December 24th / 25th, 2012
We had a nice “email chat” with Elder Garrett on Christmas Eve (P Day), and again a “real chat” on the phone on Christmas Day – both very enjoyable. He seemed to be most anxious for the Christmas day “eatings” he had scheduled with some Fijian families. He sounded great, happy and healthy and on the downhill slide of the mission. Three months left – now it’s going to go fast! (Maybe….)
January 1, 2013!!
Here’s his email that came through today. We again got to chat for a bit on email, which I always love to do! Also check out the pictures that he sent across – each with its own unique explanation.
Love to everyone, and Happy New Year! Hope everyone enjoyed a very nice holiday season.
Bula vinaka
What a crazy week we had hahaha soooooooooo good though.
First off last Monday after we called we went over to some of our Fijian members house and ate then relaxed then ate some more, what a good day of food haha had a roasted Pig and much, much more.
Other than that we had a great time teaching Sister Salawai this past week or actually I think only I really did, haha. I feel kinda bad because it’s all in Fijian so he kinda just sits there and chills while I teach haha.
And then on Saturday we had definitely the most best baptism that I have had so far on my mission. It really was pretty intense because so many people have been waiting sooo long for her to be baptized. There were a lot of people there and by the closing hymn they were all in tears. It felt so good just knowing that this baptism meant so much to so many people. It didn’t really hit me until that moment how important it was to everybody. And during the end Brother Cinavi (her son) got up and was speaking and he said that he told her one way that you can know that this is true is because it will be taught to her in her own language, hahaa, sort of as a joke but before we started teaching her Bro Cinavi came up and told me to study up on my Fijian haha. But it all went really well.
So funny story though from this week, we went over to Oakland on Thursday for her interview and afterwards we had a meeting back across the bay so we had to grab a quick lunch before we went so we stopped by Taco Bell. We were inside for about 5 minutes, came back outside and someone had busted in the two passenger side windows and stole Elder Chapman’s backpack! It was so nuts because it was right in a way busy area. Haha stinkin Oakland, doesn't give us any breaks.
That’s it for the week, sorry for the lateness.
Peace and blessings,
Elder Hanke
Fair warning:
Below is a graphic pork picture!
Poor little piggy - he became Christmas dinner!
Elder Chapman, Elder Hanke, Sister Salawai, Elder Racule and his companion, and Brother Cinavi at Oakland Temple visitor's center. (Sister Salawai is the one Garrett wrote about above, she was baptized last Saturday. Elder Racule is actually from Fiji, he was in the MTC with Garrett and they became good friends... then when Garrett was in his first area in Fiji he spent a lot of time with Elder Racule's family - they fed him often and took good care of him.) :)
We'll call this one the "Oakland Taco Bell Smash & Grab".
(Garrett said that they didn't even bother calling the cops, because the typical cop attitude is pretty much, "sorry, too bad that happened, nothing we can do".) Luckily Garrett had previously put his backpack in the trunk, but felt badly that he hadn't reminded Elder Chapman to do the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment