First Full Week on Abaiang!

*We got a short email from Dallin on the 28th.  There was no internet on his P-day, so they stopped by the cafe to send short messages home the next day to let us know all was well.  I left for YW camp a few hours later and didn't have time to get this posted.

Hi mom dad Taylor and cami!

We had a busy week here in Abaiang. First full week, and we finally worked all three of our areas. Very tiring, lots and lots of biking. Some days, we bike for more hours than we teach, so that's kindof frustrating, but when we do teach lessons they go well. 

We're essentially starting from scratch out here. The Sisters who worked here before us left us 1 investigator, out of 3 whole areas. I'm trying not to be bitter. As a result, we have done a lot of finding, mostly tracting. It's going well; it's just slow. We have found some really good families though, and we're excited to see where we can take this place. 

I'm still adjusting to outer island life. Everything is hot and inconvenient, but that doesn't mean it's bad I guess. I'm clearly getting a lot of time to adjust my attitude. The hardest part is sleeping at night. We have solar power during the day, so when the sun is up, we can run our fan no problem, and the house is bearable. But at night, we just have the charge off a car battery that the solar charges up. So we have to spend our solar wisely, on lights and water pump and the fan. So if we save all the power for the fan, it dies around 4 in the morning, so we're cool enough until it actually cools down, so we survive the night. But if we turn in the lights or the pump on for a minute, the fan dies at like 11, so then we just sweat alllllll night long. It is SO hot. So that's tough. It's so gross too. I miss reliable electricity! 

I feel like I'm learning a lot out here, especially about how to teach effectively. It's mostly me teachig lessons right now, since Elder Pulufana is still learning the language. It's weird for me to not have anyone to count on to help me if I get lost, so I have to be super precise and my lessons are improving as a result. I am grateful for the things I'm learning, and I hope I can continue to learn what I need to learn!  

I'm exhausted, and I'm sorry this email is short! It's hard to type on this iPod, but it's better than nothing. I love you all! Thank you for the support and prayers. 

Talk to you all next week!

Love Dal

Elder Hamula's Visit

I found this picture from another missionary.  It was taken when Elder Hamula was visiting Kiribati.  I just get so happy when I find any picture of Dallin!

Hello From an Ipod Touch!

*We did hear from Dallin!  There is a tiny place with Wifi on his island, but only two computers.  One was occupied by an elderly nun and he gave the other one to his greenie companion.  Dallin sent us short messages on an old ipod touch, so I am going to try to piece together a letter of sorts from those messages.

Hi mom and dad! I'm online :) such a good week! Great to hear from you this morning, such happy emails. I'm glad everyone is doing well. We’re in a little internet place about a 30 min ride from our house. 2 computers, one for my comp and one for this old nun... Awkward hahaha but lucky that there's wifi! How are you all? What do you want to hear about? Abaiang is great. Pulufana is equally great. He's a good kid, born and raised in American Samoa, but he moved to St. George last year and has stellar English. He's totally overwhelmed and shy right now, but I don't blame him. His accent is spot on, he just is shy to speak. Not a bad situation though.  No good stories yet, we hardly spent any time together on Tarawa we were always on splits with the ZL's because we worked their area and stayed in their house.  We just arrived on Abaiang Saturday due to travel delays.

(We asked about his health/arms and they are all healed.  He was able to take all the food we sent him to this island via boat since there were no weight limits) I am feeling super healthy! Not sick. I also have finally started working out again, nice to be back on a schedule.

Taylor’s pictures look awesome! (She sent him some pictures from her HEFY trip to the Dominican Republic) How is her Spanish now? Probably a thousand times better than mine. That's so fun. Tell her to respond to my email. Good for her (dealing with a mean guy during a visit), that's crazy. Our ZL right now, Elder Maisey, got in a machete fight on Beru. The guy went insane, but then he ended up getting baptized. Craziness is usually just a last resort before you give in to the truth. (She told Dallin a story about an old, drunk man trying to hit her head during splits with missionaries while yelling about the “blond Americans”.  It upset her, but she handled it well and he was embarrassed after she gave the closing prayer in Spanish and he realized she understood what he was saying about her.)

(Speaking of machetes - we sent him one in the mail per a long list of needed items for outer island life.) I'm so excited for that machete. In Kiribati it's called a taabe, and people love to show off their taabes. It's like a respect thing that your machete is sharp and clean and cool looking. So hopefully mine will qualify!  (Dallin needs a machete for several reasons, but they also drink a lot of coconuts and he needs it to open them.)  I absolutely love coconuts now. I would rather drink a coconut than just about anything else. And the stuff inside is delicious. If you get one that's the perfect ripeness, it is like carbonated. I don't know how, but it tastes so good and bubbly. Definitely my favorite food.

(We asked about P-Day activities) This morning, I hand washed all my clothes. No washing machine. My hands are sore and my back hurts from sitting next to the huge basin. Not a fun activity, but my shirts are all spotless. Outer island life is very different.  Since we already washed, technically nothing else needs to be done. Pulufana wants to play volleyball at like 4, and we have lessons at 6 and 6:30 and family home evening at 7. Other than that we have nothing else to do. I think we might go drop some coconuts and chill at the beach later. We’ll see. (We asked if he was climbing trees to get coconuts and he responded…) You use a big stick and poke the coconut stem and they fall right down – don’t worry, not climbing trees.

(We asked about the first church meetings on the island and the members in the branches there.  Since they only arrived Saturday afternoon, they didn’t have much of a chance to figure things out for Sunday.) We only did church in the main village. But, it started an hour late, we blessed and passed the sacrament, we spoke in sacrament, I taught Sunday school, and then I taught priesthood. WOOoow. I was exhausted. I honestly am worried, everyone was ready to go home after sacrament, and they were surprised when I suggested Sunday school and they seemed like "are you serious" when I suggested priesthood. Not quite sure what that means, but I sure didn't get any discussion. Kind of rough, but a good experience. I imagine that will end up happening a lot. 

Branch president is in Fiji on a temple trip right now. He's been gone for a while and he'll be gone a while longer. But I guess he's active if he's at the temple. I just wish he was here to help out.  Hopefully he comes back super motivated to get things done right. That will be important I think. Other than that, church was good.

After church, we went out and taught some lessons - 8 to be exact. Busy day! Hopefully Pulufana doesn’t hate me for such a busy first teaching day. It was good though. Tomorrow we’ll bike an hour and a half out and then the same back in from our southern village. Exciting stuff. 

Can't wait to talk to you all next week again! Thanks for everything. Love you all!

Dal

Happy Kiribati Independence!

Hi Mom, Dad, Taylor and Cami!

Short, busy and simultaneously SO boring week! Happy Kiribati
Independence, by the way. It's a week long here, so that was the
entirety of our week. So busy and so just crazy. All of Tarawa was in
Bairiki, the capitol, all week. So all the missionaries were here just
tracting and trying to find lessons. Busy stuff, but resultingly we
only got like 5 lessons the whole week... so that was just driving me
stir crazy.

Tuesday Elder Farley left to go work in Onotoa, the Southernmost
outer island for missionaries. So from Tuesday until today, I've just
been cruising around with the Zone leaders. Their house has air con,
and I got a cold from sleeping there, because I was so not used to it.
I legitimately had a runny nose from sleeping in a room that was 71
degrees. What a difference haha

Independence was just so crazy. They had soccer, volleyball, rugby,
wrestling, weight lifting, running, all kinds of competitions and such
going on all day all week. It was so fun to watch. They also had the
world's sketchiest ferris wheel at the end of the field, and we may or
may not have put all the missionaries on it at once. It was definitely
the most dangerous thing I've ever done in my life. BUT it was so fun.

Other than that, my new companion comes in today in about a half an
hour! I'll ride with the ZL's to the airport and finally meet this
kid. We'll be here on Tarawa til Thursday and then we'll be out on
Abaiang! Who knows when I'll come back in, but I am so excited to
train and so excited to finally get to work on an outer island. Lots
of exciting things going on and so much work to do. I love you all!
Thank you for your support and prayers. I'll talk to you soon!

Love Dal

Le Tour de Abaiang!

Hi Mom, Dad, Taylor and Cami!

Hopefully you have had an awesome week. Sounds like you've been having
so much fun in Indiana and the Dominican and at home and wherever
other fun places you may have been.

Happy Independence Day as well! Elder Farley and I said the pledge of
allegiance the morning of the 4th, just to be festive. I felt super
patriotic. The craziest thing ever, Kiribati Independence is July 12th.
Only thing is, Independence here, lasts a whole week, starting from
the 5th and just building up til the 12th. Everyone meets up and has a
GIGANTIC party in Bairiki (the national capitol), at the national
stadium (read - dirt soccer field with bleachers, and 100,000 people).
SO dirty and so insanely busy, but also so fun! The only hard thing is
that all of our people are gone :( So we had a really hard week for
work in Betio.

Luckily, we got to take a vacation and shortcut most of the
independence pain. My next transfer I will be working the outer island
of Abaiang. It'll just be me, and my trainee on the whole island.
We're also replacing a pair of Sisters, so it's not possible for us to
stay a week out there with them to have them show us the area and get
us used to the places or whatever. SO, President Weir authorized me
and my current companion Elder Farley, to take a boat out to Abaiang,
explore for three days, then buy plane tickets to come back in.
Essentially, a working vacation. It was so fun! Farley had worked
Abaiang 3 or 4 months ago, so he still had a good handle on the places
and the different church leadership there, which made it a lot easier.
I really had so much fun jsut getting used to the area. Abaiang is
just a really long thin island, and we live right in the center
village, Tuarabu. But, we work the whole island. We have a branch at
the furthest south point, and at the furthest noth point. So we
visited all the area, and I think I biked like 80-90 miles total in
those three days. We weren't really vacationing, we worked crazy hard.
We found about 21 different new investigators for me when I come back.
I'll be going out sometime next week, the 15th or the 16th, depending
on when my new companion comes in.

After our trip to Abaiang, we came back and just worked on our
baptizees. We had 4 of our investigators here in Betio get baptized,
and it was really awesome. We were exhausted from the trip, but I
think that made it easier for me to really feel our investigators love
for the church, and I was so proud of how they progressed. I'll send a
picture soon, the internet is too slow today.

Other than that, we're prepping Farley for his transfer tomorrow. He's
going to Onotoa, the furthest South missionaries are allowed right
now. I'm bitter we only got about a month together, we were a killer
combo. He's a great companion and I guess we're just too good to be
left together. Can't have everyone getting jealous of us :) In all
seriousness though, I'll be sad to see him go. We did a lot of good
work in Betio really fast, and it was lots of fun.

My time is almost up! We've got to go hit up the independence
festivities. Today is soccer semifinals, and the primary school dance
off. Should be too fun to watch. I'll take lots of pictures.

I love all of you! I am excited to talk to all of you next week, and
the weeks to come. Email was discovered on Abaiang, another precious
gem from our trip out there. All in all, great week. I'm happy and
healthy and very glad I am a missionary right now.

Talk to you soon!

Love Dal