Elder Kala Ellis

Started off the past week by hiking to some huge Cannons and bunkers that the United States built and left during World War II. The hike was insanely muddy and the parts that were concrete were crazy slippery so I ended up taking off my sandals and walked down the hike barefoot. It felt so nice and the traction was so much better, all while the other people in my district thought I was crazy and weird for doing it. Ahhhh she go, the sisters were looking like crabs crawling around while going down the hike because they were low to the ground and had their hands behind them. I don't know who was more crazy looking, me or them... nah c'est bon. Miracles: We had a lesson with a little boy who just didn't want to listen... or so we thought. He was glued to his phone playing a video game and my companion had given up and seemed just as out of it as the little boy. We finished up our lesson and started asking the little boy some questions and it turned out he was paying attention ...

Kura'ora Kakou, Kung Hei Fat Choy tout le monde and Happy Chinese New Year!!! Experiences: My companion has been really hungry this past week and has learned on multiple occasions the importance of patience. Patience in itself is a virtue that we all need. You can have a mango or avocado in your possession but if you decide to cut it open and eat it when it's not ready you're just wasting a perfectly good fruit. For my companion that meant eating a mango that was as hard as an apple and eating an avocado that didn't really taste too good.  We had a meeting with the stake President and he started talking about how they want to split wards and build a new chapel but in order to do so we need more members. He started saying how many baptisms he was expecting for each ward and then looked over at me and my companion and said 26 and that absolutely shocked us. 26 baptisms and we have 11 months. The only thing we can do is hope for a miracle. We proceeded to clean up our Area...

Highlights: We finally got hot water at the beginning of this week which was so nice. We've been taking these cold showers for the past three months and then the plumber comes over and boom we had hot water in less then an hour. Biking in the rain and wind has never been so fun because now we can just hop into the shower and heat up at the end of the day. Maruuru Te Atua. For a few weeks we would see this mouse at night time running across the floor and we could never catch it. Transfers happened and I got a new companion Elder Van Drimmelen from Utah and 5 minutes after getting back to the house we saw the mouse again. We trapped him in this bookcase, grabbed a garbage bag, moved the bookcase around a little bit and the mouse ran right into the bag. Took him outside and I was just like, "We're filling this bag and drowning him. So he doesn't come back to life." Filled the bag with water and the little guy swam his life away. Looked over and saw my companion was j...

Luiaaaaaaa Le Quartier!!! It's pretty funny going throughout the neighborhoods and hearing both the old and young people saying Luiaaaa which is basically a shortened version hallelujah. Luiaaaaa le seigneur. Praise the Lord There was so many miracles this past week. The first miracle happened at the baptism we had. It was for two twins, me and Elder Parau each did a confirmation. It was really huge because this was my first confirmation I actually did. Someone asked me to confirm them and I had another Elder do it because it was my second week in the mission field and I was super scared/my language definitely wasn't there yet. This time was different, and the spirit and testimonies of the two little boys were so strong. When I confirmed one of the boys my tongue was loosened and words just started flowing out of my mouth. The second miracle happened at church. We had so many friends, new members, and inactive members come to church. It was crazy because we had been going super...

Oa’oa Matahiti 'Api tout le monde , Wishing everyone a Happy New Year filled with good health and fun times with family and friends. Lessons: Had quite a bit of lessons this past week. Got insanely sick Monday night for some weird reason. Threw up four times that night and then went to the doctors the next day. Everything was going smoothly until we got to the pharmacy where I proceeded to throw up at the checkout when the guy was explaining what all the medicine does and how to take them. Went back to the house slept till the afternoon time then did 6 lessons over the phone that evening. On Thursday we did some contacting with our ward mission leader after a lesson and ended up having a few other impromptu lessons in Tahitian. It was a little weird being able to understand but not talk as much as I wanted to. But was still able to say the prayers, testify on key points and teach some principles of the gospel.  Splits: Had a split with Elder Yates this past Friday, I'm pretty s...