Glad I Built My House Upon a Rock

Aloha!

This was a pretty eventful week so I will start from the top. Wednesday I went on an exchange into the Waikahe Ward with Elder Collins which was pretty fun. We did Bible study with a Chuukese family and met lots of interesting people. On Thursday me and Elder Ferrin drove up to Hilo for interviews with President Bekker, most of the time the interviews just seem to be a passing thing but this time President was really personal with me and gave me a lot of good mission and life advice, he honestly is such an inspired man and I know he does more for these Islands than people will ever know. After that we went on a split with the Kea'au Elders because we didn't want to drive all the way back to Ka'u just to turn around again the next day (we live about and hour and a half from Hilo) so I visited some people with Elder Dorrough. Turned out to be really needed since we ended up having to give 3 different blessings, priesthood in action!

The next day we had Zone Conference at the Hilo Stake center with all the missionaries on the Big Island. It was cool seeing most of my old Kona Zone and my old comp Elder Campbell. The theme of the conference was fulfilling your purpose with a focus on being Christlike. A big push lately has been to do what we think is right, not just necessarily what the handbooks tell us to do. They want us to stay within limits of course, but be creative about how we accomplish our purpose.

After the dope conference we spent Saturday morning at a 1 year olds birthday party (big deal in Hawaiian culture) and then went all over our area inviting everyone we could to the ward party that night. It was DUMPING rain the whole day around the entire island but we kept going and covered a lot of ground. After finally hitting everyone on our list we got to the church right before it was time to start only to find out the party was cancelled. Because of rain. We were a little salty.

Aside from setback we ended the week on a good note at church. Elder Ferrin and I taught Sunday School and High Priests which was pretty fun, also the Bishop just started taking care of a foster daughter named Mandy (16 year old) who was been coming to church with him. She is interested in what we have been teaching and wants to know more, we are just waiting to get the ok from her biological parents and avoid a family feud. We ended the day by setting up some appointments with the Kaawa family and the Kaleohano family for this week, hoping to start seeing some progress with them.

That's about it, one last fun fact is that about 20 minutes before typing this us and the Kea'au Elders got stuck in a lightning storm in Hilo that was pretty intense. Saw a power pole get struck and everything. Sketchy as heck but we are still here. Church is true.

Aloha!

Elder Smith

1 and 2: HD pics of the last temple trip
3: me and Elder Campbell at ZC
4: Oreo is the Kaawa's new dog and melts my heart every time
5: average first serving at a luau

Nothing

Aloha friends and family.

Well I've been thinking a lot about what to say in this email because in all honesty nothing really happened this week. Like a strange amount of nothing, not even bad stuff. We had a handful of appointments set up but pretty much all of them fell through. We were given some referrals but just haven't been able to catch any of them, we tried to use our time setting up new appointments but between busy schedules and the flu that's been going around no one could see us this week.
We were still out and about it's just that nothing happened. Kinda weird to be honest.

One accomplishment though is that we got the majority of Ocean View mapped out, it's the most populated part of our area but because of how remote and isolated it is it can be impossible to find anyone. Hopefully the map we made will help us find some less active this week. Fingers crossed.

For P-day our plan was to go with the Kea'au elders to Mauna Kea but after getting to the visitors center halfway up we found out you need at least a half tank of gas to get to the top and we only had a quarter. Soooo we played it safe decided to try again next week.

That's about all I have to report, not the most exciting week but not the worst week either. Our recent convert Josh is going through some hard times but his faith is Christ is strong and inspiring, keep him in your prayers.

Love you all, keep Christ in the center of your life!

Elder Smith

High Hopes

Aloha!

Sorry for the late email, had a crazy p-day. But first off, my week. Me and Elder Ferrin are still hitting Ka'u and doing whatever we can here. Like I said before finding ways to keep yourself busy here can be a little difficult but I can promise you that the Lord blesses us when we do whatever it is that we can. For example we had a new family move into the ward (the Uckers) and they seem really cool, husband isn't a member but seems nice enough. We are hoping that we might be able to start working with him fairly soon.

We are continuing to work with other less active or part member families, but the overall main issue at the moment is getting them to come to church. Sometimes we can be a little hard on oursleves but its important to remember that we are there to invite and guide, people will still be people. I'll just go and do whatever the Lord wants and we will see where that path leads.

P-day has been quite the adventure. We left early this morning for Kona to go to the temple, which was as usual an amazing experience. Its weird though how fast time is going, feels like it hasn't been that long since the last temple trip. Anyway after that I took the Kea'au Elders and Elder Ferrin on a tour of the scenic parts of Ka'u, we hit up Southpoint on the way back from the temple so we were still in our suits and felt like bosses. After that we switched clothes and went to a dope black sand/lava rock beach that has some cool tie ins to early Hawaiian history. Its not really known by the tourists so its stayed pretty preserved, beautiful hidden gem of this place. Very spiritual.

Anywho its been a pretty great week, I am finding joy in thw work even when the days don't go the way I want them to. Elder Ferrin and I have some ideas on how to shake things up around here, we will see how it all works out in the end.

Love you all!

Elder Smith

Also fun side notes: I met a family at Costco from St. George with the last name Snow. Probs related to me. Other fun fact is that apparently centipede bites don't swell up until like a week later so just when I thought it was better it flared up and looked gross, all good now though, just waiting for my centipede powers to kick in. Ofa atu!

Lift Where You Stand

Aloha from Ka'u!

We had a pretty great start to my second transfer in this corner of the Big Island. My new comp Elder Ferrin is awesome and we are figuring out ways to push the work here. Elder Ferrin is from Springville, Utah and has been on his mission for 17 months. So far he has only been on O'ahu so he was pretty pumped to finally hit one of the outer islands. He has a lot of fire in him and is excited to get to work here which makes my job a whole lot easier.

This week we primarily focused on getting to know the members, focusing on the less actives and part member families. I basically haven't met any of them before this so it was nice to start figuring out who was who. We met a handful of lass actives who want us to keep coming by so hopefully that will bring us some investigators in the long run.

One funny (in hindsight) thing that happened this week was that as Elder Moody and I were leaving the pad to take him to the airport he put his shoes on without checking them first (something you should always do here) and he got bit on the toe by a centipede. After 6 months in Ka'u with no incidents he gets bit in the last possible moment. I hazed him about it for awhile but karma will be what karma is and a couple days later I woke up around 2:30 in the morning to a centipede biting my hand. Thankful I shook it off quick and it was a big one (they are actually more dangerous when they are small) so I wasn't in any danger but it still hurt like a bee sting on crack. Needless to say we hunted down the culprit with the butcher knife and he isn't a problem anymore.

This area is definitely a unique one, I see that more now since I am the one running the area. Sometimes I get a little discouraged because its really hard to find people, or because we have so few members to work with (about 40 active) but I know that this is all God's work. I remembered that Elder Utchdorf told us all that we need to "Lift where we stand" or in other words we need to build up the church wherever we are. I may not have a lot to work with here, but it's more than some people have. God doesn't expect me to do any more than I can in Ka'u, but he does expect me to do ALL that I can, and that's what I'll do.

Thats all for this week, I'm excited to see where this transfer takes me. Love you all!

Elder Smith
Hawai'i Honolulu Mission

Pics:
Elder Ferrin
Kawa Beach (Rock/Black Sand Beach)
Inside the Kaumana Caves (Lava Tubes)
The Centipede that got me