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.
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.
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