Bula Vinaka!

Mi'au Bula Si'a

So Labasa is way sweet, ha, technically it’s like one the biggest cities in Fiji, but compared to Suva its still really small.  Honestly, though, in some small ways it reminds me of like Duchesne. If there was sagebrush and no palm trees it would have a lot of similarities, ha! Because once you get outside of the town there are a lot of farms and it’s really open and super green everywhere, but it’s also a lot hotter here and a bit less humid.

My companion is Elder Seila.  He is Fijian but honestly he doesn't act very Poly.  He's pretty quiet, ha, I dunno.  He is way good at teaching and stuff so all of our lessons are good but pretty much all the other times it’s just pretty silent and what not.  I'm so used to being around really loud Polys who are way funny and I'm really used to being kind of obnoxious in the flat, but that is definitely not how it is now, ha. But  no worries because the Elders come up from Seaqaqa (Elders Yashko and Dakunimata) every Sunday and they stay for P-day and Tuesday District meeting, so that’s good.  And this week we will go to Suva on Friday until Monday for a mission tour so that’s tight.  We will have a blast and then next month on like the 15th we will go again for the mission Christmas party so it will be an exciting few months coming up.

As for the Baptisms, they went really well.  The best thing that missionaries can do in my opinion is have someone from the ward do the baptism and confirmation so that right from the start they have that connection and friend in the ward so it will help them stay active after they are baptized.  So for the first one her name is Sister Ali, she is about 70 and kinda just reminds of a sweet, old American grandma, ha. That’s how she treats us, but she was baptized by Brother Vakalala in the ward and was also confirmed by him. The next was Selita and she wanted us to do it so Elder Seila did the baptism and I did the confirmation and it all went really well, no worries with them they will be great, ha.

Language is still just coming along. Pretty much 85% of all the stuff we do is in Fijian so I'm learning a lot but it will take time.  I feel that if I am here for like 6 months then by the time I leave I should be pretty comfortable with Fijian.  And yes, I am taking a bunch of pictures but it would be hard to send them from here so we'll see about that but when I go to Suva I'm going to finally put all the pictures on a CD and send that in a little package and hope that it gets to you safe.

So this week was just pretty normal. I have been a little under the weather but no worries it’s just rough here cuz when you get a little sick it lasts for like a week because it’s hard to get rid of it. But that’s just how it goes sometimes, ha.

And ya, the package is in Suva so I'll get it when I go in this week.  Thanks for that, I'm stoked mostly just to see Elder Diloi in a 5XL SWK shirt, ha. Onz.

I'm glad you all had a good week as well.

Peace and blessings,

Elder Hanke

I was able to email back and forth with Garrett a little bit yesterday.  He didn’t seem quite like himself, though, as you can probably tell in his letter.  (Or is that just the worrisome mother in me?) Hopefully he gets feeling all better soon.  He said he was emailing from an internet café / tattoo parlor; he said it was “pretty nice”, and that it would be pretty funny if he got a tattoo that said “Mama”, or one that said “LDS” on his thumb like a lot of the Polynesians have.  I advised him that maybe he shouldn’t do that! 

He also apologized for teasing me last week (remember the “joke” about him not being able to email for a month or two?), but said he “just couldn’t help himself, ha ha, it was just too easy”.

Happy Halloween to everyone… have a great week!