Week 15 - Aloha(again)

Hey everyone, 

Choke Mahalo and Aloha from Hawaii! It's just too bad you're all stuck in the freezing snow back home;) This week has been crazy. For starters, I got transferred to Big Island. I'm in a little town called Honoka'a. It's really green, and really rural. This is the first time I've seen cow pastures and green hills. It's really pretty though, just not that many people.

The work is pretty slow here as well. It's a fairly small area and there have been missionaries here for I don't know how long. Almost every door has been knocked on multiple times and a lot of houses even have notices or signs just for us like "No Mormons!" or "We are a catholic family and if you're Mormon missionaries or Jehovah's witnesses you're just wasting your time" But it's fun and the people here are super loving. There's a lot of Hawaiians and no Marshallese people, so I've been picking up pidgin in place of my Marshallese.

We had a really good stake conference this past sunday that was broadcast from Salt Lake to all of the stakes of Hawaii. Elder Uchtdorf, Bednar, a member of the 70 and the 2nd counselor in the primary general presidency spoke. It was a really good conference, almost like a personal general conference just for us. The main message seemed to be on repentance. What Elder Bednar said hit me the hardest. He talked about how a lot of people plan to sin, then repent later, at a time that's more convenient for them and after they've had their fun. He said they see it a lot in young men preparing for missions. But in the scriptures it talks about how, in order to be truly forgiven of your sins you have to repent with real intent. Then he asked the question "How can you hope to repent with real intent, when your original intent was to sin?" That really hit me and helped me realize how important it is to be a witness of God at all times and to obey his commandments at all times, not just the times that are convenient for us.]

Thanks for all you guys do!

-Elder Merrill