Things are looking up!

 (This is the largest KPC church built on Nikunau in the 1800s) 

We had a great week. Right after email last week we got a call from the Walls that they had sent packages! So we got our pump and I got a package from you, Kalani, and President Weir! So fun. Thanks for the Legos and he food. (We sent him a few small Lego action figures.  It seemed like a good thing for him to carry around and show to little kids.  There are no toys on these islands and since legos were Dallin's childhood we thought he would enjoy sharing them.  They were Star Wars, of course.)  I love cliff bars. Kalani sen me a tie and some junk food and some really awesome BYU devotionals she found. I'll recommend you read them actually: Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ by Elder Gene R. Cook.  It's awesome. Really perfect for missionaries. President sent me medicine from Marshall's and a copy of The Liahona from Sept and Oct.  This medicine is literally magic. I had one on my arm and it was gone in a day. We didn't clean the well, our pump got fixed and it rained for 4 days do our tank is full again. (Yay for fresh rain water and new medicine!)  Everything in the package was perfect. I also love the watch. Perfect for here. 

(We asked if the rain made teaching and getting around difficult. On Christmas Island no one would let the wet missionaries in when it rained.)  Rain does not mess up our teaching. It POURED for literally all day yesterday. So dark and rainy or solar didn't even charge. We still biked 40 miles, did 2 confirmations, and taught 10 lessons. Rain is inconvenient, but we still work. If we're 10 miles away and it starts raining we just do things normally, we just get really wet. 

2 baptisms! There was progress with the mean grandma, we baptized 2/3 of the kids on a compromise. We'll still keep after the other one. We are at the house a lot because this is Etuati 's house, the guy with no leg. It's his mom who is the mean grandma, and his kids who were baptized, and his niece who is forbidden to be baptized. 

Looks like I will be opening Nikunau with Elder Sion. Sometime in October. Missionaries have never worked on Nikunau, so I have zero information for you about it!  But Elder Sion is fun. He was my District Leader in Betio, he's Hispanic and he's from Detroit. Great guy. So looks like that will be quite an adventure.  Hopefully it's a great place. It can't be bigger than Abaiang, so it will be less biking and that will be nice. Let me know anything you find out, I know just as little as you. We'll most likely just get off the plane and try to find somewhere to live first. It will be really basic for a long while. I have no idea honestly haha I don't know if I'll even have a house!

New intake comes in October 9th, so transfers will start around then. I have to go to Tarawa first for sure. All flights go through there. We should have a pretty good set of supplies and such as 4 of us will be making the initial trip out. Me, Sion, Maisey and Grover. Maisey and Grover are the outer island ZL's. It's basically their job to visit struggling outies and help out. So they'll stick with us for a while to smooth the transition.  I'll take plenty of supplies. I can handle staying healthy, I promise.  I am sure Nikunau will be one of those crazy experiences that'll stick with me forever. Hopefully I can work hard enough to make it a good experience.

(Here is some basic information we googled quickly about the island and sent to Dallin.  It's hilarious how the 2005 census notes that there is 1 Mormon on the island.)

"Just around 2,000 people. Northern part has main offices, etc with 4 villages and the southern has 2 villages.

The Nikunauans are fortunate in their island being wide and pride themselves in the growth of coconuts on the island for it is said that the coconut trees on the island rarely suffer the effects of drought and will continue to produce coconuts thus copra, during periods of famine. A favorite local term on the island is ‘te kataang’ (spreading across an area to collect coconuts or fish etc). This term is generally used on the island when collecting coconuts across a span of land. 

Visitors residing on the island are highly commiserated with, and for consumption needs, a yard on both sides and including the road itself is generally allowed for them to collect coconuts from thus it is quite common to see teachers, council workers or medical officers hire a truck for a round trip of the island just to collect coconuts for their own consumption. This custom has however been misused by the islanders themselves to the effect that the ‘unimwane’ now deem it a waste of time and to be stopped. 

All guests staying at the Council rest-house in Rungataa are always booked for the first four nights of their stay on the island to visit four different ‘mwaneabas’ in the early evening for general introduction and discussion of island visit objectives. The bookings for the different four ‘mwaneabas’ are however restricted only to visitors in the council rest-house. Every time a guest is called to such gatherings, a new ‘nangoa’ (lavalava/sarong) is provided to highlight the importance of the guest(s) and to bring good luck to the visitors during their time of visit to the island. The provision of ‘nangoa’ is not limited to guests at the rest-house but generally to any visitor to the island invited to similar gatherings. This custom was introduced in the 1920-1930s (Timeon pers. comm.) during the phosphate mining years of Banaba and Nauru when excess rolls of materials were sent back to the village of Tabomatang for the opening of either a ‘mwaneaba’ or a church. Though the materials were meant to be used that one time only, the people found that the materials had been excessively sent whence the custom of providing guests with the ‘nango’ was born. The excess materials were then used to dress initially the unimwane, 

guests and later anyone deemed a guest (a foreigner or from Nikunau). 

The Nikunauans are generally like those in the rest of the country – friendly, hospitable, religious and like Beru, have a similar accent with the end of their sentences always ending in a high pitch.

The 2005 census showed that out of the 1912 Nikunauans, 986 (51.6%) are Protestant, 870 (45.5%) are Roman Catholic followers, 8 (0.4%) belong to the Seventh Adventist Church, 39 (2%) are Baha’is, 7 (0.4%) belong to some other unstated church while one does not have religion and the other is a Mormon." 

I'm just really happy that we taught lessons this week. I taught a lesson in priesthood about praying in faith, and it was really good. I read that verse in Alma 31 that talks about how the Lord prepared the way because Alma prayed in faith. The Lord didn't do everything, but he did make it possible for Alma and company to do what they needed to do. I really enjoyed it. Made me look forward to Nikunau and think about the kind of prayers I'm gonna need out there!

(A KPC church next to a traditional mwaneabas in one of the villages on Nikunau)

Dallin has to stop in Tarawa on his way to the next transfer, so he promised to go to Moroni High where the internet is faster and send home some pictures!!  He also promised to get a haircut.  Missionaries don't get haircuts the entire time they are on an outer island. He said some missionaries come back in with beards and crazy hair.  He said I would be proud of the fact that he is shaving every day and keeping his shirts spotless white.

He is hopeful that because there is a council office on Nikunau that there will be internet.  Unfortunately, we won't know if we are going to hear from him on this island until after he gets there.  Fingers crossed!

Just a Quick Hello!

We did hear from Dallin yesterday, but there is not much to report.  They had kind of a rough week with a few baptisms falling through, he continues to deal with illness (I was so hoping he would be healthy this week), and they are running out of water.  I checked the weather and they have a good chance of rain later this week, so hopefully their water storage will be replenished.  Until then they are living on coconuts and really nasty well water.

He knows he is getting transferred to another outer island sometime around October 9th - details to come.  He was in good spirits, just totally exhausted.  It seems like he has alternating good weeks and rough weeks.  Maybe next week will be better.

Ed said that he thought of him this week when he read Alma 31:38.  Dallin had read the same scripture this week and it brought him comfort in his circumstances:

"38 And the Lord provided for them that they should hunger not, neither should they thirst; yea, and he also gave them strength, that they should suffer no manner of afflictions, save it were swallowed up in the joy of Christ. Now this was according to the prayer of Alma; and this because he prayed in faith."

From Dallin...
Thanks for all the prayers! I sure need them. We are actually going to get going right now. Our time is up :( thanks for the the emails! I love and miss you all a lot. Thanks so much for your support. Hear from you all next week :)

Love Dal!

Just a Little Bleach

We were able to email with Dallin last night.  He had a great week!  The work is really picking up on Abaiang and they are beginning to see lots of re-activation and many new investigators/baptisms.

Great week, we did a lot of good work. 105 miles, I think that will be average now. We had a baptism, had 4(!) successful baptismal interviews, and taught a lot of great lessons. We also had some new investigators. I think we've worked hard enough for long enough that we'll be in a really good cycle for a long time. We have baptisms planned for the next 5 weeks. Really exciting. Plus we'll most likely be involved in the October transfer to some degree, so things are very busy but very good. 

Our whole family has been praying diligently that inspiration would come to someone about how to help Dallin stay healthy.  I actually spoke with his Dermatologist from home about his situation to see if she had any suggestions.  She said that some people's skin just can't balance itself with that kind of contamination and since there was no way to fix the contaminated water or culture anything that he should just take a "bleach bath" every day.  He just has to dilute some bleach in a bucket of water and wash down his skin - every day.  She thinks it will keep the nasty bacteria under control and cut way down on the infections.  I know that they can get bleach, because he has been diligent about bleaching all his shirts, towels, etc. trying to keep things clean.  We have sent all kinds of antibacterial soap, but it never occurred to any of us that the bleach could be diluted and used on his skin.  I immediately emailed this information to him and he read it yesterday.  He had received the same inspiration before even reading my email!!!  It seems so simple.  It makes you ponder why simple answers don't come more easily, but I guess there are lessons to be learned first sometimes.  Hopefully this simple step every day will keep him healthy.

About the bleach! Last Monday night I thought really hard about what I could do to fix my skin, and I decided to put bleach in my bucket showers haha I've been showering with a cap-full of bleach in my bucket every morning for all week. No new infections, so hopefully it helps!  I'll bump it up to two cap-fulls. Too funny I just did that on my own! Glad it was apparently a sound idea. (actually more like divine inspiration ;)

I am feeling pretty optimistic about it to be honest. We have bleach here, we're lucky because we're close to Tarawa so we get most of the basic things. Also, the service center will be coming this week sometime to fix our pump, so going back to rainwater will be good too.

While we were emailing Dallin mentioned that one of the ZLs hinted that he might be getting transferred in October.  Ed asked  him if he had some sort of elaborate spy network keeping tabs on the movement of the mission :)

I do indeed have a spy network, President Weir, Josh Sherman the AP, Elder Maisey the ZL, Elder Raika the ZL. They're not very forthcoming though, we don't know if it's Pulu or me, or if it's the November intake. But, we will get transferred eventually haha

A few minutes later...

I'm definitely not staying, my spy network told me I'm leaving in October :( but they also cryptically told me that I will be even happier in the place I'm going, and that I will be making history. So that is exciting and scary. 2 more weeks and transfers are really announced.  Pulu is sad, I'm glad he likes me.

He sent us two stories about people they are working with:

One really cool spiritual experience: We were leaving Tabon te Bike on Tuesday and it was pretty late, about 6. We still had about an hour bike ride ahead of us, and we were hoping to make it home before dark. On our way out of the town a guy on the road stopped us randomly, and asked if he could show us his house so that we could come back and teach him. We agreed, and we got off our bikes and started walking with this guy. We talked a bit, and he explained that he had just left the Seventh Day Adventist college in Fiji, and that he had been training to be a missionary in the SDA. He confessed that he used to hate our church. But he told us he had one lesson with Elder Wells and Elder Paora (my trainer!) in Bikenibeu. They taught about the importance of the prophet. At the time, he just shrugged it off and never had them come visit again. Bu he said that he was reading the Bible lately, thinking about prophets, and he decided to pray about that lesson from so long ago. He prayed 4 nights in a row to know if we needed a living prophet, and on the 4th night he received inspiration to go and find the missionaries.  I know he was led to us by our Heavenly Father. I also know that Heavenly Father has big plans for him, and I'm so excited for his lessons. Hopefully he gets baptized before I leave :(

Our baptism was a guy named Terabwena. He is hilarious, he loves being a farmer! He plants all kinds of stuff at his house, and we're actually bringing those seeds from Grammy to him on Thursday. He wears blue jeans too... because it's farmer attire. Such a goofball. He had a bad drinking problem, but he prayed so hard to overcome it and he totally conquered it. His wife is a less active, but now they're both active and aiming for the temple. No kids yet, but they want to have kids who will serve missions. Great guy. He gave us cabbage and bananas yesterday and it was awesome.

Baptism interviews happen one week before baptisms, so we have 4 baptisms this week. 3 in Tabon te Bike, one in Tuarabu. Church is great, especially in Tabon te Bike. We slept in Tabon te Bike chapel on Saturday night, went to sacrament there Sunday morning. Saturday night though they did a party for us. The new Branch Pres is trying to get everyone excited about missionary work and bringing less actives back. He's the man. Also, the Stake Presidency came to visit Abaiang.  President Tione, the 2nd counselor came to Tabon te Bike with us. He's funny.  He loves us because he's visited Abaiang three times while we've been here. He brought us cookies from Tarawa.  I am trying to take a lot of pictures! Especially now that I will be leaving here soon.

We mentioned how smart it was to save so much time  biking and just sleep at the chapel before church the next morning...

We're never sleeping in the chapel again. It was SO hot and just really unbearable. We had mosquito nets, but I got bitten a lot too. It was a great one-time experience I think haha I love president Tione. He is the man.

We asked where they do all their baptisms on this island.

We do all our baptisms in the lagoon, which is essentially ocean but more shallow and not as wavy. 

Our time was over in a flash, but we were so happy to hear about the work and feel his excitement.  He really loves this island and is sad about leaving all the people he has grown to love.  I'm sure another adventure is awaiting him.  Thanks to everyone for your prayers.  He feels the love of so many... and so do we.

I Found Two Pictures!

I am always looking at blogs and postings from other missionaries in Dallin's mission in the hopes I will find a picture of him!  These two pictures were in a newsletter that was sent out sometime recently.  This is the hut Dallin lived in on Christmas Island and this is the visit from Elder Hamula.  They are not great pictures, but I'll take anything I can get :)

Thank Goodness for Physics Class

We had an internet miracle this Sunday!  There had been no internet on the island for about 2 weeks, but Dallin and Elder Pulu decided to ride over to the cafe anyway just in case.  They arrived about 5 minutes after it came back on!  We were really relieved to hear from him and hopefully he got a lift after getting to read all his emails.  I will piece together a summary from our back and forth as there was no "official" letter this week from the itouch :)

They have had a lot of mechanical problems this week.  The solar power in their house quit charging as well as the water pump.  When they report problems, the office expects them to try to work on it themselves and be very sure about what parts they need to send.  It is really hard to get repairmen/parts out to the islands, so the missionaries learn to figure it out on their own.  Thank goodness we sent him the mini-panel - it has been keeping things charged. Here's what he said:

"Solar is great! It charges awesomely. I love that little battery pack and fan, the best thing ever. The panel is great. Speaking of solar, I became an electrical engineer last week, I took apart our entire house solar/electrical system and put it all back together. It wasn't charging, but now it's all fixed. So that's fun. I did it all with just that leatherman you set me haha!"

We then expressed concern that he might electrocute himself... "I won't, I took physics e/m I know what I'm doing with circuits. I might bless or pump though, well water sucks."... so I guess an email to his old physics teacher is in order!  Teachers like to hear how their students use the material in real life, right?!

We asked about his investigators and baptisms:
"Tabon te bike has a new Branch President, and he is so awesome! He did less active visits with us all day Saturday. We had 3 baptisms these last two weeks. One in each area. It's awesome. I'm making Pulu teach lessons on his own. He hated it at first, like a lot, haha but he finally is teaching and it's working."

"One of our baptized is Riimwa. He's been coming to church for like several years, we just helped him to overcome a smoking problem. He got baptized, and the same Sunday he was confirmed, he got called to be the new 2nd counselor in the branch presidency under our new Branch Pres in Tabon te Bike. He's the man, and he's definitely ready to help with the work. I'm glad he was willing to change, he just needed a small push and then he was ready to do the rest on his own. Great guy."

We asked him how much he biked in the last 2 weeks:
"212 miles. My legs are always sore, just mostly from tiredness. They're toned though."

We asked him how the language was coming and he said he had kind of plateaued because there is just not a lot of material to study.  The Kiribati language was only written in the late 1800's by a protestant missionary using the Latin alphabet and it wasn't until 1970 that a language board was established to standardize the language.

"I'm thinking of starting the bible in Kiribati. It's hard, it's written in like old language, but I think it might be a good way to get new vocabulary, even if it's not as commonly used. I think I'll try and do a chapter a day  or something."

We asked him about music in his congregations.  There are obviously no pianos and we were wondering if there were favorite hymns.  I had read that singing was a big part of their culture:

"One person sings the first couple notes and says 1, 2 , sing and then everyone just goes. We have hymn books, but most people only sing like 3 songs. Redeemer of Israel, We Thank Thee o God for a Prophet, Count Your Many Blessings, God be with you til we meet again, and How great the wisdom and the love for sacrament. Some wards are really bad at singing. Betio was terrible. Here they're pretty good.  They do love to sing. They sing all the time, but never well, they just like to make noise I think hahaha it's so funny. We'll look up Kiribati music when I get home, you'll laugh."

We asked him about p-day and shopping on this island:
"P days are not much fun.  We wake up, Pulu does wash for about 2 hours, we come email (which is fun - unless Internet is down), then we go home and I wash for 2+ hours, then we usually have one lesson and a family home evening. Not enough time to do anything fun. We do have stores, we can get a lot of things from Tarawa too. It's just not very nice things haha like, canned food mostly. It's alright though, we manage. Money comes into the council monthly, we just show up sign and it's done." 

We asked about his health:
"DO NOT freak out, everything has settled now, and I am 100% fine.  Last week though, I had two severe infections. One on my eye, from that wasp sting I told you about. From the last time we emailed til that Saturday it just got bigger and bigger, and my eye swelled shut. So embarrassing to teach lessons. But finally it just was enough of hurting and being huge so I cut I open with a sanitized pocket knife and drained it all. Right now, you can't even tell it happened. Other one was on my left shin, it hurt for walking and sitting and it was the biggest in history. I did the same thing, cut it open and stuff. It's equally healed now, no worries. Just a scab. Other than that, my gums are done bleeding, I have no stomach problems, I'm fine! Our water pump is burned out, so we're showering in well water again, so that's gross. But hopefully he service center will fix that soon. 

I am mostly happy. Last two weeks were just really hard, I hate being sick and it was awful being so embarrassed about my eye. Then I was just not happy to not have email last week. But I'm trying to be happy, and I know I'm helping people so that's good. I don't really love the culture yet, I'm trying. I get so irritated when church starts an hour and a half late or when people set a time and then go fishing; the entire culture is just inconvenient. I'm praying for charity, because I need it, and I really am trying to focus on the good.

Thank you really. I love you guys! Have fun watching football, I have to go wash :( talk to you all next week!

Love Dal

No Email... but a Picture!

We haven't heard from Dallin this week, but Josh Sherman (who is currently an AP) took a picture of Dallin and his companion on their last visit with President Weir.  I was feeling sad that we didn't hear from him, and was SO OVERJOYED when Masako posted this picture!  It is rare that Dallin has enough internet speed to upload anything, so it is so nice to see his smiling face.  I assume that I see his little solar-powered house behind him and I see some huts to the right. Thank you, thank you, thank you Masako (and of course Josh for taking and sending the picture)!

Happy Day.