The Grind, a Painted Ceiling and Drunk Australians

Well here we have had yet another week in the desert paradise of Makakilo. After taking a good hard look at our area book app Elder Cowden and I have discovered that the records in our two wards are pretty out of whack. So we spent a good amount of time drafting up some lists of people who had talked with missionaries before and knock on all their doors systematically. It took awhile to throw the list together (and sort through records that were incomplete) but now we have a basic plan for what we're going to be doing these next two weeks (so basically the rest of my mission). We have already seen some success come from this and look forward to seeing what happens next.

Honestly I think the real difference between a good and great missionary is whether or not they remember to put contact information in the area book.

Thursday was a bust of a day, we got all ready to go only to find out a guy was coming to paint our ceiling after some water damage last transfer. He said it would only take a little bit but a little bit to him apparently means 10 hours because thats how long it took. So yeah we basically lost an entire day. Not how I'd like to spend one of my last days but I guess that's part of the job.

Sunday was fun and were able to help teach again in some of the church classes, but let me tell you 7 hours of church is definitely not my cup of tea so I'm really glad I didn't end up in a mission where you cover a million different wards. Also that night we went to a musical fireside put on by the Tongan Branch. If you guys have never heard Tongans sing it's quite the experience, they just tell everything and somehow it still sounds good. Also ran into the Van Wagenen family from back home in Clovis visiting the Palehua ward. There were here on vacation and it was fun to see them. I went almost two years not running in to people back home and now in the last month all these people just start showing up, guess it's a sign my days are numbered.

Finally as a funny story the whole zone (there's only 10 of us) went bowling this morning and there were a bunch of Australian tourists there who were just straight hammered. One was dressed like a hula girl and challenged Elder Cowden to an arm wrestle. He accepted and lost but we all had a good laugh over it.

Anyway that's the summary of this week, looking forward to these last couple weeks and honestly can't believe that I am near the end of this journey. Thanks to everyone that got me this far. Love you all!

Elder Smith
Hawai'i Honolulu Mission

candid pic visiting with some of the Van Wagenen family...