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!