Taveuni!

Bula vinaka!!


Well, today I am emailing you from the beautiful garden island of
Fiji, Taveuni! This morning we took a 3 hour bus ride on some terrible
roads to get to the bay where we got on a tiny ferry to ride over here
to Taveuni. The boat ride was so gorgeous and so was the bus ride
though so it was awesome. It was one of those days where I feel like I
am just dreaming this whole thing of being in Fiji. I dont know what I
have done in my life to be so blessed!

This week was a really awesome week. I think I told you guys last week
but on Tuesday we had Zone Conference. It was kind of a little bit
stressful having to be the ones in charge of everything but it turned
out way awesome. It was actually my favorite zone conference that I
have been to my whole mission. Me and Elder Moaalii’s training was way
good. It really made our zone a lot more unified, especially because
we don’t all get to be together too much because we are so spread
apart and are on different islands and stuff. It was really fun to get
to know some of the newer Elders too that I hadn’t even really met
before. Zone conferences are always some of my favorite times just
because it gets everyone so pumped up to work hard and stuff. Our zone
is doing super good right now. This zone is usually the slowest as far
as the work and stuff just because it is a lot of really hard areas,
but we actually have the most baptismal dates right now out of all the
zones which is way awesome. Me and Elder Moaalii are working really
good together on helping the zone out a lot. We have a lot of really
good missionaries here too which is awesome. We should be getting some
more areas opened up soon in our zone too with this massive intake
coming in next week. We are going to be really busy trying to organize
getting everyone moved around to the right places after the transfer.
It will be good though.

As far as our own area goes it is exploding right now!! It really
sucks because we travel so much and we can't even keep up with how many
potential investigators and stuff that we are getting. The members
really like both me and Elder Moaalii so they give us a lot of
referrals and things which is way awesome. We are both really outgoing
people to so we just meet all kinds of people all of the time that
invite us over to teach them. We are trying to get president to send
us some more missionaries to share our area with us just because we
are gone so much and there is so much work there right now.
I had a couple of really cool experiences too this week in lessons and
stuff. One of the nights we went over to this ladys house named
Masina. She is from an island called Kioa, they speak Tuvaluan
language there. But she has been an investigator for over a year now
and she has been dropped multiple times by other missionaries, but a
few weeks ago we had a super good lesson with her and she is really
started to progress now. So she was gone for a few weeks because of
the school break so we kind of just went over to see if she was back.
We were all just talking stories for a while and then we decided that
we should probably share something spiritual before we left. So Elder
Moaalii told me to just find a scripture really quick to share. I
started looking in the topical guide to just see what popped out to me
to share and I just picked some scripture and flipped the pages of my
Book Of Mormon to find it and on the first page that I stopped on
there was a verse that I had marked from my studies earlier in the
week and it instantly just stuck out to me and I knew that that was
the scripture I needed to share even though I didn’t even know what it
said yet. The scripture was Alma 26:35-37. It talks about how God is
mindful of all of his people no matter where they are and how he loves
them. So we all read it and I bore my testimony about how we are on
this tiny island in the middle of the ocean and all of us in the room
are from different places, but God was mindful that we were there and
he brought us together because he loves us and wants this family to
receive this gospel in their lives so that it can bless them. I really
felt like I was feeling a love for these people in the same way that
our Heavenly Father loves them. I finished and looked over at my comp
and his eyes were a little teary haha which is probably pretty rare
for a US Marine. The spirit was super strong, and then after the
lesson we were walking out and my comp said that his whole mission he
has done this thing that if one of his comps shared a way good
scripture in a lesson that made him feel the spirit super strong that
he writes their name next to that scripture to always remember that
experience, so he said my name is going to go next to that verse in
his scriptures. It was a way awesome experience of being led by the
spirit.

Well I am glad you guys are all doing well. That is crazy that there
are 2 more teenage girls living in our house! Haha They are lucky to
get to have the experience of what it is like to have such amazing
parents. I love you all so much. Keep being awesome!! Au lomani
kemudou!

Loloma, Elder Hawk