So as a recap: transfers happened, I'm staying on
Kiritimati but moving to the village of Banana. I have a car, a 201?
Ford Ranger. It's a manual, which I'm new at, but I'm picking it up
faster than I thought I would. I have a new companion,
Elder Bartley. From Grantsville, Utah. He's my first comp who has not
been a missionary for as long as I have.
A Seventy from the Area Presidency came to Tarawa, so
all the missionaries came in. Us from Kiritimati had to stay for about 2
weeks on Tarawa and it was quite boring because we were out of our
area. The good thing was that we got to fly through
and spend a night in Fiji going to and from Kiritimati. We ate a lot
of really good food inside of the Fiji Gateway Hotel. We also got some
Burger King.
Beenibiti (Sulu's? Not sure what they are called in
English) got okay'd for missionaries to wear on Sundays and formal
occasions, so I bought some.
Recap over, I'm back in my area now, so I can write regular emails (hopefully improved)
Thursday September 12:
Today was alright, your typical start to a white wash.
We woke up and studied as usual, went over transfer goals and set up
ground rules for the companionship. After that we got started on buying
food for the week, but Kiritimati is out of Skippy
Peanut butter, which is quite unfortunate. We got into the area book to
find out who are investigators are, and we made a goal to find all the
progressing investigators the previous Elders left for us. That took up
just about the entire day, considering addresses/street
names haven't been invented here yet. We also figured out Banana is a
lot different than Tarawa/my other area on Kiritimati. Some of the
places we went to reminded me of Abaiang (for those of you with a poor
memory, that is an outer island). Our house is also
quite small, and we only have enough electricity to have lights and
charge small electronics. The toilet works off a hand pump as well. A
lot of the people speak faster and more slurred.
I also had a really clear guidance given to me by the
Spirit today. We were meeting with some of the people Elders Strauss and
Lenthe left for us, and we were deciding on which reading from Ana Boki
Moomon to give them. I've been trying to be
more lead by the Spirit recently, so I said I quick prayer to myself
and asked God for direction. And then I had a really clear thought to
give them the fourth chapter in the Book of Mosiah. I remember thinking
"what in tarnation is even in that chapter."
I quickly read the chapter heading and decided it would be good. We
have a follow up lesson on Saturday, so we'll see if that chapter is
going to be anything significant to them.
Friday September 13:
Pretty normal day. We made a lot of progress in our
whitewash, basically we dug through the area book some more and tracked
down our people that we are supposed to teach. But all the houses we
decided to find were in this weird place in Banana
that consists of a vast amount of bush with houses speckled in. So in
short we did a lot of driving on weird sketchy back roads to find the
houses. We only got lost twice I think. We met some members during our
adventures, and we asked them all if we could
have dinner in their house's because I'm not super fond of eating
noodles and tuna for dinner. Speaking of that, we had dinner with our
Branch President, who had previously told me that the more Elders eat,
the more people like them. So I'm currently pretty
bloated and lethargic.
Saturday September 14
A different day. Started off with a phone call home,
because father Itaaka started his Victor Strasser year. After that I got
a look into what being a zl really means, I got to take stuff that
other missionaries need to them, because I have
the superpower of driving a car. The rest of the day was kind of the
same as the previous days in the week, driving around the bush in our
car. We ran into some interesting people, but we never found the guy we
started out for. We did find the place where
I drank alcohol that one time though. I asked them why they gave us
alcohol and they said something about how it was only a little bit.
We had a lesson with those people that I gave Mosiah 4
to. When we first showed up to house, we asked the woman how her day
went. And no joke she said: "My day went very well. I was overcome with
joy when I read those scriptures you gave to
us. It is exactly parallel to our lives and I'm grateful that it was
given to us." Slow down lady, we haven't even said the opening prayer
yet. Anyway, it lead into a really good lesson, which was pretty needed
because I think they were wary about having two
new Elders.
Sunday September 15
So our first Sunday in Banana. We were assigned to teach
the lesson after sacrament meeting because it was our first week, and
then we were assigned to speak because nobody else had anything, and
also because we're new. The rest of the day was
about the same as the rest of the week, except we were more courageous
going through brush today. We brought the sacrament to an old lady, but
we forgot to bring a tithing slip for her so now we have to bring
icecream for them on the sixth day (Saturday).
We wore sulus (lavalavas?). A good day.
Ngaia anne, I tangiringkami ni kabane ao Ia kabo ma
ngkami ma ni katokaa baumi bwa te Mauri, te Raoi, ao te Tabomoa, kam
bati n rabwa.
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| pretty sure this is eating in Fiji during their layover |
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| Always looking for the best ginger beer and a good challenge |
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| much,much nicer than what he drove at home! |
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