Cyber Missionaries

Aloha!

Well this is incredibly weird. I'm sending this email through my new smart phone and during the course of this sentence I have made about 20 spelling errors. How the heck did I use one of these before? Anyway so yeah the big change this week was that me and Elder Lee got our smartphones and set them all up with churchy dakine. As of now we do not have the SIM cards so they are just fancy scriptures but we will gradually have more capability as time goes on.

Holy cow this is taking me a long time to type. Ugh.

Anyway we had our ward Christmas party this week which was legit, but earlier than that we helped the Elders Quorum (all 3 of them) cook a pig in the Imu. It was cool to see the whole process of how it worked and while we were waiting for it to cook, O (the EQ pres) whipped out a guitar and started playing some hymns and we started singing along. It was really peaceful on this farm and there were a couple families there and the spirit was just so strong. Hard to explain but I can testify that Hymns have a special way of bringing the spirit.

Oh yeah also the most intense blessing of my life happened, one of our members casually grabbed us at the party and asked calmly if we could give his wife a blessing. We assumed she just felt sick or something so we went to the car and grabbed our oil, went back in and met with her. Turns out shes deathly allergic the walnuts and had accidentally eaten one thinking it was a macadamia nut. Me and Elder Lee started panicking internally but we gave her a blessing and she started to calm down. But just to be safe her husband pulled an epi pen out of no where and stabbed her in the leg with it. It was pretty intense. She ended up staying at the party so it all turned out OK. God is good and so is his priesthood.

Speaking of Elder Lee, he and I literally have the same taste in all movies/tv/comics. So yeah we have plenty to talk about. He is awesome.

Our investigator Koen came to the party and had a good time. We are meeting with him again this week and I am looking forward to that.

That's about all I have to report today, pray that I can figure out how to use this newfangled technology and I hope you all find someone to serve this Christmas season.

Mele Kalikimaka!
-Elder Smith

1. Our gecko. We shelter him from the birds, he keeps the bugs down.
2. Elder Lee rollin' in mail (we finally found our mail key)
3. Hawaiian Santa
4. How does one selfie

Kona is Weird

Aloha from the Big Island.

So this has been a long week. Like a really really long week. I feel like I have been here forever and it hasn't even been a week yet.

Here is basic rundown of the week. On Tuesday my flight to Kona wasn't until 2 in the afternoon so I spent the front half of the day just chilling at Honolulu, once I got to the airport I realized I had no clue what on earth I was doing so I found another missionary that was transferring islands (Elder Wills) and he showed me the ropes. Anyway on the plane ride over I talked with some hardcore hippies and gave them some light the world cards which they liked. After that I met my new comp Elder Lee (he is legit and from North Ogden, Utah) and him and the Ke'ei elders tried to make me think that they were super apostate and that we were meeting with some girls on the beach buuut of course it turned out to be a prank. Anywho after exploring the Big Island I can tell you all that the rumors are true:it's big. My area here is like the size of a zone on O'ahu. Day 2 on the island we were called to give a blessing but we got third hand info so we thought we were blessing an old auntie, turns out the message was misconstrued and we were actually blessing a house that had some "unwanted visitors" in it. A little different than we thought but it all went well. Day 3 the Ke'ei Elders tricked Elder Lee into eating a habenero pepper in one bite so needless to say he was down for the better part of the day. Day 4 we realized that we don't have a key to our PO box and its probably filling up with mail right now. We are working on getting the new key but the only one that can order one is who ever ordered the PO box in the first place which is a missionary who has already gone home. Joy. So sorry but I won't be getting anyone's mail for the next little bit.

The rest of the week has been pretty normal but all in all this has been the weirdest first week in an area so far. The members seem pretty cool but its going to be hard to beat the Waipiolani members. Also there are a lot more haoles here than I was expecting, first time on my mission that I've had a white bishop so we'll see if I get along with him (lol). But yeah that was my week, oh duh almost forgot we taught a super awesome lesson to our investigator Koen on the Plan of Salvation. He absolutely loved it and said that it was like he was remembering something that he forgot. Amazing how the lord works. But I love you all and hope that you find a way to lighten someone's life today.

-Elder Smith

(camera is still broken so no Kona pics yet, but here are some from before I left Mililani)

Service and Conference and Kona Oh My

Aloha!

So quite a bit happened this week, lets start from the beginning. We did a lot of service this week for people in our ward as well as some in the other wards. The service at the Kings in our ward went well and was very physically draining, moved 100's of pounds of rugs while getting destroyed by every mosquito on this side of O'ahu. Recovering from the bites was an experience. But aside from that Elder Hayes and I were able to reset Ikaika with a baptismal date in early January. I have loved teaching him and have definitely seen a change in him from the spirit. His desire to come to church has increased and his ability to understand the doctrine has gotten so much better as well. Another cool thing is that he has a really hard time reading, but since he started reading the Book of Mormon his reading has gotten better as well. I know that that book is of God and works all kinds of miracles. Also our investigator Francis came to church this week which was awesome because we haven't seen him in almost a month. He has also been a joy to teach and I know that his faith will lead him to the truth one of these days.

Saturday was a blast, all 100+ missionaries on O'ahu were at a conference in Laie and we got to hear from Elder Stanfill of the seventy. He talked a lot on the importance of following the spirit and how what we need to do and how we need to do it comes easy once we remember who is leading us. Also if we don't have the spirit we don't even have the authority to teach the gospel so that was an interesting thought. All in all it was a fantastic training. In the fun news we (all 100+missionaries) all sang Live Aloha, video will be included.

Then the time came for transfer news, as expected Elder Hayes is staying and I will be heading out. I am moving to the Kona zone on the Big Island, I will be covering the Kealakekua Ward and my new comp is Elder Lee (he came out with Elder Hayes so he's been out about 3 months). I am super sad to be leaving this ward, these have been my favorite members and I have absolutely loved the 4 1/2 months I have spent here. I am excited to be heading to a new area though, new adventures everywhere.

Love you all and remember to keep Lighting the World

Elder Smith​