. That took awhile though, and at the end by job was to hold this little latter thing for the Elders Quroum President while he tied roofing at the top of the house because it was too tall for us to reach. Our EQ President is a pretty little guy, even by Kiribati standards, but he is like a monkey. He is like the Chinese dude in Ocean's 11. Anyways, we went back home after that to shower and eat and what not. We then started to teach lessons. Surprisingly enough, we had no lessons fall through today, so we had a total of 6 lessons. We taught Repentance, Temples (that lessons was frustrating because this one lady REFUSES to pray during lessons, and she refused for like the 5th time today), The Doctrine of Christ, we read a chapter from Ana Boki Moomon, we taught about how we should pray and read everyday and follow the prophet, and we finished with a lessons about the first part of the Plan of Salvation. We had dinner with our Branch President that night. 

Sunday December 8

At church today me and Elder Bartley had to give talks, but that's okay because we had been assigned for a couple weeks, so it wasn't just a last second deal like what can sometimes happen. I gave a 10-12 minute talk on Missionary work, and my companion talked about Service. It went pretty well I suppose. We did weekly planning (or an abbreviated version of it) after church because we didn't get the chance to on Friday and Saturday. We had some business to do at one of our members houses afterwards, and on our way back, we saw peole from the same house we just came from on the side of the road because the chain from their motorcycle had fallen off. So we drove back to that members house to get them some help. After that we had a lesson about the Plan of Salvation with this young couple we're teaching. I really like this couple because the first time we asked them to read and pray, they did it and received answers. Since The first time we asked them to keep the Word of Wisdom, they've been working on it. So it's  been nice not having to try and convince them to keep commitments, because they have so much faith. We had some more lessons fall through, and then got dropped by one of our investigators. We had dinner early so we could go to this fireside in Tabwakea put on by the Walkers. I think the original plan was to have the district president translate for them while they were talking, but for some reason it ended up being me. And they were talking for like an hour and a half. It was just one of those times that I felt that the gift of Tongues was helping me a ton, and the Holy Ghost was placing words in my mouth like crazy. The great thing about that is that's how I learn a lot of new language concepts, I speak with the gift of tongues and afterwards I remember whatnI said so I can use it again. Pretty sick deal if you ask me.

#1 Biggest Monarchy (Cubby letter 12/2/2019)

On this world

We share our talents 

Which have been given by God

For our individual opportunities

Light your candles

Put them on their places now 

That they may be seen

By all people

Light your candles 

This is a translation of a song. Much more poetic than the teapot song I learned. 

Tuesday November 26

We slept in London again, and had a service in the morning. We were supposed to put this old man's water tank on a platform, but the government water truck came and filled it with water. Three people isn't quite enough to lift 1 ton of water. So he insisted that he feed us, and that was our service. We had a couple lessons after that. One was with Teretia, our investigator that is actually a member, but technically not. We had first time meetings with a couple people as well, one was a woman names Teaekaki which is loosley translated to "category." We taught the plan of Salvation to someone as well, and met some new people. We taught a lesson about temples to a young couple we are teaching. The hope was to give them more incentive to keep the Word of Wisdom. I think it worked, but that's always a struggle. We finished with dinner at 8, and a centipede was seen crawling towards me, and when that was mentioned I think I jumped 3 feet in the air from a cross legged position.

Thursday November 28

So we woke up in Banana today only to find that we had no water in our tank, and when we turned our valve back to get water, it wasn't filling the tank. So when we were about to go to Tabwakea to shower and stuff, it started working again. But that stalled us for about an hour in the morning. After that we headed to a botaki we were invited to, thinking we'd just stay for an hour amd leave, but we were made guests of honor instead. Do that turned into a 3+ hour commitment. We had a bunch of planned lessons besides that, but we only got to teach one. It went well, it was on the word of wisdom. We basically just told the guy that if he believes that Joseph Smith was a prophet, he'll keep this law like he keeps the Ten Commandments, but if he doesn't, it's just a bunch of mumbo jumbo. I guess that's kind of true for everything in the Church, no matter how logical it all seems, we have to believe in the Restoration. So when we were driving to dinner, we tried to take a new road that would be faster. But it was night time, and we couldn't see the road very well. So when we were about to get to the house we were going to, we turned onto what we thought was the road. Sike. It was pretty deep mud that looked solid. We got stuck. I got out and tried to push, with no success. But luckily  some members saw us from their house and pulled us out with a huge truck. 

Friday November 29

Waking up today was great, I've been able to work out again now that my stomach is stable in the morning. Some lady gave us a bunch if donuts last night (not real donuts, but bread fried in oil) so that made for a better breakfast than crackers. We went dowm to Tabwakea shortly thereafter to minister unto our beloved Sisters. We completed very inportant tasks such as taking the garbage to the dump and delivering paper materials. Me and Elder Bartley each called home because it was Thanksgiving in America. I felt bad for Sam because "all the athletic people are on missions" therefore the annual game of bump was not as entertaining. Dad did tell me about his new pie endeavors which made my mouth water just a little bit. Anyways, we went back to the holy city of Banana to work. We had a couple lessons, one of which was on the Restoration, and the other one was to set up a plan for one of our investigators to stop chewing kouben (I think kouben has tobacco in it, but I'm not sure). We had dinner at 8, and the food was good. I'm quite thankful I can eat full meals again at dinner time.

Saturday November 30

A more average start to the day, but we did have a lesson at 10. It was with a couple that split up and got back together, so we read Jacob 3. But before that, the District President came to cut grass at the chapel, and he brought us fish and rice for breakfast. Anyways, we had another half lesson with this girl, it was on the Message of The Restoration. We had lunch and did weekly planning after that, which is always great fun🙃. We mostly just to make a ton of new teaching records because we've gotten a bunch of new investigators recently. We had some more lessons after that, one about the word of wisdom and another one about the Restoration. The restoration lesson went really well, the lady we taught it to was way into it, and actually seemed like she wanted to find out what the truth is. I think it's because she has a test to get a job this week, she just ran away from her drunk husband, and she has a 3 month old son. I guess she viewed the gospel as a way to relief and not another stressor in her life. She isn't even really close to being a member at this point, but we could all learn from her example. We had dinner like we always do to end the day, and they made very good fish. 

Sunday December 1

December started today, so we rearranged our music playlist to make it mostly Christmas songs. We started out with church, there was a medium amount of people there. It was a good tesrimony meeting. It wasn't a very eventful day besides that, but I was reading from church magazine and saw a recipe for sticky mango rice. And my mind had already been on food since Thanksgiving just past, so unfortunately food was on my mind for the rest of the day. 

Took my pills for mosquito death (Ben letter 12/2/2019)

My buddy is breathing his dying breath.

Aka my comp is going home in 2 weeks, which is sad.

 

A lot is going on in the mission work here, but you can just ask my mom about that. We have many good investigators, but lots of them leave the country still. However some stay. And as Grandpa and Grandma Volmer now know, I love me some fish eyeballs, or maybe some pork lungs. I really should have believed uncle Ben when he said that in Europe they eat all the intestines. Also all European food is NOT Italian food. Once you get past the its-raw-fish-that-has-been-dead-for-over-two-moths-and-smells-like-sams-farts part of things, it doesn't taste that bad.

 

I bought some boots that are already falling apart, but they have rabbit hair on the inside which is nice and warm. Also it's cold. Very cold. 

I forgot it was Thanksgiving until we got home at night, it was a really good day. We got fed 3 times, so I suppose I got my nontraditional Thanksgiving. 

 

I do a lot of cool stuff and kore cool stories, but I don't have the time to share them all. 

My favorite investigator is a woman who cant read the Latin alphabet, but she also doesn't know the Russian language, and we don't have any books of Mormon in Cyrillic sadly. I am learning some Kore Russian now, but on purpose, because we have some people we know that come to Moldova from time to time, and tell me that I'm speaking half Russian hahah. I think they're exaggerating. 

Won't send a letter next week because I will be in Kyiv. 

All I have to say this week is that atheist people have the worst logic, but only slightly better then Pentecostals.

Btw Martin Luther is from Germany and not America, but somebody needs to tell that to the Moldovan people, and I'm not even sure how they use that as anti Mormon logic.

Also, pray everyday for revelation in your life, and treasure what you feel, then you can make the best decisions that will help you be close to Christ. 

 

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And Warbler in a Short Bush (Cubby letter 11/24/2019)

Once upon on a time, there was a land where it never rained. The end.

Mauri

It was a good week, another week of us being in a trio. We live in London because our house in Banana is too small to accommodate 3 people. The new sisters came, one from Tonga, one from Fiji, and one from Kiribati. So maybe I'll be able to speak in Divers tongues by the end of this transfer. 

Tuesday November 19

We worked in Banana today. We had an early lesson, but Nobody was there, so we went to a place called Bwatua to talk to people. So a weird thing about Kiribati, every religion has what they call a "wall." That basically consists of the place they go to church, generally a mwaneaba, and a bunch of houses around it. A lot of time the people that live in these houses don't really have a calling/office/job in their church, they are just really determined not to talk to anyone not of their faith ever again. At least that's what it seems to me. Anyway, this place called Bwatua has the Catholic wall inside of it. So the people that live there are really into Catholicism. But we go there a lot anyway, and sometimes people give us funny looks because of it. Anyway, we only had 2 lessons that actually happened, one was a Plan of Salvation lesson for the daughter of one of our investigators, and the other a first time meeting with a new person. To end the day, we had dinner in Tabwakea, it was a good bye botaki for Sister Manu. During the botaki, I got a call from President Foster trying to talk to me about something about the new sister's house. But since he was in Marshalls, it kept cutting out, so the only thing I heard was that we needed to do an inventory. So at 9 oclock at night we did an inventory of their house. And we tried to contact President again via Face Book Messenger, but he never responded. So we got home at like 10:40

Wednesday November 20

We woke up at 5 am today to go pick up the new sisters that are working here. There is always a lot of interesting people at the airport, so it's fun to go there. One of the people who got off the plane was this very old white dude, who looked very confused. I went over an talked to him and he said that he was a doctor here for work, and nobody was there to pick him up. So I tried to help him a little bit. We didn't have the hospital's number (typing that out makes me realize that we should probably get it) so I went and talked to a random I-Kiribati dude and asked him if they had the Hospital's number. He asked why, and I told him it was because this old white dude is a doctor and nobody was here to pick him up. Which is funny because the doctor had just told the same guy that in English and the I-Kiribati dude pretended to understand. But once I talked to him he went and talked to the guy that was supposed to pick up the doctor, and everything was solved. Anyway, we dropped the sisters off in their house, and went to our 8 am lesson. We came back after that only to have the sisters inform us that they only had 1 bed. So we went on a bed hunt. Luckily, I don't spend that much money so I had more than enough to buy one. Well not like a real mattress, but 2 foam pads at 70 Australian notes each. We returned to the Tabwakea chapel to have district council, but we took the new sisters to shop for food instead, because they had none. So after that we took Sister Manu to the airport to so she could leave. It was pretty entertaining because the KUC minister (I think they are technically Lutheran, but they don't know that lol) was leaving after the standard 4 years. When it was time for check in they actually rolled a red cloth in front of him to walk on. I aspire to achieve that kind of clout. So after that we took Sister Manu's companions home, and begun teaching lessons. The first one fell through, and we decided to study at that point, because we hadn't yet. The next lesson fell through, and we had a good lesson on 2 Nephi 32. We had dinner in London, yet another botaki, this time for a missionary who just returned.

Thursday November 21

We woke up today and Elder Bartley was sick. So we kind of just sat around the house. Elder Baker cleaned a bit, I would've helped but there was only one broom, and I'm lazy. We gave this one YSA lunch because he came to our house. So it was good to get the language juices flowing. At around 2 or 3, Elder Bartley woke up, and shortly thereafter we were working again. We had 3 lessons, in which we were late to all of them. The last one was on the temple. All the lessons were a little disorganized because we didn't plan, thanks to the illness early in the day. We had dinner with this dude who went to The Dominican Republic on his mission and his family. Since he speaks Spanish, he made friends with this cook dude on one of the cargo ships, so he was gifted a bunch of "meat" which appeared to me to be steak. So we had that for dinner.

Saturday November 23

Pretty average start to the day, exercise, studies. I studied from some old general conference talks, my favorite being one back in 1985 by Russell M. Nelson called Self-Mastery. He gave some good insights on some commandments and the influence they have on self control. The one I had never thought about before was the Law of Tithing. He said something along the lines that if we have the self control to pay our tithing, then if some opportunity comes up to steal something or cheat someone, we'll have the self control to not do it. Anyways, we had a lesson planned for 10 am in Tabwakea, but they weren't there. So we headed up to Banana. We spent awhile tracking down people we already knew and scheduling times with them. We ended up teaching a couple lessons. We taught a pretty good first lesson to one of our newer people. Anyways we had dinner at a birthday party, so we got cake amd ice cream. But since we're in Kiritimati, it was American ice cream, and cake from a mix. Actually the other day we ate some Fijian ice cream that was passion fruit flavored, and it was really good.

Sunday November 24

Shook things up a little but today by spending the day in London. We went to church in London as well. Everyone in the branch was surprised to see me again, and I think some members that don't come very often didn't realize that I'd ever left at all. But church was good, a girl gave her home coming talk, she served in Kiribati, so I actually knew her a little bit. She didn't speak very loudly though, so not a lot of it was heard by me. An old lady spoke on service, which was pretty neat. The toilet for the chapel was broken, so church policy required us to end church after sacrament meeting. The day went alright after that. We spent awhile walking around London, I was showing Elder Baker around because he's taking the area over when his companion comes on Wednesday. We had two lessons as well. In one lesson, we were talking about prayer and this one lady expressed that after we had taught her to pray, she was not very good at praying in her own religion. I thought it was funny. We had dinner in Banana and the member we had it with shared possibly the most riveting conversion story I've ever heard, at least the way he told it.

This is why Twisted Wizard isn't allowed/ Shut Up Dalton!! (Cubby letter 11/18/2019)

This is a teapot

It is big, it is round

This is my ears

This is my mouth

If it is hot

I yell "ha ha"

Turn me over 

Turn me over 

Turn me over

Pour

A song I learned this week 

Tuesday November 12

Not quite that exciting, but interesting is how I would describe today. So we woke up and went to a service, which was surprise, chopping coconuts. Elder Bartley figured out how Kiribati people do it, so he chopped a ton, while I did none. Then we went down to Tabwakea and called into Zone Conference. It was pretty good, except when they were talking about if we became a technology mission. And then lots of pointless questions asked. But we also discussed the new handbook, which was fruitful. We all got our ankles broken by transfers. So I'm staying with Elder Bartley, which is a surprise by itself. Elder Geertsen is leaving tomorrow, that was expected. But what we learned today was that Elder Geertsen's old companion, Elder Baker, isn't going to get his new companion for another 2 weeks. So we get to trio with him for awhile, and cover both areas, woohoo. And if that wasn't enough, they are sending 2 more sisters out here, making a total of 4. I guess the upside is that one of them is I-Kiribati so we'll all get better at the language. 

Wednesday November 13

A day for sure. Woke up early at the request of the Elders in Tabwakea, so we could take them to a good bye breakfast. We had district council afterwards, which was okay, the language training was just an exchange of new vocabulary that we've picked up recently. And then we talked about what happened during Zone Conference. I wasn't too impressed with the conference yesterday, I thought it was going to be more thought provoking and motivating than it was. It's okay because generally speaking I don't really need to be motivated by an external force. After that we took Elder Geersten to the airport because he's going back to Tarawa. Despite my heavy objections, the sisters tagged along "to say good bye" (I was outvoted 5 to 1), I'll hold my tongue and describe that activity as an enormous and unnecessary waste of time. We were officially in a trio with Elder Baker, and we took him around Banana and taught some lessons.

Thursday November 14

An interesting day for sure. We spent the morning working in Tabwakea, because that's Baker's area. We had a lesson about tithing, which I haven't actually taught in awhile, so the refresher was good. After that we went around and scheduled times with what seemed like everybody in Tabwakea. So that took from about 9am to almost 1pm. So after that we went back and had lunch, and we didn't have the chance to do comp study in the morning, so we did that as well. So at about 2ish we went back down to Banana to teach all the lessons we had scheduled before. They went alright I suppose. We ran into one of our other investigators and she told us that she's going to Tabueran (Fanning Island) until the new year. I was pretty sad about that because she's one our good friends. We had dinner in Tabwakea because a member was having their 5 year marriage anniversary. It was a small gathering, but They did have cake. 

Friday November 15

Pretty interesting day I suppose, we worked in Tabwakea, so I got to meet some new people. It was also weird teaching as a threesome, I think sometimes we didn't know what to say because we were expecting someone else to say something, etc. Most of the lessons we taught were in the morning, and then we had weekly planning, which took forever because it was for 3 areas, and then we had to do needs. That included laminating some documents and delivering some missionary materials. Nothing really too exciting happened besides that, we drove up to Banana for dinner, and Elder Baker and Elder Bartley slept for about an hour while they prepared the food, leaving me to talk with everyone. 

Saturday November 16

We worked in Banana today, we didn't have a lot of stuff planned like usual, mostly because this week was so different. So we spent most of the time finding new people and setting up appointment with investigators that didn't have times scheduled with us. So we did that until about 4:30, and we went back to Tabwakea to attend a baptism. It was one of the Sister's people, a ten year old boy. His mom is a member and his dad isn't. I think he didn't really know who to ask to baptise him, and since I did his baptismal interview, he asked me. It was a nice experience. Afterwards we had a botaki with the branch, they had some nice dances for us. One of our investigators actually lead one of the dances, and she went pretty hard, it was entertaining. 

Sunday November 17

We went to church in the Tabwkea 2 branch to start, mostly because we figured that Elder Baker wouldn't be going there anymore after this week. The first speaker during sacrament meeting spoke until the time the meeting was supposed to end, and then we sang an intermediate hymn, and the last speaker spoke, so we went about 30 min over. After that we went to Banana to catch the second our of their church, but lucky for us they were in the process of going 30 min over as well, so we caught about half of their sacrament meeting as well. And since it was the equivalent of a ward council, they brought cake for everyone. After that, we had a word of wisdom lesson with these 2 couples, and it went pretty well. I don't think I like that the 2 couples are combined at this point, because one couple has already prayed and received answers about Ana Boki Moomon, and the other hasn't. Who knows maybe the other couple will follow suite. 

Cubby pics 11/11/2019

Mother Nature is a Little Nervous about Me(Cubby letter 11/11/2019)

Tuesday November 5

The first day in a while that we didn't have something to do in the morning, like District Council or service. When we first left the house we met an old lady who was raking/sweeping leaves. I told her I would do it for her, so I raked for about 30 min while Elder Bartley talked with her. The rest of the day was pretty normal. We had 4 lessons planned but we ended up teaching 2. One lady that we taught refused to pray because she was certain she would cry and be embarrassed. The other lesson was our first with a younger couple. After dinner we were invited to learn a dance with the branch. Elder Bartley was excited because we were told is a New Zealand dance and he has heritage there. But when we got there they were doing a excersize dance, kinda like Zumba. That was only one half of the branch though because they are doing an intra branch competition, so me and Elder Bartley might go see what the other team is doing.

Wednesday November 6

Had district council today. For language training we did something like 20 questions and my thing was Bambi's mom so it took awhile. Me and Elder Bartley had no food in our house so we ate at a restaurant afterwards. Their half cooked fish was okay but I've had better. Anyways after that it was just a typical day. Meaning that only 2 out our 5 planned lessons went through. They were good lessons though. At one of them there was a girl we never met before standing right next to the house before the lesson started. I asked if she wanted to join us, and she made it sound like we wouldn't want her there, most likely as an excuse. Usually when people refuse the first time, I let them be, but this time I kept thinking of a Jeffery R. Holland talk that talked about a missionary who put his foot in the door when somebody tried to shut it on them. So I tried to convince this girl for like 20 minutes with no success. After the lesson was over though, she came back and I asked her if we could schedule a time with her. She said she would talk to her mom. But right then her mom walked up, and we already knew her. So we scheduled a time with both of them.

Thursday November 7 

A disappointing start to the day really. We had a service to start the day, it was to chase pigs and tie them up, but when we showed up, nothing happened. The lady we were gonna do it for said that they had all ran away and that they would have to do it later that night. Pretty normal day besides that, we taught this lady about our reason for living on the earth. She liked the lesson because before we started she asked out of the blue how we get to heaven. We forgot to confirm dinner, but it was alright because the people we had scheduled it with was the house that all the members were going to practice their dance. So when we showed up to see if they remembered, they didn't but we had an excuse for coming to their house so they weren't embarrassed. But we did have canned fruit for dinner which was a bummer.

Friday November 8

A normal start to the day, studies etc. But we had to go down to Tabwakea to take needs and whatnot. We were starving from the night before having no dinner, so we made a deal with the sisters that they would make us lunch if we brought icecream. So we had chicken for lunch. So after that we went back to a bunch of lessons we had scheduled. We had 4 scheduled and 2 went through. One of them was a first time lesson, which is always exciting. Nothing really too exciting happened after that, besides that we had dinner and our car alarm went off during it.

Saturday November 9

Another service appointment fell through in the morning. And then directly afterwards a morning lesson fell through as well. But that was okay because we had weekly planning to do, and we had a lot to discuss because last week Elder Bartley was sick so we didn't do it. After that we went to find some people we knew and set up times with them. We ran into one of our investigators who told us that her husband got drunk last night and that some crazy stuff went down. She seemed like she just wanted to sit and talk for awhile, so that's what we did. Essentially the entire camp where she lives got drunk the night before, so I got asked a bunch if I wanted to go drinking, and one guy asked me if I wanted to sleep next to the road. I'll pass this time. All the rest of our lessons fell through, but we met some new people, which is always fun. We got called by the APs and they told us transfers. They told me I was staying, same companion. It's kinda crazy, only one other person before me has stayed on Kiritimati for 5 transfers, so I had kinda assumed that I was leaving, but I guess not.

Sunday November 10

A pretty average Sunday. One of the speakers in sacrament meeting spoke about focusing during sacrament meeting, and how it would benefit us, and I think I was among the few people who listened. This is called irony. And during the second hour this old guy names Bwaketi (literally translated to Bucket) was telling stories about when he got drunk, and everyone in the elders quroum was dying of laughter. Afterwards we had some lessons, although one of them was just talking to one of our investigators who just recently seperated from her husband. We've seem a lot of family situations that aren't very good lately.  It's definitly made me thankful that I come from a steady home. Also more than ever I know that a home founded upon gospel principals can and will bring happiness and stability in our lives. Sometimes I just wanna grab people here and shake them and say "can't you see what you're missing? Can you not understand that our message holds the keys to all your problems?" 

 

Tri-Cities represent

Tri-City Potatoes!

Living space

Wut? (This one he actually captioned)

 

Киев or киïв. Don't make no sense dog (Ben letter 11/11/2019)

Hello

Can you hear me? 

Man I miss middle school.

Anyway these past 2 weeks have been good, full of miracles. Last week we went to Kiev for a mlc, and I got to go through the temple. It was such a good feeling to see the church in Ukraine. It is still young and small in comparison to the states, but nevertheless I could see what Moldova is headed towards. 

 

This last week we had a mission tour, featuring elder Golden of the 70 from south africa. He gave some very practical advice. The way to teach culture is to teach application. Interesting and useful. 

 

I also did an exchange this week with elder Marchenko in Balti. It was a city that mostly spoke Russian so it was fun to improve. Between going to Ukraine and Balti I picked up some more Russian but still not even close to really have a full convo. It reminded me of how when I first got into the mission I couldn't understand anything, and that's just frustrating.  

 

In the past couple of weeks I have been very absorbed in missionary work. I am trying to become a better instrument in the Lords hands, and boy do I see miracles everyday now. It's like the heavens opened when I put down my pride! Wow I guess the Book of Mormon was right this whole time. It is really just showing me how open he heavens really are, and it kinda scared me.

 

The power and authority of God are back on the earth today, and it's real, and I see it everyday, and I see how the Spirit puts thoughts and words into my mouth to help people come closer to Christ. We must let down our pride and our sins, and become instruments in the Lord's hands, and we will see miracles and blessings. 

 

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YSA activity

Branch activity

Language teaching

 

A level 3 Pathfinder Bard(Cubby Letter 11/4/2019)

Tuesday October 29

Solid day. Woke up and had service, but this time it wasn't chopping coconuts but getting the coconut meat out of coconuts that we had already chopped. It's actually harder than it sounds, we're a lot slower than your typical Kiribati person. We came back for studies, but I was struggling to stay awake the whole time. There was also a leadership council in Tarawa that we were invited to, so we went to Tabwakea to phone in. It went pretty well, I mentioned that we started calling the different companionship everyday to see how they're doing, and the APs were about to make it a mission policy until President Foster said something along the lines that Zone Leaders can implement that in their zones if they feel inspired. So that lasted about 2 hours. We went back to Banana after that. A lot of our lessons didn't end up happening, so we spent a good amount of time contacting. Elder Bartley hopped in on a volleyball game, and let me tell you, he can spike the ball very well. All the Kiribati people were stunned after every time he hit the ball, it was pretty funny. 

Wednesday October 30

We had district council today. It was pretty good, President Foster called in. He talked about how missionaries are not allowed to sit in the back of our truck anymore, which was funny because the missionaries here tried to convince him otherwise, with no success. He told us that the stick house that the Elders currently live in is going to be closed because of issues with the land that it's sitting on. He also told us that the plan currently is to never send senior couples out here ever again. It was mostly just a regular day besides that, we had two lessons planned, but they fell through. So we contacted a lot of people. We've really been focusing on getting new people recently so we've talked to a ton of new people and set up a lot of times, but at this point most of them just fall through. We had dinner with an RM who served in Oklahoma, so she made some pretty American food for us. 

Thursday October 31

Since it was Halloween today, me and Elder Bartley decided to dress up as one another. So I wore one of his ties and he wore one of mine and we switched name badges. It didn't really confuse anyone because most people here are too shy to try and read English, but we had dinner with the Branch President, and he was calling in me to say a blessing on the food, and he noticed. The day was pretty normal I guess, we 5 lessons planned and 4 went through. We taught the Restoration at 3 of them. I really like teaching the Restoration because the logic of it is so clear and then the Spirit usually is there and then your brain and the Spirit work together and all of a sudden you understand again why you're on a mission. Good stuff. Dinner was at 5pm and only went for an hour which is a change from the standard 7pm start 9 o'clock finish. Hours after 7 are kind of culturally unacceptable to be out and about, so we just eat dinner at those times.

Friday November 1

Elder Bartley woke up sick today. So he was pretty out of it the whole day. The missionaries needed us in Tabwakea so we went down there. We were asked to make an inventory of the medicine cabinet at the senior couples house, so because we were using it, Elder Bartley got to sleep in a pretty nice bed. And he  slept for probably 5 or 6 hours, all the while I was identifying all the medicine we had from Amoxicillin to after bite cream to parasite curing pills. That was really the only thing that happened besides that last night my worst fear came true and I got bit by a centipede that was half a foot long. 

Saturday November 2

So definitely a change of pace from yesterday. Elder Bartley woke up a little sick, so we drove down to Tabwakea to get some medicine and salt for him. But while we were doing our business we got a text from the APs saying that  the Sisters were seen inside the Elders' flat at 11pm on October 22, and they asked us to investigate. They also asked if it was a good idea to essentially white wash all of Kiritimati so all the missionaries could be supervised more closely on Tarawa. We investigated and the incident wasn't as bad as reported. The APs also asked for reports on each missionary and recommendations for transfers, so we wrote the most accurate and detailed report this world has ever seen. So in the end, they probably won't blow up Kiritimati like they were originally thinking, but we do have to move the Elders to London on Monday. That whole thing took awhile, but afterwards Elder Bartley felt good enough to work, so we had 3 lessons, and they all went pretty well.

Sunday November 3

Cool Sunday I guess. We had 5 or 6 lessons planned. Church was pretty good, we had a new investigator come to church for the first time. I was pretty worried about him at first because he's pretty shy, but a guy he new from work and his wife sat next to him. Whenever I looked over at them talking about how to sing, what the lessons were about, or what was gonna happen next. Made me feel pretty good. Most of our 6 lessons fell through, but we did find someone that we haven't taught for awhile. He was working on his smoking problem when we last saw him, and when we met him today, he told us he had quit. I could tell he had, because he was a bit heavier, which often happens to people here, they quit smoking so they are hungrier more often, and therefore eat more and gain weight, it's pretty funny. At the end of the day I conducted a baptismal interview with one of the Sister's people. He is 10 years old. He's a pretty mature kid, but whenever I asked him what he believed he gave me a line of what the sisters told him to say. So we decided to hold off the baptism for one week, to give him time to pray about Ana Boki Moomon. 

 

The centipede that bit him

the bite on his back. looks like it got him twice. It ended up swelling a lot more, but nothing Benedryl couldn't take care of.