Monday, October 10, 2016

Two Months a Missionary!

Ohana,

Glad to hear that everything is going well. I was pretty bummed to not be at Savy's wedding but it looks like it all went really well. Maya looks adorable in her dress. Congrats to Savy and Will, can't wait for more pics!

So anyway transfers are this week, Elder Zollinger and I are staying put but a lot of the Missionaries in my zone are transferring out and a lot of greenies will be starting here. 4 new ones, which is pretty crazy. Should be interesting since I am technically also still a greenie (I'll lose the status after my next transfer). Elders here are saying I'm the David Bednar of the zone, I'm still hecka young but I'll have seniority over half of the missionaries around here. Teaching has been good but progress is slow, Elder Zollinger and I have been focusing most of our efforts on getting members involved in missionary work. So please encourage everyone you know to help out the missionaries, I'm not just talking about feeding, that's great and all but it's also a great opportunity for missionary work. Invite non-members to dinner appointments, casually bring up the gospel in conversation, invite to church. It all seems like crazy things for us to do but it really isn't that hard and it makes it so much easier and far more enjoyable to missionary work. So hopping off my soapbox now, we did have a lot of good finding people, we were able to get in contact with 3 different people who used to be taught by missionaries but for one reason or another stopped taking the discussions, all of them seem very interested in starting up again so I'm very much looking forward to that. I'll keep you posted.

Really weird story to share, it's not really spiritual or funny, it was just odd.
So 2 weeks ago I was on exchanges with the Elders from the Kahalu'u ward so Elder Zollinger was in our area with Elder Henderson. After the exchange ended they told me that they had met a Hispanic guy named Alejandro who seemed genuinely interested and invited them to come back. I was excited because people don't do that very often. ON top of that I thought it was interesting because I've run into a lot of different ethnicities on this part of Hawaii but I had never seen any Hispanics. So two weeks later Elder Zollinger remember this guy and decide to swing by and either teach him a lesson or set up a date to come back and teach him. We get to the house (keep in mind I've never been there) and this Hispanic woman answers the door, naturally we assume it is his wife. We say that we are there to talk to Alejandro and she says "who?" we repeat Alejandro and she says that her name is Alejandra. We were both taken aback by this and didn't really know what to say so Elder Zollinger said "last time we were here we met with a man named Alejandro" and she said that she didn't know who that was and that she had only lived in the house for two weeks, which would have been right after the other elders were there the first time. Now normally looking at this you would think that she was just covering for him or something, and we thought that too, but then right after all of this we don't know what to do so instead of just stand there awkwardly I jump into the normal door approach and ask if she wants to know more about the gospel. And she set up a time for us to come back and teach. We walked away from that house so confused and we honestly still have no idea what happened. I'll let you know if that bears any fruit but dang we had a good laugh about. Hope it goes somewhere but if nothing else it's a good story to tell.

My zone all went glow in the dark mini golfing today, the whole place was filled with little kids and us. It was grand. Also I think Hawaii is already messing with my brain, there was a product called Maui Kapowee that is obviously pronounced so that the two words rhyme but I'm so used to reading names and locations with Hawaiian grammar rules so I pronounced it Kah-poh-vay-eh. Took me and my comp about 5 minutes to realize it was a Haole product so those rules don't apply. Hooray for cultural immersion!

I've never had so much rice in my entire life. It is literally served with everything. That is not an exaggeration. Literally. Everything.

Love getting mail - keep those letters coming.

Love you all,
Elder Smith

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