This is the Life!!!
Aloha Kakou,
It has been a pretty fire week filled with service on service with lessons and studies sprinkled here and there. We ate sooo much food this past week, a lot of lobster tail since people have been going diving in the bays, as well as a few meals of goat and shrimp, and some Hawaiian style poke along with Poisson Cru and too many cakes and other deserts!!! We also made more Haole Brownies again and our neighbor ended up eating that thing up and I had to tell him to watch out because those things are high in calories and then he ends up buying me more ingredients so I can make it for him again, ahaha.
Highlights:
- We were debating on getting eggs because it was $30 at one store so we were there for 30 minutes just staring in awe. Then we went to a few more stores and finally found eggs for our desert at $15, what a miracle!
- Went to a waterfall last p-day, the nice thing is that you can drive almost all the way there and then you just walk for another 15ish minutes to the base.
- We found a new friend again thanks to our drug dealer friend. Pretty cool and this new guy ended up giving us his number and asked us to stop by his house because he had been given a book of Mormon but was scared to open it until we had talked about it with him.
- Went contacting one day and everyone was either not home or pretended they were not home or told us to go away. We went to this one house and asked if one of our friends where there, the guy says yes, but then her two sons come out and the youngest is just like "Yeah mom is right around the corner", Then the older boy whispers in her ear and the younger boy is just like "Actually, she's not here" Sickkkkkkkk......
- Got my pendant back... I ended up giving a Papi a rock a friend gave us and asked this Papi if he could sculpt me a greenstone looking pendant and it turned out pretty sick. He also showed us how to make Ukuleles and we talked about culture and the gospel of Jesus Christ together.
- We were eating pig and goat and the pig kept scratching my throat. I was wondering why and than I saw it was because the bristles were still on the fat, it was just really short. Lol it was like a lot of mini toothpicks going all over the place in your mouth.
- Set a baptismal date for one of our friends
- Had a security training for the entire mission but since we are off of Tahiti it was over zoom for us while the rest of the mission was in person. Luckily other missionaries were doing things during the training which made the zoom gallery interesting!
- Had karoke to an extent, we went over to a dinner appointment which ended up been a going away party since a cousin of one of our members is headed off for the army. It was unofficial Karoke because half the people there were really drunk.
- Had our district council over Facebook messenger and one of the other Elders ended up getting a ticket from the police mid meeting. We still don't know what he got a ticket for or how they found him because they were at the church building over on the other island in an office, and the police still found them.
- Cut some trees, clearing this pretty big area with machetes and also helped build some things at a Papis house
- We build a staircase for one of our new members. The other member said it was already done but all he did was collect wood to make it and showed up and we were like "Oh buddy, you got a plan" Turns out he didn't have a plan and we were figuring it out and designing it on the spot but the thing looks great. We also did the work during the hottest part of the day and the surf was firing right across the street, the sound of the ocean was soooo soothing but we couldn't go surf after so we ended up going to the store and buying some lemonade and Strawberry Cream soda.
- We came out from one of our dinner appointments and we where filling up water in the dark at 8pm one night and were just amazed at how bright the milky way was that night. We tried taking pictures and you can see it if you turn your brightness up but it still isn't as clear as it was in person. Guess you guys needa make a trip over to the Marquesian Islands to see it for yourself!
- Made a Japanese Cake with one of our members and it called for 24 eggs and me and Elder Hagen which amazed and scared at the same time after seeing how much eggs costed. The cake ended up amazing and we didn't need to eat that Sunday night because we were stuff from the Steak/Fries and cake we had for lunch
- We've been doing so much machete work lately it made its way into my dreams and I woke up because my arm was swinging like I was holding a machete and trying to chop things at the same time.
Spiritual Thought:
In Matthew 16:25 it says, "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."
When it talks about loosing our life it isn't talking about dying but rather overcoming the world and temptations in it. Being able to sacrifice temporal things for spiritual things in which we might have a more abundant life. This past week a whole bunch of my personal studies have been focused on self reliance and self sufficiency. There was so much books available through the hchurch and I was thoroughly surprised. One highlight was doing math during personal studies and realizing if you invest $300 each month from age 25 to age 65 in something with a steady growth of 8% each year and then think about compound interest you would invested $147,600 and with an 8% return and compound interest you'd be at $1,018,812 .
All in all, self sufficiency and self reliance is a process of growth you can't expect to be self sufficient while not having a set plan. It is through having a set plan and goals were you can see your end goal come to pass.
"Vents favorables et mer suivants"
"Mata'i haumaru e moana mania"
"Fair winds and following seas"
Ua Here au ia 'oe,
Elder Ellis
Link to my Google Photo's album. Go check um, go check um, go!:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/qErFS2eWV3pJGVEV7
P.s. , hope you guys are doing well, love and pray for you all! I'd also love to hear how you're doing!!!
