Area 1, Week 11 - Nasinu, Fiji 5/19/13

Elder Ishibashi being Elder Ishibashi

Photo taken from Elder Ishibashi's blog titled " Elda Curuenaulunivanua and a few kids in Kilikali"

Dear Family,

Bula. Sa tiko eke! How is everything going? Everything here in little old Fiji is going good. Well, this is my last week of training. It has finally come. I will now not feel like a new missionary, even though I still don't know the language as well as I would like. This week has gone by so fast. It feels like yesterday I was just speaking to you over Skype. 

Well first of all, I want to wish Trevor a Happy Birthday. I wish that I could have emailed him on his birthday but we can't.  So please tell Trevor that I miss him lots and hope that he had a good birthday. Elder Ishibashi's birthday is on the same day as Trevor's so we celebrated with some cake and ice cream. It was good to eat some cake, it reminded me of home. I bet you guys are still making tons of sweets, cakes, and brownies.    A cool thing that happened this week is that we got to eat shark! It tastes really weird and a little bit bitter.  At first I thought it was chicken with no bones. I was so glad to see that there were not bones, since most of what we eat does have bones.   I ate quite a bit of it because I thought it was boneless chicken. But then at the end of the meal, they told us that it was shark. I thought it tasted different than chicken. Also this week we had Sunfish. I did not try any of that, it looked like a big chunk of fat. I should have just to say that I have tried it.

The work this week has been good.  We were able to get one of our investigators to accept a baptismal date. We were able to get both Anna and Neitani their interviews and they are going to be baptized this week on Sunday.   You already know about them because we have been teaching them ever sense I have been here in Fiji.  Anna wants me to baptize her and Neitani wants Elder Ishibashi to baptize him. It is going to be really cool to see them baptized and be a part of the gospel. The District Leader said that they are great investigators and are ready. We have also extended a couple other baptismal invitations. We are waiting on them for when the time is right.

This week was supposed to be the baptism for Molani and Junior. They still are in the process of getting married. I think that within the next couple of weeks, they will have their marriage date set up. Elder Ishibashi is sad because he thinks that there is a chance that he will not be here for that date. They might be having a transfer the first of June and he thinks that he is going to leave. But, we met with them last night and had a good lesson. We taught them about the law of fasting. They accepted it and said they would follow it after they are baptized. After our lesson we stayed a little bit and played some games with the kids. They are ages 4 and 6. We played simple games where you use your hands. I showed them the one that we always did in church. The one where you twist your hands up and tell them to move a certain finger. They really liked it and thought it was very funny. Even Molani and Junior were doing it. They are such a good family.

This week, a new ward mission leader has been called in our ward.  His name is Brother Taukei. After church he wanted to talk to us. Actually, everyone wanted to talk to us. Someone wanted a blessing, we had to show Ana and Neitani the font, we had to talk to bishop, and we had to meet with the WML. He told us that we need to start working hard. He is expecting quite a bit out of us. Brother Taukei is going to be good for us and will help us out a lot with the work. Time in very important to him. He wants three baptisms every month.  For the past 3 months we have not been doing any meeting or any ward council, but now we are going to start and start doing what we are supposed to be doing with our Progress Record. He is going to be a real big help to us.

It is crazy to hear about how everything is changing back home. It is going to be so different. I am running out of time and want to let you know I love you and miss you all!

Talk to you next week.

Love,

Elder Grotepas



He also writes to his sister:

Dear Heidi,

How is everything going? Everything here is going great. I miss it back home but here is good. It was really nice to get to talk to you last week. I know that it is hard to talk to me when you miss me so much. I was feeling the same way. I miss all of you so much. This week we have been doing a lot. By the time you know it, I will be home. I am almost already at my 4 month mark. It is going by so fast. If you think about it, 2 years is not a long time. It is only like 730 days. So I will be home here soon, in a year and 8 months. Well as you know, we have new sister missionaries in the area and we are still showing them around. Their names are Sister Jonathan and Sister Su'a.
It is a lot of work because we will be on one side of the area and they need help and they are on the other side, but it is all good.

Well how is everything at home? Has dad fixed everything that has been ruined in my room from the flood? I bet by now he has everything fixed. You know dad and how fast he gets things done around the house. Well it sounds like you had a lot of fun this week. You made a new friend and got to see Gabe. Tell him that it would be cool if he came down to Fiji. I might be able to see him if he comes down. That would be way cool. How has he been doing?

I cannot believe that you are going to be done with your school year already. It seems like you had just started with it. You are getting so qase ( What is that word? :)  I still remember when I was in DARE and in Elementary. I remember we did the drunk goggles also. We had a kid in a motorized wheelchair in our class and he put them on and drove around. It was so funny because he was hitting all of the desks around the room. Everyone said that he was drunk driving. I still remember those days and liked them. Now you are going to be in a bigger school, Junior High School. I cannot believe that.

Thanks for being such a great sister. I love you very much!