Week 11 - Hi from HI

Wow. missionary work. If you're wondering why I didn't email last week, it's because I was crazy busy. If you didn't notice...thanks for nothing:)

A bunch of just small random things happened this week. Our car got towed, I saw a homeless guy strip down on a corner, almost ran over a prostitute, got a black eye, and had our baptism cancelled. The other stuff doesn't really matter, but with the baptism, we had this kid who was so solid for baptism. He understood everything, wanted to be baptized, and was gonna go to the temple the week after. We had a date and time set, and even had the programs made, and he called us the night before and said his mom wouldn't let him be baptized...it sucked but we're hopefully gonna baptize him in  a few more weeks!

Also this saturday we're baptizing a whole basketball team! I'm not sure if I've talked about the basketball coach who's leaving on a mission next week, but there's this kid who coaches a basketball team of middle-high school kids and he brought them all to church one day. We've been helping out with their practices and teaching them all the lessons. We have like 10 baptisms planned for this saturday from the team so he can baptize most of his team before he leaves!

We've been working hard and have like 20 baptisms for our ward planned this month! 

The Marshallese people are awesome, and the language is actually coming along a lot better ever since we started language studying with some of the Marshallese members in our ward.

Love everyone! Bye!

This last p-day we did a hike to a light house. Here's a picture

Week 10 - No letter but some great pics from Elder Merrill

Week 9 - Sup

Hey everyone!

So I don't have that much time, but we had a miracle this week. We went to a member's house for dinner, and because we shared a killer spiritual thought with him, I think we gained his trust. So he told us that one of his sons had a friend that felt the spirit when he went to the church to play basketball, just like a peaceful feeling, and he wanted to know what it was. The member talked to him about the Spirit and how he could have it if he was baptized. The kid said he wanted to be baptized and agreed to meet with us. We met him at church the next day, then taught him yesterday. He's set for baptism on the 26th and he's going to the temple with the youth on Nov. 2nd!

We also had our zone temple trip this morning. Laie temple is definitely my new favorite temple. It was super pretty plus we got to drive along the beach the whole time.

And this is our uke jamming sesh at the crazy $30 million mansion we go to every 6 weeks!

Week 8 - Talofa!

Hey everyone!

This week we got 2 more with dates! We found these two little girls who live with an inactive family. We've been teaching their whole family and committed the two girls to be baptized on November 9th!

I hope you all got to watch conference. I've never been so pumped for conference before. I really liked how some of the speakers just layed it out. They didn't sugar coat anything. Like Elder Oaks when he talked about standing up for what you know in this crazy world of constantly changing standards. I liked where he said "courage, not compromise, brings the smile of God's approval". That's really relevant to me as a missionary here because not many people, even the members choose to make church their ultimate priority. Hopefully conference was able to stir something in them.

I also found out that my companion can husk a coconut with his teeth! We had a contest between the 3 missionaries from Kiribati who could husk one the fastest. Of course my companion won. He's pretty crazy. He'll just climb coconut trees sometimes. But we have lots of fun together.

Everyone take care and stay strong!