Mauri, week 3 rabi!

 

 

Mauri everyone!

Hey guys sorry I couldn't email last week. There isn't any real place to email on this island because of the super spotty power and the doctor we sometimes email at is out of town a lot, so we will see how frequent I get to email over the next few months. But this week we got to go to a mission conference over in Taveuni so we get to email this week.  Woooo!!!

Me and Elder Davis, my district leader, on the boat to Taveuni

These past two or three weeks have been super busy and filled with studying to try to learn this new language as much as possible. The Gilbertese language is a language that only uses 14 letters so all the words sound very similar and it still just sounds like Chinese to me so that's been fun. haha The island of Rabi is pretty small and you can walk the whole thing in like 4 hours or so. It doesn't really feel civilized at all. There isn't any hotels or resorts on the island. We only have power for 3 or so hours a day because of the generator that runs in the village we live in. The water is more brown then clear so we have to filter and boil it before we drink. We fill up buckets of water and use a bowl to pour water on us for our showers. As for food there is like 4 mini stores that sell the basic foods here in Fiji. There isn't a refrigerator or freezer on this whole island because of the lack of power and there is one restaurant that sells fish and rice for 2 hours a day. The whole island is like right on the ocean, and I still haven't been to a house that I couldn't see the ocean from so that's pretty neat! As for the food we eat fish that has just been caught that day for every single meal. Sometimes its fried and sometimes its raw but they are both so nice! Got to love that raw fish!. The people here are literally the nicest people on the planet! They are way nicer than Fijians and that says something! haha They are super short, have pretty dark skin, and are way loud like all the time! haha Its pretty funny though because I'm one of two white guys on the entire island and I'm way taller then them so everyone stares at me all the time, like literally everyone. And it's more awkward because I don't know how to speak with them hahhaha oh well! Our other main source of food out here is mangoes. We have two huge trees next to our house and me and my companion Elder Alonzo average eating between 5-8 a day. haha They are so nice....

 

Crazy kids!

As for the work here, its pretty slow but we have two baptisms on this Sunday for an 8 and 9 year old girls that are probably the cutest girls in the world. We should be able to baptize them in the ocean so that's going to be pretty cool too:) I will send pictures!

 

Me and our baptismal dates who are the cutest girls!

 

As for this week we got the chance as the zone on the Northern island to go up to the beautiful island of Taveuni for a mission conference/ stake conference with Elder Pierson, a member of the seventy. We had such a good weekend with heaps of meetings and just lots of elders being all together. We had 20 elders staying in two tiny apartments so you know it was a bit stuffy and cramped, but we definitley had some fun and caused some trouble... haha

Me and my best friend, Elder Mclean, from my intake



Me and my boy, Elder Afatasi

Part of our zone at the dock

One last story, probably the coolest thing I've done since I've been her in Fiji. When me and Elder Alonzo took the boat ride off of Rabi to come to Taveuni we rode on a tiny fishing boat that belonged to a member. About half way through the boat ride he asked us if we wanted to fish and we were like absolutely! So he gave us both a spool of fishing line and we let it go probably 50 or so yards behind the boat. So how we do it is you wrap the line around your hand a few times then while the boat is going full speed you move your arm non stop so the fish are attracted to the little hook on the end of the line. Then the driver of the boat just chases birds because that's usally where the fish are. Then while the boat is going full speed you just get a massive tug on your arm that sends you off balance on the boat and then you pull the line in with your arms. SO MANLY RIGHT? haha so sick. But we were going and he told us that not alot of elders have ever caught much and then BAM a massive pull on our arms and we both pulled in fish that were probably the size of my fingertips to mid bicep.. MASSIVE  I ended up catching 2 and Elder Alonzo caught 3. The member wanted us to keep fishing because we were " being blessed as missionaries" hahah it was so fun. We then killed them on the boat and I got alot of fish blood on my shirt so that looked pretty cool, haha But ya it was seriously the craziest thing I've done so far!

Anyways ya you could say life is crazy out here but hey I'm loving it. I love you all. Thanks for all the support you give me.  Have a great week!

Elder Mumford

Beautiful sunset