Elder Kala Ellis

Aloha ko'u ohana e mau hoa, Queue Braddah Iz siging Margherita "On a hill top on Tahiti as I gaze across the bay at the island of Moorea..." Sikeeeee that was me a couple weeks ago standing on a hill top in Tahiti staring at Moorea, transfers happened and I'M ON MOOREA. Moorea is lit, takes me back to Bora Bora because it's not quite like Tahiti, most of the people speak Tahitian and there's no A/C in our church building. Not quite as much tourist as Bora Bora or at least not that much in my area. This past week was absolutely a blast. Started off the week by going to an American store and being in absolute heaven seeing Costco and Sam's club products. One thing I've been missing from the start of my mission has been Hamburger Steak and seeing brown gravy in the store literally brought tears to my eyes. I quickly bought that along with some dried mangoes and we made some Hamburger Steak for dinner that night.  We thought we were gonna have a nice norma...

Boom kanani!!! Just like that another transfer (or six weeks) has passed by here in Outumaoro and we've honestly been seeing so many miracles that I really hope I don't leave. This week was a little weird because we started off by going into papeete on three different occasions for my companion to see the doctor. Long story short they ended up testing his blood a few times and told us he got dengue fever. Everything that followed was crazy though. The equivalent of the tahitian center for disease control started contacting us like crazy getting our positions and whereabouts and they even sent a team to fumigate our apartment. They even came back and sprayed our complex and surrounding area with this big machine. Highlights:  - We found 8 new friends this past week and 4 of them are siblings/cousins that are from an inactive family. The children are all super interested and we've already done two lessons for them and they keep asking us to come back. The kids are literally g...

Alohaaa!!! Another week down in our super duper small sector. The sickness ended up getting worse and then transferred itself over to my comp who has been dying because of it this past week. But he's still down to go out and contact/make lessons happen so it's not too bad.  Last monday we went hiking with the district and had a pretty killer time because the sun was still covered by clouds on our way up and then when we finally got to the top everything cleared up and we had a nice view of Moorea. That evening we ate with one of the families in our ward and talked a lot about graffiti. It turns out that all the murals in the neighborhood have been done by one of the members in an effort to beautify and bring life back to the place and it's safe to say it's worked! We saw a little miracle this past week while contacting. We went up this private drive and then walked right through this gate that's usually closed. We went and knocked on every single door in that apartm...

This past week was pretty fire up until the point where we got sick but we still tried to work through our sickness anyways! Highlights: - We played a lot of beach volleyball and ultimate disc with our district in the mornings for our sport.  - We've really tried to fine tune our lessons for each friend and found that playing a little game or watching a little video helped the spirit to manifest itself very powerfully during our lessons. - We started singing more, in one of our lessons, there was this sibling combo who ended up bringing out there guitar and singing for us. It was all in tahitian and it was so powerful to hear the testimonies of these two young kids being shared in tahitian on the guitar... Like whaaaaat they are 9 years old and 11 years old! - Contacted some people who had told the missionaries they were interested in the past and we were able to set some return appointments. - Did a split with Elder Kaopua, another Hawaiian in the mission and it was honestly one o...

Hoooooo howzit! Just wanna start off by wishing everyone a Happy New Years!!! Hope you were able to ring in the new year for me with a lot of fireworks and firecrackers. I must say New Years in Tahiti is definitely not the same as New Years in Hawaii...  Highlights:  - We had a few solid lessons from this past week. One really solid lesson was with a member who is starting to return to church because he wants to provide a good example for his kids and because he misses all of the blessings that he had seen when he was active. - Played Beach Volleyball with some of the missionaries in the district and did yoga on another one of the days.  - We had some pretty fire dinner appointments and were able to build some better relationships with the families in our ward. We talked about surfing, bodyboarding, sailing and paddling. One of the families even does kayaking/surfski-ing and I was straight stoked and we talked about that almost the entire night - Walked to church and said...