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