Levu na ka vo!

Bula re!

Well this week has been pretty insane. We had our zone leaders council which is always good. We announced the transfer at the end of the meeting and everyone was way excited for it because they knew there would be some areas opening up haha We got 8 new missionaries in this week which was way exciting. We have another 2 from this intake that got delayed but just got here today and then another Fijian that has to come back here and serve here for a while before he gets his Visa to Guam so we are getting lots of new people which keeps us super busy. And in 6 weeks we are getting 17 more new ones haha pretty awesome. There is going to be a whole lot of new areas opening up. This transfer we opened up Levuka, that one island that I went to a while ago and saw the iguana and all that, and also Nasivikoso, that other place we up in the mountains that we went to a few weeks ago with the Lautoka zone leaders. Really exciting. Both of those places got brand new missionaries that just came in. Pretty exciting to be opening up some awesome places like that as your first area haha the one up in Nasivikoso is pretty crazy. They have no electricity or running water and they will have to bathe in the river. They will really be living the village life haha it is a Fijian and then one of the new Elders that is from New Zealand that are going to go open it. Way cool. I am jealous haha

Well I don't have a lot of time to email. We are kind of running all over the place today, but I will try to write a few highlights.

Elder Corder from our intake that went home came in with this intake! It was sooo exciting to get to see him back out here. I am way proud of him for being able to make it back out here after a year and a half. He is the man. We also had an Elder that finished his mission this week, Elder Diloi. He is the biggest man that I have ever met haha like 6'8 and 400 something pounds. That is what the picture is on this email. Me and him right before we took him home. He is Fijian. The mission will miss him a ton. He is just always super happy and loves everyone. Way good guy.

We had a really good lesson last Monday night. We went and taught Filipe. He is the one that has a super strong testimony about everything we teach him but he just feels like he isn't ready to be baptized for some reason. So we were talking to him about it and the scripture from Alma 34 popped into my head and we shared it and it said "raica, oqo sara ga na gauna kei na siga mo dou vakabulai kina..." which is something like "right now is the time and the day for you to be saved." The spirit was super strong and he paused and said that he knows that he needs to be baptized and that he is getting close. He didn't commit to a day yet but I know that it helped him get closer.

The coolest thing by far that happened this week was a lesson that we had with one of our new investigators named Luke and his friend Nathaniel that he brought with him. After the zone leader council on Wednesday we were just supposed to meet Luke at the chapel at 730 because he doesn't have a phone. So we go to meet there and we waited for about half an hour and were about to leave and then him and his friend Nathaniel came around the corner. We just started to introduce ourselves to the Nathaniel kid because we had never met him. He said that he had a sister die when he was in class 5. Right then I just felt like I knew that I was supposed to meet him and tell him about my experience with Jace and about the Plan of Salvation. So we started the lesson and the spirit was really strong. We started to explain the Plan of Salvation to him and to explain how we know that he can be with his sister again someday. He was very thankful and expressed how much peace he was feeling. Towards the end the story popped into my head and I shared with him about how when Jace died, Parker was super young and you guys were explaining to him that Jace was going to go and live with Heavenly Father and Jesus and then Parker said "Heavenly Father and Jesus?! YES!" As I told the story to him through my tears the spirit was stronger than ever as I testified that I know that his sister is with our Heavenly Father and his Son Jesus Christ and that we are here to help him get there with her and his family to stay forever. It is experiences and lessons like that that make this work soo rewarding. There is nothing else that we can do that can help convert ourselves and grow our own testimonies than by sharing them and teaching this gospel and having amazing experiences like this.

Well this week is going to be another crazy one. Today we have 2 more new ones coming in. Then tomorrow the new one that is waiting for his visa is coming in. Then on Wednesday we are flying up to Labasa on the other island and doing a leadership training there, then that evening after the training flying back to Suva, switching planes and then flying to Nadi, sleeping there, doing the same leadership training over there for that zone and then flying back to Suva that night.... haha insane. We also have a baptism this weekend which is way exciting. Saki is the man. He passed his interview. He is completely different than when we first started teaching him. The spirit has just taken over and taught him all that he needs to know. way cool. Well that is so awesome about Rand and Parker teaching that guy!! That is by far the best way for them to prepare for their missions. Keep it up!! Au lomani kemudou!! o yeah, I got the package! You guys are the best!! Vinaka Vakalevu!!

Loloma, Elder Hawk

 

 

Vale ni bula!

Bula Vinaka noqu matavuvale!

Well this week has been pretty hectic. I didn't write in my journal at all this whole week because we were so busy just running around doing stuff and getting home late so I will probably just be printing off this email and gluing it into my journal haha that is what I did on the week that we had all of the Christmas stuff too.

Well the week started off pretty crazy last Monday after we went and played sports at the LDS Tech we were driving some Elders and sisters home and there was a group of kids surrounding a kid on the ground and we drove up and the kids leg was gashed open really bad. They were playing touch rugby in the street and he was chasing the ball and slipped and a pointed rock just cut his leg right open. So we got him in the van with one of his friends and the sisters were still in the van so they were kind of freaking out but they are from Tonga and Samoa so they were tough about it haha so we quickly dropped the sisters off and then ran him to the hospital. There are 2 hospitals here in Fiji and we couldn't take him to the nice one because they would probably make him pay and stuff so we ran him to CWM hospital and it is a SKETCHY hospital haha so we get him in there and there are just tons of sick people in hospital beds like all through the hallways because they don't have enough rooms. And then we get him there and it is like a bunch of FNU (Fiji National University) students and they were like all arguing over who got to put an iv in him and who was going to give him the shots and clean the cut haha it was pretty scary because they were just saying things like "well I haven't got to do it yet so let me do it" and things like that haha most of the doctors and stuff weren't Fijians so we were just talking with the boys in Fijian the whole time and making fun of the doctors and laughing haha it was pretty crazy. So we ended up being at the hospital with him for 2 hours helping him out. It was way fun though because the boys were way cool and we were just having a lot of fun talking stories and stuff with them. We gave them as a referral to the Elders in their area because we talked a lot just about being missionaries and stuff and they really wanted us to come over. His leg is the picture I am sending haha

This week we also had to move flats. We got kicked out of our way nice one because there is a new senior couple that came in and the only other flat we could find that was close around here wasn't as nice and so they didn't want to put the senior couple in it. So we found the time in our crazy week to pack up and clean the other flat and then move all of our stuff into the new flat. The new flat isn't nearly as nice but we will probably only be in it for about 2 months and then go back into the other one we were in haha

This week we also had a specialized training for all of the district leaders in the mission. So all of the district leaders and zone leaders came in. There were some really awesome trainings that were given. My favorite one was the Nausori ZLs one about recognizing the spirit. It was really cool for me to just think about all of the cool experiences that I have had on my mission with being led by the spirit and really motivated me to do what I need to do to have more of those great experiences. That is what I am here to do, the will of the Lord, no matter what it is, and the only way that I can know what it is is through the spirit. We gave a pretty good training as well about giving commitments and things to our districts. We talked about climbing a mountain together and being able to have "mountain top" experiences. At the end of it I was bearing my testimony and I said "I am committed, I am roped it" because we talked about being all roped in together climbing up the mountain. When I said that I felt the spirit really strong and I almost started to cry because I just feel so blessed to be able to give myself to such a great cause as this and all of the blessings that I have received because of it. I want that feeling of being committed to the Lord and His will and His work to continue on with me for the rest of my life.

Our baptism fell through this week which was a big bummer. He had passed the interview last week but had some temptations this week that came up and us along with him felt like it would be better to hold off. It was hard but it was so cool to be able to feel such a great love for him. I really felt the love that the Lord has for him and knowledge that he will make it. He actually moved back to Taveuni, a different island, so we will give him to the Elders there. He is the man though. Love the guy.

This next week is going to be pretty insane. We have our zone leaders council and then we have an intake of 9 coming in which is a lot of work and the transfer is really huge and then we also have one Elder that is finishing his mission and going home so we have to do all of that stuff too. We do get to go to the temple twice this week though, once with the new intake and then with the Elder going home so that will be awesome. We actually got to go this last week too. I have been a ton since I have been here which I love!

O yeah, one last kind of crazy story that you guys will think is cool. So we have an island in our mission called Rotuma. It is pretty far north of Fiji but it is also under the Fiji government. They speak Rotuman there though which is probably the hardest language in the South Pacific. But if you get sent there you just have to go and learn it. It is a tiny island and there is no electricity except for little solar panels and the few that have generators. I would love to go serve there haha what an adventure. But the one of the Elders has been out there for like 8 months and so he is getting transferred and there is a plane that flies there once a week but it didn't work out to where we could get them on that so they had to ride the boat... which is a 3 day boat ride.. haha so when we picked them up they were pretty haggard and sea sick haha way awesome though.

Well I am glad that everything is going so great back home! That is so cool that Rand and Parker are getting opportunities like that to do missionary work. You will have to let me know how that goes. Keep looking for great opportunities like that. Nothing will prepare you better for a mission than doing missionary work! Au lomani kemudou!!

loloma levu, Elder Hawk

 Ouch!

Big Gecko they found in their new flat.

Sa oti na ivola i mormani!

Bula Vinaka!!

That is really cool that both of the boys did well in those tournaments. When they wrestle in the state tournament stuff you will have to record them and then put them on a DVD and send them to me so that I can watch them. I can't believe that I am already emailing home again. Time does not wait, but I wish it would! This was a really awesome week. Me and Elder Stock almost got double digit lessons in our area this week. We have a baptism this Saturday though so that will be really awesome. It is Joel. He is the man. He wants to serve a mission as well. He is 21.

Well at the beginning of the week I finished the Book Of Mormon in Fijian! I was super excited. I have been reading it my whole mission off and on so now I have finally finished it all in Fijian. I want to make a goal to finish it again before my mission is over though. Because now when I read it I can actually just use it for normal study of the Book of Mormon because I can understand everything that it is saying haha That was really exciting though. This week was also sister Klingler's birthday. Me and Elder Stock made a Passion Fruit cheesecake.... There is one store here in Fiji that sells those Jell-o cheesecake things so we got one of those and made it and then got some passion fruit and put it on the top. I will have to send you a picture. it was amazing haha we were pretty proud of ourselves. When we took it over to her we also took a step ladder in with us and went a cleaned one of her fans because the other night that we were there she was saying it needed cleaned. It was really fun. Sister Klingler is awesome.

Another funny thing that happened this week was when I was trying to move our fan my finger slipped through the middle grate thing and the fan cut my finger all up and it broke the blade off of the fan haha it was insane. My finger is all good though. Just cut up and bruised a bit. Still good enough to go golf this morning haha

This week we also got to go through the temple with the first man that Elder Stock baptized on his mission. Him and his wife got sealed and we got to be there for that. It was way awesome. We got to go through another session in Fijian too so that was really cool. I hope that at the temples in home they have the headphones and that I can listen to it in Fijian. it is way cooler.

Thursday we went and did service for a less active family. we went to their farm with our machetes and cleaned up around their kasava plants. It felt way good to get out and do good work like that again. After we had a really good lesson with them. 2 of the older kids aren't members but we started teaching them. Then we got into another big veisui water fight in the little settlement where they live haha it was way fun.

We also went on exchanges with the Suva ZLs on Saturday. I went to their area with Elder Inukihaangana. We taught like 5 lessons that day and probably committed about 7 people to baptism. It was so awesome haha That night we were at the dinner appointment and it was this house like right on the sea wall and there were mangroves next to their house and there were TONS of bats flying around and some of them were landing in the trees in their yard. So I ran out and tried to hit one of the ones hanging with a rock so we could eat it but I barely missed. After dinner we went out there again and this time we used sticks. None of them were hanging on the tree but one flew probably 20 feet right over our heads and I threw this stick at it and nailed it and it made a loud screeching noise and fell a little ways but it caught itself and flew off haha it was way awesome. It would have been way cooler if I actually would have killed it but it was still cool though that I hit it while it was flying with a stick. On the exchange we were just contacting some people on the streets and 2 times the people refused to take the pamphlet that we were trying to give them. That is more times than that has happened to me than the whole rest of my mission combined haha people will always accept the pamphlets and stuff that we give out which is pretty awesome. Most missions are super excited if they have 2 people that accept it but I had 2 people that rejected it and I thought it was funny because that hardly happens here haha awesome.

The coolest thing that happened this week was yesterday while we were teaching Saki. He is the one that is in his 20's but his mental capacity is about like a 9 or 10 year old. He usually doesn't really remember too well what we taught him or really ask us questions or anything. But when we were teaching him this time it was like a light switched turned on in the middle of the lessons and he just started asking us all kinds of awesome questions and remembering everything we taught. The spirit literally opened up his mind and was teaching him right in front of us. I almost started crying because it was so amazing to see how big of a change it was in him because of that.

Well the mission is doing great! We had 19 baptisms this week which is really awesome! I am so excited to see how the work starts to progress once we start getting all of these new missionaries. I am really excited. What an amazing time to be a missionary! Au lomani Kemudou!!

Loloma, Elder Hawk

 Sister Klingler's Birthday Passion Fruit Cheesecake made by Elders Stock & Hawk

 "Birthday Key" made by the same man that carved the Fijian Nativity 

Stock had it made for Hawk's Birthday

Enjoying some golf on p-day

 

Vunivesi

Siga ni sucu kei veisui‏

Bula vinaka!

Well I cannot believe that I have been away from home for 18 months. The time has been going by WAY too fast. I am so excited though for these next 6 months. There is going to be so many awesome and exciting things happening. And within this next 6 months I am going to get to go back out and be in a normal proselyting area, and I am way excited for that. I really have no idea where I could be going. There are a ton of areas opeing up so I think I might go open somewhere up and that would be really cool. I think I will probably train too which will be fun. I loved training. I think that I might want to go up to BYU so I should probably look into applying there pretty soon. Could you guys maybe look into that for me? I have no idea what to do with that stuff haha.

Thanks for all of the birthday emails! I had a way awesome birthday! I didn't get a key though which was a little bit of a bummer. I am still going to try to get one though ha. On my birthday we went and got on that little tiny Northern Air plane in the morning and flew to Savusavu. It was way cool flying on a tiny little plane like that. We flew up to Labasa first and landed and then down to Savusavu. It was so beautiful. I got a ton of pictures. Then that day we started our exchange with the Zone leaders there. I went with Elder Hansen. It was so fun to be in Savusavu again and get to see all the people that I knew from there. We went out and saw the Gade family and they started the veisui. Veisui is this Fijian tradition thing that they do on New Years, and really for the whole month of January to celebrate the new year. Pretty much it is just a huge water fight. Everyone just throws water on each other. Technically when you get someone wet though you are supposed to give them something to dry off with but no one really follows that part ha. Then after that we went over to Elder and Sister Muirs house and she made an awesome spaghetti dinner and also an awesome German Chocolate cake. It was so sweet. Sister Terry, the other senior couple lady out there also brought me a cake as well so I did get a lot of really good American style cake on my birthday ha

Then the 2nd day that we were in Savusavu we all woke up and went and did service for sister Lo. she is a member and she just really lives by herself. We went and used our sele (machete) to clean up around here tavioka plants and just all round her house. It was a ton of fun. I miss being able to do service like that all the time. Then the flat didnt have any water on for some reason. So we had to use the water bottles they had filled up with water to shower ha it was pretty funny. Then I went with Elder Ledoux and we got to go and teach some of the investigators that I had found when I was serving there so that was really cool. They are doing good. Then after that we all went out to Vunivesi, my favorite place ever haha Elder Leoux had never done the veisui thing before and he really wanted to so he got a big bucket full of water and while Elder Stock was scraping a coconut he went and dumped it on him and then the game was on haha We were all running through the koro and all of the peole in the koro were coming out and everyone was just getting soaked. All of the people in the koro thought that it was so awesome that a couple of white kids new about those kind of things with their culture. Hopefully it will open up some of those people to letting the missionaries teach them. Then we had a huge feast for my birthday!! It was amazing. SO much good food. We all ate a ton. The people in Vunivesi make the best food ever. So my birthday was really awesome.

Then the next morning we flew back over here to suva on that same tiny plane. On Saturday night we went and ate at President Klinglers house and we had a ton of french toast and hash browns and bacon and me and Elder Stock ate a ton because we decided that we couldnt let food that good go to waste. So we were stuffed and we went home and our landlord had done a lovo (earth oven) and they had a ton of food and they wanted us to eat with them and we want to have a good relationship with them so we went in and ate some more. We had some way good discussion about what we do as missionaries and about the church and stuff so that was way awesome. And then at the end I looked over at Elder Stock and he wasnt looking too good and he said, "we got to go". So I was trying to finish the conversation without it being all awkward and then Elder Stock just jumped up and ran outside and puked a ton in the bushes hahaha I was laughing so hard because I knew that it was just because we had eaten way too much. We went into our flat and we were laughing so hard about it. He felt way better though. I really wish that I would have thrown up too because I felt terrible after eating that much. But I still have my record going of not throwing up since we went to Hawaii when I was in 5th grade! ha

Yesterday was really awesome too. We had only had time to teach one lesson the whole week and so we wanted to really get to see all of our investigators yesterday and we ended up teaching 5 lessons yesterday and setting 2 baptismal dates! It was sweet. And Filipe came to church too so we were super stoked about that! I really wish that me and Stock got to work together in an area where we just got to focus on proselyting because we would kill it! It is good though that we are here though because by us helping all of the other missionaries we are really doing a lot more good. It is just harder to see it sometimes.

Well thanks again for all the birthday wishes! Hopefully I that package wont take too long to get to me once you send it. Did you find some shoe insoles? I got a lot of mail this week. I got like 5 letters from Grandma and Grandpa, some of them were from October haha Good ol Fiji post! Well I love you guys! Au lomani kemudou!!

Loloma, Elder Hawk