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.
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