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"

Ham and Weesy Potatoes!

Bula vinaka tale na noqu matavuvale!

So last week Sister Klingler invited us over for Easter Sunday lunch and she said that she was going to get some ham, which I have not had at all my whole mission so we were all over that haha but I asked her if she could make some cheesy potatoes and I told her all about weesy potatoes and why we call them that and stuff and she thought it was pretty awesome. So that is what we had for Easter lunch and I about ate myself to death.... haha I ate SOO much. The ham and potatoes were amazing though. This is why I have gained so much weight since being here in Samabula! Once I get back out though I will probably lose weight quick. Hopefully I go to the bush somewhere and then I will just eat Fijian food and walk and lose weight fast right before coming home. I ain't worried about it though haha I am definitely going to work out a lot when I get home though. Yesterday we also had a stake missionary fireside just like the one last week but this one was in the Suva stake. There was a ton of people there and one of the Fijian wards had a choir and they sang and it was SO amazing! Fijians can belt it. And they are super good at harmonizing. That is actually like one thing that Fijians are famous for, singing good gospel music. It is sweet out in the villages when you walk by the churches and there are always people in singing and it sounds awesome. I got to see some members from when I served in Suva 3rd too so that was pretty fun. One lady shared a way awesome testimony about how back when she was 21 her dad died and then 2 weeks later her grandma died and then not too long later her sister got diagnosed with cancer and she prayed to God and made a bargain with him that she would go to church every Sunday and do everything right if he would please just spare the life of her sister. But soon after her sister died and this lady just went years and years being mad at God but then she felt like she could find the answers she needed so she had started going around to tons of different churches and stuff and she didn't really know what she was looking for but she knew that when she found it she would know it. So a few months ago the Elders came over to their house to teach the nephews or something and she just sat close by for one of the lessons and she said that as she listened she felt the spirit and knew instantly that this is what she was looking for and they taught her about the plan of salvation and she just got baptized 3 weeks ago. It was way awesome! Way powerful testimony.

Earlier in the week we flew over to the West with President and had a train the trainers meeting with them over there and there were only 4 other missionaries in the meeting, but it was really good. We gave the same training that we gave last week to all the trainers on this side of the island. Then we went on some splits with the Lautoka zone leaders and that was really fun. I got to work with Elder Moaalii again. He is the man. I love that guy so much. I look up to him alot. and then we drove all the way back to Suva with them because we had zone leaders council the next day. It is like a 3 and a half or 4 hour drive. It was fun though. Zone leaders council was way good too. We have 5 zones in the mission now so there was more people there. It is tons of fun though because all of us are really good friends and no one gets left out or anything.

This week we also went over to these member's house and they are from Kiribati and the dad had just come back over from Kiribati that day and he brought some flying fish with him that he caught in Kiribati so we had that for dinner. It was pretty good. We asked him to bring us back some turtle meat next time and he said he will so that should be pretty sweet haha we are trying to get people to feed us turtle and stingray but we haven't gotten it yet so that will be cool if he can get it. We also had a huge feast with that one Tongan family as well. The Tuatongas. We had raw fish and a bunch of other way good islander food. You guys will love the food here when you come!!

Well I think that is it for this week. I will try to get on the other computer and send you a few pictures in a minute. Hope you guys had a good Easter! You should read a talk called "His Grace is Sufficient" by a guy named Brad Wilcox. It is WAY good. I studied this week a lot about the Savior and the last week of his life as well. That is actually what our district leader did for district meeting and it was awesome. I also started reading Jesus the Christ so we will see if I can finish that huge thing before my mission is over haha it is really good though. This week we have 2 more trainings to give. One to all of the sisters and then another up on the other island to all the trainers. Should be fun. Well. au lomani kemudou!! Have a good week!

Loloma, Elder Hawk

 

Elder Stock and our Easter Feast

Delicious Ham

 Apensia's Baptism

 

Sister Terry's Pecan Pie

Pigs!

Makogai Island



Savusavu‏

Bula Vinaka tale!

Well yet another week that has flown by. It was a good week.

Well that is really awesome that you guys got to go to St. George and go to Justin's farewell. That was really good to give him the support. I think that he will be an awesome missionary. He definitely has the energy to work hard and that is one of the most important things haha. How are Rand's papers going?! Did you hear that Tean Allsup is going to Tampico Mexico! It is crazy that these guys are going to be going on missions! So awesome though!! haha I am way jealous. I would start all over again for sure if I could, the mission is so awesome.

Well at the start of this week we gave a training to all of the brand new missionaries plus their trainers that are serving in the 2 Suva zones and the Nausori zone. There was like 26 missionaries there so it was a big training. We had just decided on our topic for the training like 2 days before the training and we didn't have any time to prepare it so we planned it all out from 9:30-10:30 the night before haha it went really awesome though. It was about OYM (open your mouth) it is a key indicator that we count on how many people you just contact. Me and Elder Stock do it quite a bit so we had some good stories and stuff to share and a lot of the missionaries shared great stories too. It was actually a really awesome training and the spirit was way strong. It was so fun to be with all of those brand new Elders that are just so stoked to be here and be starting out there missions. You could just feel the great energy in the room. It was awesome.

Then on Thursday Apenisa got baptized! I got to baptize him. He is the MAN! After his baptism me and him were in the bathroom and he was saying "It has taken me so long to change but I have done it and now I am clean and I feel so happy! thank you Lord!" we were speaking Fijian but yeah.. that is the just of it haha It was really awesome. He really has changed so much from when I got here and started teaching him. He has been taking the lessons for like 2 years off and on so it is really exciting for him.

This week we also flew up to Savusavu for exchanges. We flew on the tiny little Northern Air plane again haha On the way in to land at Savusavu we were only like 200 feet off the water maybe and we were flying over the reef and I saw a huge sea turtle and then I also saw 2 sharks swimming around. It was way sweet haha then on the flight back out me and Elder Stock both saw little turtles. But while we were in Savusavu I got to go and teach a recent convert lesson to Tupou, the girl that me and Elder Moaalii contacted that just got baptized there a few weeks ago. It was really cool to be able to bear my testimony to her and talk about how I remember the first day that we just contacted her at her house and we taught her on a little bench in the front of their house and how we saw so much potential in her that day and now she has made it and received the gospel and she is doing awesome and is way happy. It was really cool. And we also got to go out to Vunivesi and see some of the people that we baptized there. Vasiti and Semi are doing good and they are already planning on going to the temple this December for them and all of their kids to get sealed. I really wish that I could be here for that but hopefully I can at least get a picture sent to me.

One other cool continuation from last week is that I talked to Elder Palmer, the Elder that I went on exchanges with up into those villages last week and they went back up there this week and that one old guy that I gave the BOM too has read all of first Nephi and looked up like all of the cross references and his BOM is all marked up and stuff already and he bore testimony to them that it is the word of God and he couldn't stop saying how great it is. Way awesome. I usually don't give people the BOM in and into lesson like that but I really felt like I should and I am glad that I did!!

Alright well drive home safe! That is SO exciting that Rand is getting his papers all turned in next week!!! I am excited beyond belief for him!!! He is going to be a great missionary. Did you hear that Nikki Wells got her mission call to Japan!? I got a letter from Chris.. that is pretty sweet. Well Au lomani kemudou!

Loloma, Elder Hawk

Lade ki na veiyanuyanu!

Nu sa bula nakwa! (that is the dialect of this place that I went this week, Naitasiri)

 

 Well this was a pretty exciting week. Earlier in the week Elder Stock and I got our calendar for the next 2 months and we put in all of the trainings and intakes and outtakes and all of that stuff that we have to do and then we made of list of all the people that we thought it would be good for us to go on transfers with and tried to plan that all in. One of the people we want to go on exchanges with is the Elders in Tuvalu, it is another country and it is just one tiny little strip of land out in the middle of the ocean with like 4,000 people on the island and they speak Tuvaluan. We are the ones that take their numbers and all of that and so we thought it will be really good for us to get out there and see what it is like, and of coarse how awesome would it be to get to go to another country that is some tiny little speck in the ocean that no one has even heard of. Back like 2 years ago was the last time that any other missionaries went out there to visit it besides the Elders that are actually serving on the island. So we pitched it to President and moved some stuff in the schedule around and on April 9th we are going to TUVALU!!! I don't think me and Elder Stock have ever been so excited in our lives haha You will have to look it up on google earth. It is Funafuti Tuvalu. It will be like a 2 hour and 20 minute flight. It will be really good though. The Elders out there are way stoked for us to come too. We also have a lot of other really good exchanges planned. We are going to be getting out a lot more and be in the field working with some of the missionaries that are training and stuff so it will be really good. We are going to Savusavu this week on Friday to do exchanges there as well so that is always fun to go back to that area.

So this week we went on a really awesome exchange. We went on exchanges with the Nausori zone leaders. I went with Elder Palmer up to this little unit that they cover up in the interior that is pretty much just one family. This family has 3 kids that are albino. There is actually quite a few albino Fijians. They look pretty awesome. I will send you pics. So it was like a 45 minute drive up into the bush and it is way awesome up there. We got there and taught a lesson to some young girls that live with that member family and then we took Brother Qaqanisautu with us and we drove another 10 minutes to a different village called Nadakuni and there is a family that is members that lives there and they have some kids that are over 8 and not baptized yet so we were going to teach them but we got there and they were gone so we just started talking to this one other lady in the village that was right there and then this man comes back from spear fishing in the river and told us to come sit on his porch thing. So they spread out the ibe and we go sit there and before we know it there is like 8 people all sitting there on the porch with us and they are all in awe that we can speak Fijian haha it is always way fun to go to bush places like that that have never seen much of the missionaries because they always think it is insane how well we can speak Fijian. So we start to teach them about what our purpose is as missionaries and stuff and some of them were way interested. They hadn't really ever heard anything about the LDS church so I talked to them a little about prophets and a living prophet today and stuff like that and they were way into it. The one old lady said that she has been going to the Methodist church for years but lately she doesn't go much because she knows that a lot of the stuff they do isn't right so she is very interested to learn more. So that was way awesome and the spirit was super strong and then we got back in the truck and drove another 20 minutes to the end of the road where there is a river with a village on the other side. The member guy that was with us told an old man in that village a long time ago that he would have the missionaries come see him but they have never gone. So we get in this little boat (that is what the picture on this email is) and this little Fijian girl pulls us across the river. We go to his house and he is asleep and we wake him up and go in and he said that he knew we were coming because that day 3 Maina birds flew into his house and were just standing there in the house chirping and they never do that so he knew that he would have 3 visitors today. Pretty cool. But he is the Tuirara for the Methodist church in that village which is a pretty high up position but he really wanted to see the missionaries because this member man had been sharing with him about the church and he really liked it. So we started teaching him and his wife about our purpose as missionaries and stuff and he started talking about having hope in this life and it reminded me instantly of one of my favorite scriptures from Moroni 7:41-43 that talks about how we have hope through Christ and His Atonement. It is the scripture I read that time in Vunivesi. But I got a Fijian BOM out of my backpack and read that scripture to him and testified about it and the Spirit was super strong. I gave him that BOM and he took and and said that the minute we left he would start reading it. Way awesome lesson. But then they were both sick so we gave both of them blessings and that was awesome too. Then we went back across the river and back to the village where the member is from and changed into service clothes and went to his farm with our machetes and did some work haha we worked way hard, it felt good to work like that.

So then after that we went back down to their flat, showered and then went to the dinner appointment with this Indian family that just got baptized a few months ago. They are so awesome. But we were sharing a spiritual thought and I cant really remember what they were sharing about but then I felt like I should use that same scripture from Moroni again so I did and this time I bore testimony about how we don't just have hope because of Christ but we have hope because the Prophet Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ and they restored the fullness of the Gospel through him. And the spirit was super strong again and it was a way good testimony builder again for me of all of that. So that day was pretty much just a day full of way good testimony building, spirit filled lessons.... that is what it is all about.. the best thing ever.

Well I think this is a pretty huge email so I will leave it at that. Sounds like you guys had an awesome spring break. That will have to be one of the first things we do when I get back... go out in the desert, ride the 4 wheeler and shoot guns.. haha how are Rand's papers going? When do you think he will get his call? I can't wait! Well au lomani kemudou!

Loloma levu, Elder Hawk