WEEK 45 IN TONGA, PANGAI, MOTA

Well HEYYY guys!!  Sorry its been so long since I've been able to send out a group email, sometimes the internet can be real annoying. 

Those of you who haven't heard from me in a while, Pangaimotu is great!  We are still trying very hard to progress our investigators and the very large list of less actives.  It can be hard though, especially when every single appointment we had ALL of last week, fell through :)  Gotta keep smiling!!  The Island is beautiful and I love these people.  There is nothing I'd rather be doing then representing the Savior here in this part of the world!

A major set back in all the Motus (Islands beside the main one) is not seeing the members help with the work.  It seems to be generally accepted by all the missionaries that that is just how it is, but we are starting to see some more improvements with it.  We got to go down to our other little tiny village we cover with a member family and got an appointment to teach a little family.  We have started to have meetings with the ward at the end of church every week so that we can report the work we've done and encourage missionary work to be more of a topic on the members minds.

We had another Musical Fireside yesterday that was fun. This time a nonmember and a less active lady came and that makes it all worth it to me!  Even if half of the members are 'le'o ua' (tone deaf) we got this old man named Talikavili who would hop in and just start singing from the audience.

It's funny reading other missionaries blogs in much bigger places who drop investigators if they aren't progressing at all... here our investigators are all we have if we dropped them we wouldn't have anything to do lolol!

We've been trying to start a Po Ako (study night) to help the kids with English and hopefully find new investigators that way, and we had our first one on Thursday and no one showed up! 

Our dog Peewee still follows us everywhere.  She came with us all the way to our neighboring village for District Meeting and then when the zones came and picks us up she had to find her own way back which was surprisingly fast. 

SHOUT OUT TO MY AWESOME DAD WHOSE BIRTHDAY WAS LAST WEEK! LOVE YOU SO MUCH TANGATA'EIKI!!!!!

Random things:

-One of our less-actives was reading a Jehovah Witness hand out book during 2nd hour at church

-I learned that Tongans think that braces (on teeth) are 'beautiful' and like a trend or style in America 

-As a blonde dog walked past a little kid said, "Sio, lanu tatau a Kalanite" "Look he's the same color as Kalanite" lolol Rockin the palangi image our here!

Hope everyone in the mother land is doing good! And all you other homies rockin the badge around the world! Love you all ki tu'a maamani!

-Eleta K-Nite✌

WEEK 44 IN TONGA, PANGAI,MOTU

Hey you two! Running a little low on time right now, so Ill send a quick update to you guys!

This week we got to teach the family of that sister who works in the Philippians right now.  It was way good!  The dad is pretty loto-fefeka (Hard Hearted) but it went way good and they should be reading the BOM before our next appointment tomorrow.  I can just feel his general dislike for the missionaries when he looks and talks to us, but I did my best in leading that discussion, to help him understand why we were there and the request that came from his own daughter for him to be taught. I know he loves his daughter so hopefully that will help soften his heart enough to except the message over time.  We will be fasting tonight to help with our teaching tomorrow. 

We had Stake Conference the last two days here which was way fun!  Elder Thompson (an Area 70 from NZ) came and it was way cool to listen to.  Forever love listening to a chapel full of Tongans sing hymns!  It surprised me to see how many people understand English when they would laugh at his jokes before the Translator would even say anything.  The Temple President was there, who is just a man who radiates the Spirit.  I think my favorite thing that the 70 talked about was his talk about Nephi building the boat, and comparing it to our lives.  He asked if we thought that God knew how to build a boat, which of course he does, and it would be a pretty dang good boat.  He compared it to the youth building their lives.  If we do it after the manner he has laid out, it will be a pretty dang good life!

Well, like you mentioned mom, we've been trying to do more service which has been somewhat of a success I guess.  I thought it would be pretty easy to just notice something we could do every night and then do it the next day. But it's a little harder with both of us being from overseas, people tend to treat us a little differently.  Wednesday morning, I wasn't going to walk back into the house for studies without doing something! So we vilod that morning with a rake in my hand.  People looked at me weird but I got some good tafi (sweeping) done around the neighborhood.

Man sorry, Pres Makai is coming right now to pick us up for Pday.  Tell Nonu and Despain I love them! Use those Tongan phrases I taught you!

Tell them this:

Eh, Ongo Ua, masi'i, mo alu o kai lelei mo eku famili eh? Te mau kai emau kuli ahoni hahaha. Tangata eiki, te'eki ke u lepa au i vava'uni o hange ko koe i Tefisi lolol. Sipeini, tokanga koe na'a ke to eh, manatu'i ae fale'i a Tupou, o "Liaki Kinautolu"  haha. Loi pe ia. Ue kataki, fiemau ke me alu na'a ita a Makai. Ofa lahi atu ke moua. Mo tali pe ke u foki atu ke tau vaivai siasi fakataha hahaha!

LOVE YOU GUYS!

-Elder Kalanite

 Pres. and Sister Makai and us

 Just hanging out

Hanging side ways

WEEK 43 IN TONGA, PANGAI MOTU

Whats Happening This'avy??

Hey guys! The last week has been good! Here's just a little bit of whats happened:

We gave our shirts to one of our members for her to clean them, and we get them back 100% BLUE. Tongans do that because they think it look better but for real though.. its kinda ugly.  Good thing it all came out during the wash last week. Phew!

Me and my comp were a little sick a couple of days.  Just kinda a weird cold thing not fun though.

We got a random email from a Sister working in the Philippians who asked us to go and teach her family here in Pangai!  We went to their house and took him a print out of her testimony and some pictures.  We set up an appointment but it hasn't been able yet.  I think it will be way cool though!

I continue to be blowing kids minds with my magic tricks (just a little rock trick that Chad showed me) . Now, where ever we go, the kids will stop us and make me do the tricks.  Not gonna lie its getting a little annoying but who knows.. its actually helping us meet new people, so I'm down with it!

We got to help during a little primary activity which was way fun. Taught the kids Red light green light and Sharks and Minnows.  I truly love these kids so much.  From the little kids that love playing little games with us up the the young adults.  We walked into the Sunday School class for the kids this Sunday and the teacher was just sitting there staring at the kids talking, so I totally knew what was coming and he asked us to teach the rest of the hour.  I love teaching so much!  We taught a little lesson about the Atonement that involved one of the youth doing around 200 push ups in like 10 min. Felt kind bad, but whatcha gonna do when you have no time to prepare a lesson!

We had an awesome Musical Fireside that not really anyone came to.  We tried to remind everyone to bring an invite, but not much success :/  It was way fun though!  Faleao sang a solo and we sang a song with some of the primary kids.  About half of the songs were VERY off tune, but we very much appreciated the members efforts and willingness to prepare songs to sing.  They're awesome!

We got transfers yesterday and we're staying!!  Happyyy newsss!

I might have mentioned an Australian couple we met in the last couple weeks.  These guys are so nice, we've eaten at there house probably like 4 times.  They have lots of thoughts about the Mormon church and its differences to the other churches here.  We've gotten about half way through one lesson with them but they talk SO much.  Literately every convo with them turns into like 2 hours long, but he has brought up some crazy random thoughts he has, but turns out, is actually doctrine that we believe in.  Like out of now where, he said, "Where to Polynesians come from?" and then started talking about how they could have only come from South America and how they resemble Indians so much and I was just thinking about Hagoth in the BOM the whole time.  I wanted to say something, but I realized we should probably teach them a couple other things first.  Some day hopefully we will actually be able to teach them about the church without the randomest of side conversations that take us up until our curfew!

Kinda got a slap in the face this week when we were talking to our excommunicated homie about our schedule and how we normally study at about 11 because that's when it starts to get hot out, and he started to talk about how back in his day that's when they would do a little service project every day and then study (He was Misiona Tonga too) and I realized that I should have been doing that my whole mission in the slow areas, even though I don't know a single companionship that does that, this week I want us to try it. That'll be the key to meeting even more people out here! 

Yikkess, we gotta run mom and dad! I love you guys! Thanks for your guys emails!  Hope you guys had fun on your trip! Have another awesome week!

-Elder Kalanite

 Beautiful lagoon

 Beautiful lagoon with Great Elders

 Me & Elder Faleao

 Crazy dog

More than a three hour tour