What is This Place?

Aloha from Ka'u.

Man I don't even know where to start. This place is... interesting. Not bad at all, but interesting. First off even though I'm in the Hilo Zone I'm nowhere near Hilo, I'm about 2 hours south of it and Kona is just as far away in the other direction. On top of that my area is the largest one (geographically) in the mission as we basically cover the entire southern coast of the big island. Now don't get me wrong, this area is big but it is empty. We cover a series of small towns that mostly consists of Pahala, Naalehu, and Ocean View and its about 30 minutes to get from one to the other. There's no major stores here so we shop at local markets.

Also despite the fact that the ward boundaries are bigger than most Hawaiian stakes this can hardly be called a ward, there's only about 50 active members so sacrament meeting was pretty small. One cool thing is that for years this ward didnt have missionaries and so there was a bit of a standstill. This area was finally opened again about 4 months ago and there have been 3 baptisms since then with a couple more in the near future. I am super excited to be a part of this wards growth.

My comp is Elder Moody from Corona, California and he is super dope. He's a crazy outdoors guy and loves weapons which is nice when your pad gets kinda infested with centipedes. And for any mainlanders that don't know this, centipedes are very venomous at both their head and tail so its a little worse than being infested by roaches. But so far we are having a fun time.

All in all the work is going well here. We are pretty isolated and don't have a lot to work with, but we are using what we do have and I am loving it.

Hope you are all having a great new year and remember to always put Christ at the center of your life.

Aloha!

Elder Smith
Hawai'i Honolulu Mission
1500 S. Beretania St. ste 416
Honolulu, HI 96826


Ocean pic is near the green sand beach. We did weekly planning at an abandoned church hidden in a mountain. That was the view from the church (first christian church in Hawaii actually)