Are you out there?

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Ni sa bula vinaka tale!

Well, I am alive and well! haha I am emailing on this little thing
called a webbox that is just a tiny keyboard hooked to a small tv
screen so it is pretty hard to email haha I will do my best though!

Everything here is going awesome! the branch before was only having
6-10 members come but the last 2 weeks we have been over 15 so it has
been good. Before I flew over here president met with me for like an
hour and we just talkd about what he wants to see happen here and some
things that I can do to help. It was realy good to know exatly what
president wants so that I can do my best to make it hapen. My
companion is the man! His name is Elder Ravutaumada. He is Fijian and
I don't think that we have spoken any English at all to each other,
just Fijian all the time so that is way fun. I love being able to
speak Fijian all the time again. Our flat is a little wooden house
that is like a 20 minute hike from the road up this hill. It is a
killer to get there haha it is just up on this hill all by itself
overlooking this bay. The island is really beautiful and the people
are awesome. It is still way rooted in like the old Fijian culture so
sometimes the people here are hard hearted to change but we are
teaching a lot of great accepting people right now. As you could see
on google earth there is hardly any roads here. The people get around
to the other villages mostly by fiber boats. There are tons here. The
electricity is all just generators in the villages. So where we are at
the electricity is on for a few hours and then off for a few and like
that all day. It is usually on when we get home at night so that is
good. Except this week they shut our power off because the bill hadn't
been paid for some reason so we were with no power for a few days but
it was all good. Our shower is just a pipe with a little spout on the
end and the water is freezing ha it is way fun to live like this
though. I am going to send this email and then start another just in
case the power goes off again at least you get some ha

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So most of our work is in the villages right here closer to our house
but once a week we walk 3 hours one way up and down the mountains to
get to where the branch president's village. We teach what we can there
and help him out and then make the 3 hour walk back. But the crazier
thing is that our branch president is like in his 50s and the last 2
weeks he has made that same walk on Sunday mornings with his wife so
they could come to church. then on the next day after that we walk to
another village that is a 2 hour walk one way. There is an Indian man
that just got baptized there and he walks it every week to come to
church as well. He is the man. he has one of the strongest testimonies
I have ever seen. This last week while we were walking there I was
kind of being a baby and thinking how far it was and stuff but once we
got there with the people in their houses and teaching them it was all
worth it and I felt so stupid for complaining. What a blessing it is
to be here serving the Lord in such an amazing place. I am going to
lose a lot of weight here from so much walking so that will be another
great blessing too! haha On this walk to one of our less active's house
it is an hour walk through THICK jungle and there are these vines that
hang down from the trees, so I cleared out this area and we got a
video of me swinging on this vine like Tarzan haha It is way sweet.

This week we also had a cool experience while we were teaching a new
investigator named Inoke. Him and his wife are both way awesome, but
his wife was busy so we were just teaching him and we taught him about
the restoration and the BoM and then Elder Ravu was inviting him to be
baptized and the room was just filled with the spirit and he accepted
the invitation to be baptized. It was so awesome to get to feel of
that feeling again of such happiness when you see someone who really
understands the importance of our message and feels the spirit and
accepts the invitation to be baptized. That is what this work that we
are doing is all about and if that feeling of happiness that we feel
by seeing other people accept it was the only blessing that we got
then it would all be worth it, how crazy it is that the Lord gives us
so many blessings even though that one feeling is enough. Life is
good, the gospel is true, and Kadavu is wananavu! haha that means
awesome in Fijian.

This week we are going to get on the big boat and go down to the other
side of the island called Kavala. there is another unit there. there
are some investigators there too. hopefully we can find more work
there. the elders usually only go there once a month but if we can get
some work going we will go twice a month. we ride the big boat there
and then a little fiber boat back haha it is going to be sweet.

well au lomani kemudou! I am going to try to talk to this other girl
that we just started teaching to see if her laptop that she has can
skype and we might be able to skype on Mother's Day! If not though I
think I will just give you guys our phone number and you can call from
there. We will get to talk for sure though so no worries!

loloma, Elder Hawk

TUVALU

 



Talofa from Tuvalu!!

I have some pretty insane news.... We made it back to Suva and this morning we had a meeting with President and I am getting Transferred!!!! and I am getting transferred to like one of the coolest islands in the mission!!! It is an island called Kadavu and it is down to the south of Viti Levu. Me and my comp are the only missionaries on the whole island and the branch is just tiny. President wants me to go down there because the branch is having some problems so he thinks me and Elder Ravutaumada (who will be my companion there) will be able to boost it up. My comp is a Fijian and the whole island speaks absolutely nothing but Fijian and they have a way cool dialect so I am going to be speaking straight FIJIAN 24/7 until I finish up!!! I am so stoked beyond belief.... It is BUSH!!! and it is just this beautiful island. There will be no email there unless we get it set up to use this one members computer and figure out a way to get the internet. They have it working lately so hopefully it will work while I am there so that I can keep in contact with you guys haha I am flying down there on Friday so next Monday if I don't email you guys that will be why... because we might not get the internet down there haha I will try my best to get it though. I just wanted to let you know so you don't freak out next week. I will try to send you guys some of the pictures from Tuvalu right now. AU LOMANI KEMUDOU!!!

Talofa from Tuvalu!!

Talofa!!

Well... first off I am SOO stoked for Rand!!! He is going to be a great missionary and is going to have a blast in Argentina! I cannot believe that it is in Quynn's mission! I really hope that they get to serve around each other! I haven't watched the video yet because the internet here is slow and won't load it, but I will watch it once we get back to Fiji.... I am still here on the beautiful island of Tuvalu!!! Our flight to come here on Tuesday got moved back to Wednesday so we were WAY bummed because our scheduled flight back was for Thursday. So we were only supposed to be here for like 24 hours. BUT... the plane has been getting cancelled every day and now here we are still on Tuvalu six days later!!! It has been some of the funnest days of my mission. This place is amazing. It is so beautiful it is ridiculous. It is so TINY too. Pretty much anywhere you are on the island you can see the ocean on BOTH SIDES of you haha which is pretty insane. We have been studying the language while we have been here because we have been teaching TONS of lessons. We taught 28 lessons in 5 days! The work here is ON FIRE! But I can bear my testimony and say a prayer and explain myself a little bit all in Tuvaluan! It is such an awesome language. It is a lot like Samoan. It sounds so awesome. I wish I could stay here longer and really learn it well. The gift of tongues and the gift of interpretation of tongues is so amazing and real!

So the first day that we got here we got off the plane and we were straight to work because we thought it would be our only day here. We split up and taught a total of 8 lessons that day. I was with Elder Peleseuma. He is a Samoan from Australia and he is the man. I love him. But one of the other Elders that had served here before is in Suva now and so before we left we had him write down how to share a testimony in Tuvaluan and on the plane ride the whole way here I was just studying it and memorizing it and in the first lesson that we went to at the end I bore my testimony in Tuvaluan and Elder Peleseuma was shocked haha it was funny. Elder Stock has got it all down too. He is the man.We taught this lady named Ina and Elder Peleseuma was teaching her in Tuvaluan but she knows some English so I started teaching a little in English and I talked about how we have a living prophet today and how he spoke to the whole world just last week and I asked her if she would be interested in hearing what he said and to see him and she was really excited and said of course! The Spirit was really strong and it was just another good witness to me of how awesome it is that we have a living prophet today and how big of a blessing it is to know about it! Then that night at one of the other lessons we taught, after the lesson the guy said "you guys have to stay and eat" Because it was his daughter's birthday. So he goes outside and brings in a WHOLE pig!!! haha They cooked it in the lovo (earth oven) It was sooo good. I got some good pictures of it.

The next morning Elder Stock and I got up early and got on the bikes to go get some good pictures of the island because we thought we were going to fly out that afternoon. So we went all the way down to one end of the island and it was crazy because we were just standing on this little strip of white coral that is like 5 feet wide and the ocean is on both sides of us haha but that wasn't the side that we actually wanted to go to so we got back on the bikes and rode all the way to the other side of the island, which only took us about 40 minutes. But we got tons of amazing pictures down there too. So we came back and started walking to the airport and this member guy took our bag on his motorcycle and went to the airport to drop them off for us and we were walking and we saw him coming back with our bags and he stopped and said "no airplane today" We all were jumping around and so excited haha so we had another day of great work with lots of lessons and lots more of feeling like a greenie not being able to speak the language and not knowing too well what is going on haha it has been fun to feel that way again. I worked with Elder Smith that day and we had some more awesome lessons. We were teaching a boy about our age named Apo and it was like the same lesson to Ina about prophets so he spoke pretty good English too so I shared to him the same thing about conference that I shared with her and it had the same results. It was great!

So the next day Elder Stock and Elder Smith went to check at the airport about the plane and they said it would come on Saturday and they also said that for everyday that the plane is delayed we get $50 Australian as compensation!!! haha So we have been getting paid $50 a day for being in Paradise! So if we leave today we will have $200 Australian haha and Australian money is worth a little more than American money! So we will go back to Fiji and be rich!! haha So we have just been working hard every day and the work here right now is on FIRE! So we taught a total of 28 lessons in 5 days!!! That is so awesome. It has been good that we have been so busy and doing such good work. So then on Saturday the plane got moved to Sunday and then Yesterday we were at the airport waiting and they said it was going to come. They had already stamped our passports and everything but then the plane had to turn around because of problems and so we got to stay all yesterday too! haha We got to go to church here which was really awesome. There are like 100 active members and we got like 7 investigators at church which was really exciting.

One other cool experience that Elder Smith and I had was a lady that we just contacted at her house. Elder Smith was speaking Tuvaluan to her and she came out and we went and sat on the little hut thing that they all make by the ocean and she had good English so we just had like an introduction lesson with her in English and at the start she said "You guys are so lucky that God has called you to represent Christ" and she said "I know that you guys are called of God and that you have the Holy Spirit because I can see it in your faces" It was a really cool experience and a great blessing to hear that and realize how much people can see us as representatives of Christ. I am SOO blessed to be a missionary and a representative of Christ and I am so thankful beyond words for this opportunity.

So that brings us to today... they told us that they plane should be coming today and we have to go to the airport at 1:00 to check it out but we will see haha we do need to get back though. It is probably pretty hard on President to not have any Assistants in the country haha I feel so blessed though for the opportunity that I have had to come out here to Tuvalu and to have had so many great missionary experiences and testimony building experiences. I can't wait to send you guys lots of pictures once we get back to Fiji! It is going to blow your mind! haha and pictures don't even do it justice. But I love all of you guys so much! We have the best family ever!! haha There is a lot of exciting stuff happening in our family! It will be way fun to get to skype you guys next month and talk! Au lomani kemudou sara vakalevu kau sa vakavinavinakataka na nomudou veilomani veitokoni ka ivakaraitaki vei au!!!

Loloma levu, Elder Hawk

Joji's

Bula Vinaka!

I know that I say it every week and usually I end up writing a way long email anyways but this week's email might be pretty short because we are way busy and we haven't gotten to play sports on

 p-day for quite a while so we are going to make it happen today.

So this week I got a new temple recommend because mine expired with the end of last month. It is so crazy to think that it has been 2 years since then. Time goes by WAY too fast. It was cool to get a temple recommend interview from President Klingler. He is the man.

This week we had a Sisters training here in Suva. All the sisters from the mission, which is only about 12 right now, came in and we had a training for them. It is WAY different with sisters but it was way good. Our training was about prayer. I thought that it went really well. I think that is probably one of the strengths that me and Elder Stock have together, we have given some pretty awesome trainings. It is way fun. Then on Friday we flew over to Savusavu. We flew on the little tiny Northern Air plane again but President and Sister Klingler weren't too keen on that so they flew the bigger plane on Pacific sun so we took off and they were supposed to leave 30 minutes after us but their flight got delayed before we took off and we got to Savusavu and then they called and said it got moved way back until 3 that afternoon so we were supposed to do the training in Savusavu that morning but we had to move it until the night when they would get it. So we had a bunch of missionaries in Savusavu and so 6 of them went on splits and then the other 8 of us went over to the purple mansion and cleaned it all out because they moved out of it. That place was SOOO dirty! It was nasty. We cleaned it for like 3-4 hours and it was looking pretty good. It is actually a way good thing too because just the Elders there would have never finished that by themselves. So then we went back and got all ready again and started the training at 5:30 in the evening. it went til 9 and we went to stay at the new zone leader flat and there were 8 missionaries and 4 mattresses so a few of us took the ibe out on the porch and lit some mosquito coils and slept out there just on the ibe. It was pretty sweet. We didn't even get any mosquito bites so that was awesome. Then the next morning we got up and flew back over here.

Other than that we were just busy doing a bunch of office stuff and getting ready to go to TUVALU tomorrow!!! We are so excited its not even funny haha we have an Elder that is the zone leader of the zone that we are in now and he just came off of Tuvalu a few months ago so he wrote down a bunch of notes for us on how to share a testimony in Tuvaluan and stuff so we have been studying up. It should be so much fun and I will have hundreds of amazing pictures next week haha

O yeah, Sister Maiwiriwir, the one that you guys took to dinner in Florida. Somehow she found out that you guys are coming and she wants us to go over and have dinner and stuff at their house, so we will have to do that one night while you guys are here. Some of the senior couples have invited us over while you are here too and there will be lots of members so we will probably have dinner covered for most nights while you guys are here haha I think we should for sure stay in Savusavu for 2 nights if not 3. So I think if we want to do that we could go right over to Savusavu like right when you got here. It would be way fun to go to church there. Out in Vunivesi. I am really up for whatever though. We can plan it all real good when we skype next month. Unless I get transferred somewhere that I won't be able to skype. I would be able to call though so no worries. Well au lomani kemudou! Have a good week! AND I AM SOOOOO STOKED TO HEAR WHERE RAND IS GOING TO GO!!! Record him opening it and send me the video!

Loloma, Elder Hawk

 

 The Joji's Crew

 Our new "Shades"

The airplane tire..."Air Hawk"