Week 26 - Kiritimati, Tabakaia 1st (Companion: Elder Miller)

Email dated: 14 March 2016

Sup fam bam?

Thanks for letting me know that Red (Dog) has no testicles now Dad.

Sounds like your week was great. Your Birthday sounds like it was pretty chill Mum.

This week has been really great for me and my area.

So Elder Miller came! Finally we can concentrate on just our area, but I'm going to miss London's investigators and Elder Beacham is going to miss our investigators.

No parcels came on the plane with Elder Miller and Elder Johnson just a letter from PMG class (Danien's Christmas Parcel has still not arrived, and we sent anotherone 2 months ago which is still sitting in Botany, New South Wales). So yeah, everything is still in Tarawa. And the parcel that's stuck in Sydney, that's a bit worrying considering there is a possibility I will be transferred soon. I really hope I don't though I am loving Tabwakea 1st so much. Alot of our investigators have become legit friends.

Since Elder Miller has been here and we've been working in our area everyday, the work has picked up its pace again. And for the first time I've been out tracting! Not because we had to but every time a lesson falls through, instead of going to our next person on the list, Elder Miller likes to try one house before we head off.

So the way tracting goes with him is we pick a random house and a random name, go to the people from the house and ask if that random name lives there. And as you'd expect they'd have no idea who the random name is, so before leaving we ask if they want lessons and more times than not they invite us in and listen. So yeah, tracting is way to easy here, the only thing is we have to figure out if they really want to listen or they are just being polite.

So yeah we have a few new investigators, just haven't taught them enough yet to count them as progressing, but our progressing ones right now are legit. One of them Tioni (Johnny) is so cool, he's only 13 years old but we set up a time with his parents for a lesson so they could be a potential complete family.

Anyways, when you first see Tioni, you might think he is not all quite there in the head, but he is the smartest 13yr old kid I've met in Kiritimati. Its just his face looks a little messed up, which is sad because kids have no chill with bullying here.

He was telling us when he went to school last year he was top of his class but he couldn't go back this year because he didn't have a shirt, bag, exercise books and pens. So this morning before school started Elder Miller and i grabbed my Kathmandu shoulder bag, bunch of pens and pencils, smallest white shirt Elder Miller had, rushed to a store, bought 7 exercise books and gave it all to his Mum before school started so he could go to school.

I really hope that helped there family and made them happy and now I just cant wait what other happiness we can bring them with this gospel.

something that was really big this week, do you remember Tatonga, the one who had Word of Wisdom issues, so we started visiting him again and had a really good lesson on repentance and during the lesson we mentioned fasting and straight away he asked what fasting was. so we explained it and he got really excited and wanted to fast the next day
(Saturday) to help him with his WOW problem, so we said we would join him.

On that Saturday, we were near his house so we decided to check up on his fast. First we find him with a fish and a big plate of rice infront of him... and he was drunk... kinda sucks. However, he felt really drunk sorry... he also explained that he opened his fast in
pray, but somebody came along an hour later and gave him alcohol. at least he opened in pray... but, teutana imwiin teutana (little after little).

So yeah those are the highlight of this week. For crazy stories... to be honest every day here would be so different from home, and you could count them as crazy stories but wack things happen so often its normal... one of our investigators is going to teach me how to koro karewe (cut karewe, the drink we drink that comes from the sap of
coconut trees) so that be a story worth tell when it happens.

so yeah thats it,

love yall

love Elder Berends.

Week 25 - Kiritimati, Tabakaia 1st (Companion: Elder Beacham)

Email dated: 7 March 2016

Mauri my family,

Sounds like it was a fun weekend for you all, those posing photos made me laugh, you guys are lame :P

And happy 45th birthday mum! Hope you enjoyed your day and I'll try my best in this email but I think you already know I suck at writing, and sorry I can't send you's photos, but all well.... Tiaki taina I'm thinking of borrowing a camera and recording a short video, hopefully the internet will be fast enough to send it.

Um, still no companions for all of us on Kiritimati, Elder's Miller (my comp) and Johnson (Darm's comp) made it to Fiji but didn't get on the plane to Kiritimati on Wednesday. We have no idea why but when we went to pick them up from the airfield they didn't get off the plane.

However, this massive white guy got off, dressed in church clothes and came to us for help. He was the Pacific Area Facility Manager, and he had brought a PA system for the chapel here. We had no idea he was coming, but we helped him take the PA system to the chapel he checked out all the church buildings here. It was all kinda of bazaar, but that's kind of how it is here... Limited communication, responsibilities you would never think you would have on a mission. Oh, and while he was here, He was like, "I know I shouldn't do this but you wanna here some new songs?" it was so weird... There was this song by Justin Bieber and it was actually pretty good. Its weird to think that I will miss all these popular songs and viral videos and fads.

But yeah, no companions.

I already told you last week that since having no companion, has forced me to grow, but the growth continues. I have really been focusing on how I teach and interact with investigators, and now, I really strive for "teaching people, not lessons". I have been trying so hard to teach for understanding and really push the investigator to ask questions, and since I've started doing this, the relationship between me and the investigators has been so much better. I'm really getting to know them all better and their concerns and I guess teaching I'm more like Christ. 

I hope none of that sounded like cockiness, and if it is, I'm waiting for the Lord to chop me down and humble me.

I'm not saying that I've become master teacher, but I'm definitely feel a lot better with my teaching skills considering that I thought I would never become a good teacher. And I'll probably still be really bad at teaching in English because I'm way more comfortable teaching in Kiribati.

Only working 3 days in my area this week, 3 really good days. taught some new people who I'm really excited for. I'll talk about them a little.

Nikiraa, 17yrs, is this hard core catholic girl, and I see her around everywhere with this fat cross around her neck. But recently she has been playing volleyball at the chapel and started sitting in on some of our baptismal services. We had been asking if she wanted lessons for a while, and she keeps saying I'll think about it. And now finally she decided to sit in on one of our lessons with Nikinam (fairly new investigator as well). We were teaching the Restoration, a pretty hefty first lesson for a hard core catholic. So we started with Christ's work on the Earth... Establishing his church. and then we started to explain the Apostasy.

I thought things were going to get heated but they didn't. She had questions but they weren't intimidating, just honest, earnest questions. We continued to the restoration of the Gospel through Joseph Smith, and she listened all the way through. After the lesson we asked if she wanted to continue and she said she would think about it.

I didn't see her until later this week at the chapel and asked if she wanted to continue and she gave me a confident yes, so I'm really excited for her. Not sure if she's promising yet, but she's definitely thinking about things.

There's also this older guy, Uatebe, 50-55ish, he has been having lessons for ever and just never made it to baptism. Sunday was the first I had ever had a lesson with him. I heard earlier that all of a sudden he really wants to go to the Temple. So I went to go and visit with a YSA and he was studying from Ana Boki Moomon, Baibara, and a temple preparation booklet! We talked, got to know his hopes, which was to be sealed to his family and live a better life. We set a plan to be baptized on the 19th or the 26th. and he was really excited. He is such a cool guy. I never thought that I would be able to keep a conversation with him because he is almost triple my age and he is massive but talked about carpentry, what its like to be on a mission, how the church is going in other countries...

I'd love to talk about all the investigators and members, they are all so cool and I'd hate to leave Kiritimati right now. But yeah that's all I have. Hope it was a good Birthday email for you Mum.

sweet, Laters...

Love Elder Berends