Area 1, Week 4 - Nasinu, Fiji 3/31/13

Bula,

Happy Easter everyone! How's everything going? Tell Dad Happy Birthday for me!  Everything is going really good here. This week went pretty good. For the most part we taught most of our lessons planned. We still had a few that fell through because they were not home. It is a lot different here on holidays than in America. It has been a holiday for the past three days and today is a holiday too. Everything is closed. I did not even know it I was going to be able to email today because we could not find an email shop that was open. But luckily we found one.

This photo is for Kyle!

The past couple of days have been really hard mainly because of the holiday. Everyone is gone to the koro (village), or they are sleeping, partying or drinking grog.  On Saturday, we had seven lessons planned and we only taught one lesson with Anna and Neitani.  Everyone else that we were planning on seeing were gone. So on Saturday, I think that we walked at least 10 miles. All we did was walk around trying to see if we can meet with other investigators.

It has been raining the past week on and off. More on than off. Well I got your packages and to my surprise, they were open. It said that they were damaged in the travel here. But I do not believe that. So, tell me everything that you sent to make sure I got it all.

My training gets over a week after Mother’s day.  A week before that there is an intake of 15 new missionaries. I don’t know if they would do two big transfers within 2 weeks so we might be together until the end on June possibly. I don’t know when for sure. And as for dinner, we have it every night! Yesterday when we went to church, the April dinner chart was up. Then by the end of church it was full!   Ishibashi says that they fight over who is going to feed us. We are going to be feed by Sister Diloi 4 times this week. But in Nasinu 2nd ward, they only have dinner scheduled for 3 times this whole month. So, we are really blessed to be feed every night.

{Answering to his brother’s question as to what is the 7’s?}  What is up my brother! Well the 7's is Rugby. Fiji has a really, really, really good team. They have been winning. Everyone here was watching it. When they won the Hong Kong Cup, the whole city was freaking out.  There were fireworks and screaming everywhere. It was really cool but we did not get to watch:-(  But we knew they won.

We are planning on having a baptism this week on Sunday with a girl named Eta. She is really excited to be baptized and is ready. She cannot wait. We are going to see her tomorrow to have the last lesson and set up an interview with the DL Elder Olsen. Other than her, we have a couple more baptisms scheduled for the 14 of April. We are having Marika and Eva baptized on this day. I think that they will be ready, we just need to teach Marika the last lesson and Eva just needs her interview done. I think that her parents are going to let her be baptized.

We have another set of investigators named Anna and Neitani. They are brother and sister. Elder Ishibashi and Elder Smith were the first ones to teach them. They have really come a long way. Anna was saying that she hated to do anything that was spiritual like family devotionals, but now she is the one that is wanting them to happen. They are really cool. They are really fun to teach and they would be ready to be baptized if they would only come to church. They always say that they are coming then, when Sunday rolls around, they do not come. They constantly want us to tell them riddles and they always tell us the same ones. It is really funny.

We do a lot of walking and teaching lessons. We don't really have much time to OYM because we are always walking to lessons. But we are still getting some new investigators. One of the new investigators we have found is Moheni. She is a Hindi. One day we were walking down the street and she saw us, so she came up to us and said that we have not come over yet. Ishibashi said that they OYM'd her about 2 months ago with one of his other companions and they never went back. She does not speak Fijian or English that well, only Hindi. So it is a little hard teaching her. She says that she wants to get closer to God and Jesus Christ. She really liked the idea of family and had many questions pertaining to families. She has a son named Samson. So I think that she will be really good. Her son is really cool. He is 5 years old. Whenever we come over he gets this little toy car and just sits there and plays with it rolling it back and forth, back and forth. It is really hard not to laugh because it is so cute. She is a really good lady.

Well my time is about up so I want to let you know that I love you all and miss you tons. Have a good week and I will talk to you next Sunday.

Love your Son/Brother,

Elder Grotepas

Area 1, Week 3 Nasinu, Fiji 3/24/13

Me and Junior

Bula Vinaka, vacava tiko?

How is it going? I am doing really good. This week has been a great week! I am getting the language little by little. I still do not know what people are saying. It gets really frustrating. I wish that i knew it already so I can actually participate in the lessons. I recognize the words that people are saying, but my mind cannot comprehend them fast enough. I know that eventually I will get faster at it.  My companion is great. He teaches me alot. He teaches so simply and clear. I hope that I will get to be as good as he is. Some of the lessons we teach are in English so he lets me talk more in them. I was going to lead a lesson yesterday but our investigator was sick so we did not get to teach her.

Well me and my companion are doing really good!  He is really cool and really funny. We had a baptism scheduled for yesterday but it fell through. I think I mentioned that in my last letter. When me and my zone leader went over there to interview her she was not there. It was really frustrating because me and by companion thought that she was ready. I think that her parents are holding her back .I don't think that they want her to be baptized.  Her dad is a preacher for a different religion. She has been taking the lessons for a year and a half and it seems like she does have a testimony of the church.  It is really frustrating to see this, but we will keep working with her.  We have another investigator that is planning on the 7th of April. If our month goes good we will have a baptism every week. Well back to the investigator with the baptismal date, she is awesome! She was telling us about how she was before she met us. She was sharing some pretty personal stuff with us. Once she meet the missionaries, Elder Ishibashi and Elder Smith, her whole view on life changed. It is really cool to hear that the gospel can help anyone with any problem that they have and God does really love and listen to them.

I think that I am getting used to the weather here. Every time I go somewhere where there is AC, like right now here in the internet shop, it feels very different. It is going to be really weird going back to Utah where there is not any humidity. Most of the days here are really hot and humid. It has been raining on and off for the past day now. 

The food here I have to admit is not that good. The food that I like the most is called chopped Suey. It is like a stir fry over rice or noddles. It is really good. Last night we went on splits to our dinner appointment. I went with my district leader because we had two dinner appointment scheduled for that night. When we got there they had us sit down. They said "eat a lot." They had tons of food. I ate as much as I could and could not eat anymore, then when we were done they said "now dessert." They came out with all these scones and lemon leaf tea. The tea was boiling hot and at the same time the house was very hot. I don't get how they can do this here, drink hot drinks in the hot climate.

Our new friend, Junior, being funny

This week we went over to visit a boy that just got baptized. His name is Inoke. When we were waiting for him, there was a kid that was there hanging out with us. His name is Junior.  He wanted us to take pictures of him. Eventually,he was taking pictures of us. It was really funny because he took tons of pictures. Every time he went to take the picture, both me and Elder Ishibashi would make a funny face and he would get mad and take another one, and we would do the same thing. I will attach a picture of him, he was really funny. When we were sitting in sacrament meeting, he came up to us and sat between us for half of the time. He is really cool. 

Well it is really cool to hear about home and how much everything is changing. I cannot believe that Steiner and Braiden have their mission calls already. It is weird to think that they are only 18 and are already going on their missions! It seems like I am a lot older than they are and they are already going to be leaving here shortly.  They are going to have a great time in California and Arizona. Also I cannot believe that Jordon and Krystal are leaving already. It seems like they just got their mission calls the other day and they are already leaving. So much back home has changed. It is going to be weird coming back to Utah after 2 years.

Well I hope everything is going good back home. Everything is fine here. I miss you a lot and cannot wait to talk to you again.

Love,
Elder Grotepas

Updated contact information for Elder Grotepas

Any family member or friend can now email Elder Grotepas at dallin.grotepas@myldsmail.net.  He will check his emails on his Prep day which is Monday in Fiji (Sunday in USA).

Letters:
Elder Dallin Matthew Grotepas 
Fiji Suva Mission
GPO 215
Suva, Fiji

Packages:

Elder Dallin Matthew Grotepas 
Fiji Suva Mission

2-20 Lakeba Street

Samabula

Fiji

Area 1, Week 2 - Nasinu Suva 3/17/13

Bula!

It is going really good here in Fiji. I do miss America!  I have sent a photo of the curry that we eat.  It is basically Ramen noodles with chopped up chicken served over rice.  We have dinner appointments each night, so we are not going hungry.

Me in my flat eating Curry and Rice

We eat a lot of curry!

Elder Ishibashi with a baby kitten

My companion and I are getting along very well. Elder Ishibashi is a great Elder. It is really cool to hear all of the stories about him and his family in Hawaii. We have not had a disagreement on anything! His teaching is really good. He teaches so simply and clearly. If the people do not understand, he will help them until they do understand.

We don't really have much time to look for new investigators. We have so many appointments in a day there is not that much time left over. We cover probably a 6 mile by 6 mile area. Most of our current investigators are within mile 2 or 3. I have a machete now. We use it every service day (Thursday).  It is really cool. The roads here are like home. Roads. The only thing is they are not smooth. They are really bumpy. We don’t really walk in the bush because we are in the city. The only time we use our machete’s is when we take cross cuts going through the little villages.  Last service day we helped some families with their taitai (farm) and we cleaned up around their homes. It was really cool.

The rain here is weird. It will look beautiful in the morning, then a couple hours it will pour and then get bright and sunny again. We carry our umbrellas with us everyday so we don't get wet. The first day I got all my books soaked but now they are all dried out. It is way different here than back in Utah. I really do miss it back home.. 

We have a young Fijian man in our ward that is going to Washington on his mission here in a couple of days. He always wants to go around with us. His name is Alma. He says that the language is so easy and I will be fluent within 6 months. He is a really good guy and will be a great Elder. He is really cool to get to know. Most of the people here speak English. I think they learn it in school. The nice thing is if you are stuck on a word they are able to help you and tell you what the word is in Fijian. It is really nice for me because it helps me to learn it also.

Me outside an Sister Sulu's home (new convert)

Well, this week has gone by pretty good. This week I asked four of our investigators if they would be baptized. They all said yes!  We have only set up one of those with an actual date. This week we are going to give the other three a target date so they can prepare themselves to be baptized. One of our investigators names is Eta. She was so happy when we asked her and she started to cry. She said that she has known for a while and she has just been waiting. She was so happy and excited!  She is a golden investigator. She is engaged to a member of the church and is ready to get baptized. I was not the one that started teaching her but my companion says that she took very in-depth notes of the Book of Mormon. One day they went back and she had read and taken really good notes of everything, just like the Jaredites did. I can tell that she is amazing just from the two visits that we have had with her.  It really strengthened my testimony that the spirit can testify to investigators that this church is true. It was way wananavu (awesome).

The hardest thing for our investigators here is to keep their commitment of attending church and to avoid drinking Grog. Two of the people that we have a baptismal date for is Anna and Natani.  On Saturday, we asked them if they would come to church, they said yes. The next day at church, they were not there. It is really frustrating.

The other problem is Grog. In Fiji, the term "grog" refers to a drink made by pounding sun-dried kava root into a fine powder and mixing it with cold water. Traditionally, grog is drunk from the shorn half-shell of a coconut, called a "bilo."  We will be walking down the street and you can hear lots of people smashing the root into the powder. Everyone says that it tastes like dirt and is disgusting. President has said that they have a big problem with this. They say that if there is any member drinking it, they need to stop.

Well, this week I carried on Dad’s tradition of the Jimmy Club. I showed it to the two kids of Anna and Naitani. They really loved the game.  They were like everyone else where they did not get it at first so we had to make it obvious for them. Afterwards I taught them that to understand the game,  they have to really LISTEN, because this is how the Holy Ghost works.  I taught it just like how Dad taught it. Here they cannot say Jimmy so I changed it to the “Joni Club.”  My companion really likes the game too and he said that he is going to start using it. It is going to be cool because I will be the first person to start the Joni Club here in Fiji. I will be interested to see how long this game will stay in Fiji or how many Elders will hear about it. It seems like that it would be a really good game to teach about the Holy Ghost because the kids here love games and love hearing jokes and riddles. They really like just about anything. It is funny in one of the towns we are in, there is always kids playing with old tires and rolling them down the street. It is really different than back in America with what all the kids do in their spare time.

We don’t see many kids during the day. They are all in school. When they see us they say Bula or Hi because they know that I am American.  All of the kids in the ward will call you “Elda” and slap your hand. Yesterday there was one kid that was maybe five years old and he slapped my hand maybe 10 times. It is really funny. Also I love seeing all the little kids in their little sulus and white shirt and ties.

I just want to let you all know that I love the Lord very much and I love and miss you all. I cannot wait to hear back from you again. I am having a really good time here.

Love your missionary,

Elder Grotepas