September 22nd, 2013

Talofa

This week on my island was tough. Trying to figure out our house and every lesson falling through sucked real bad. But we had a lot of cool experiences. We went to a restaurant for dinner and there was a wedding reception going on so we were about to leave when the family asked us to stay and eat with them. So they brought us into the room where it was just the bride and groom and close friends and we ate with them haha. Then they asked my comp to speak haha and he talked about the importance of the family it was awesome. We crashed a wedding and my comp spoke at it and we didn't even know the people. After we went to a fa'atele that Pres. Niko invited us to and man it was awesome. They did all these dances and songs. Tuvalu is a lot like Samoa, its a Polynesian country and has a lot of things common throughout the Polynesian islands where as Fiji is Melanesian and a lot different from like Tonga and Samoa. So i get to experience all this cool stuff. We also had a great baptism on Saturday, the guy is the man. Yesterday we went to visit a sister in the hospital and she has cancer and we found out yesterday that she only has like four months to live and she just hit her 3 month mark. She is such a strong member and is so sad cause her family is less active. She started crying and was like all i want, is to see the temple and have my family sealed. Freak! I started crying. Families are so important and its important that no matter what we keep a good relationship with all of them. And also what a special and important place the temple is, don't take it for granted, go as much as you can. 

Love ya guys

(excerpt from Hank's letter to Jaimie)

Ya living conditions pretty much suck here haha, you'd puke if you saw our house. We pump water out of a bucket that we fill up from the tap outside our house and in the bucket are all these nasty little worms swimming around. I've just gotten use to it though haha. After an elder comes off Tuvalu he's usually made a Zone Leader pretty quickly and zls always have nice flats.  Thanks for writing me, life is tough out here on the streets haha. Alofa ki a koe

Elder Henry Cashen

September 15th, 2013

This week has been tough, with the lack of water and living in a different house and then having storms hit us, we're trying to survive haha. We're still roughing it in at the church. I'm sleeping on a mat in the church. Hopefully we get water this   week, the whole living situation sucks here in Tuvalu, we want a new flat. This week was pretty dull, its getting close to cyclone season so we've had a lot of strong wind and lots of rain, which we're trying to work around. 

On Saturday we had a great baptism of this 14 yr old kid named Akatasa. He's the man, and for a 14 year old kid he really had an awesome understanding of the Gospel.

We have another baptism this Saturday of a guy named Ukasi who is also the man and will be a great addition to the priesthood here in Tuvalu. We have a girl we are teaching named Emma. She's a great investigator but she wants to get baptized with her husband who is in Fiji. She came to church yesterday and after talking to her and finding out some of her problems we offered her a blessing which she accepted. My comp anointed her and i gave the blessing and afterwards she was wiping tears from her eyes. The priesthood and priesthood power are real. Teaching the gospel is fun and hard but its always worth it seeing the effects of your work and service. Being on a mission you see that no one is perfect and that every family has their problems. Its important for missionaries to be there to help and be that love that people need but its also important for members to show their love and not judge or gossip. Oh ya, as you know i love cats. And here in the islands people treat dogs and cats like crap. So this morning while we were doing our studies this kid picked up his kitten and was like using it as a toy airplane, and like swooping it down on these big dogs who were hitting it. So after watching this for like five minutes i got up and yelled at the kid to stop haha. My comp was like, man you really like cats haha. Anyways, Love ya guys and hope you're all doing well. 

Love 

Elder Cashen

September 9th, 2013

Hello everyone,

Well there once was a place where it never rained...the end. 

Tuvalu gets all its water from the rain and it hasn't rained here for like 3 weeks so our flat ran out of water Saturday night, so i took a shower with a water bottle i had filled up previously....i didn't feel clean haha. We decided to go to church early and use the shower there and it didn't work. 7:00 in the morning contemplating on what to do, my comp and I decided the lagoon was the only choice. So we took a table cloth, cut it in half, wrapped ourselves up and bathed in the ocean. It was awesome and really weird and I still didn't feel clean. Don't worry we didn't break any rules, it's allowed if we run out of water. They got the shower at the church to work so last night and probably for a few more days we'll be sleeping on the floor on mats in the church. The island is great. this week was slow because there were a lot of funerals and when that happens on the south pacific, all Polynesians drop what they're doing and its like a week event. We have great investigators right now but they all have the same problem: smoking, and we don't know what to do. But the language is coming more and more every week its just gonna take time and dilligent study.We have a baptism next week of this 14 year old kid who's the man. We're also teaching these two ladies who are on like a search for religious truth so they're studying all these religions and we are the "scholars" as she puts it that they want to hear mormonism from. They started like questioning us and the first question they asked was about the BoM and how revelations says not to add to this book. So i explained to them the verse and how John was on an island and that he was talking about his book, revelations. She then pulled out a Jehovah's Wittness magazine saying that the LDS church teaches that the soul will never die which is true, its eternal. But this ex-mormon in this magazine was saying that in ezekiel the soul dies. So i asked her to turn to the verse and the guy had totally butchered the verse for his own cause and she saw that and was like oh the soul that "sinneth" dies. I explained that through the atonement and repentance we can be clean and saved from spiritual death. She was like thanks we really learned a lot today, so hopefully we can start actually teaching them the lessons soon. We also had a great lesson with an investigator Melton who had problems with the BoM because he said the Bible doesn't talk about the BoM, so we shared with him John 10:16 about other sheep and Ezekiel 37 about the stick of judah and Joseph, and finished the lesson with Elder Hollands testimony of the BoM, Melton told us he knew it was true after the lesson.  Anyways love you guys and i hope you're doing well. I'm working hard and trying to survive haha. 

love

Elder Cashen