Tuvalu - Week 3

Kaiga!

Man I still can't believe I'm here on Tuvalu.  It is really beautiful here!  The water is so blue and clear it makes you want to jump right in!  Too bad that's tapu (forbidden):(  But I love it here.  Despite being the only missionaries here, we don't get too lonely because the members take really good care of us.  They feed us way too good!  Haha I was freaking out because last week there was like a shortage of onions/potatoes/vegetables on the island.  But the boat came in so now everything is all good:)  Haha judging by your emails of wanting to send me vegetables it looks like I scared you too;)  

The hardest thing right now is the language.  After getting past the rough stages of Fijian, it has really been a mental game trying to find the motivation to learn this language.  But somehow it comes, especially after trying to teach a real lesson in a language with no MTC or anything.  But luckily my companion Elder Pomate is patient with me and does most of the teaching for the moment.  But I am improving a little bit; I just have to keep trying I guess haha.  

Just to brag about our branch for a minute......The Tuvalu branch has an average of about 50 members to sacrament meeting every Sunday (yesterday was worse because there were 3 funerals on the island).  But the branch has 11 missionaries out right now!  It's pretty awesome.  

The work is a bit slow here right now.  We have one investigator who is ready to get baptized but her parents are gone for a little while so we have to wait for them.  And all of our other investigators are playing hard to get.....   So we've been trying to talk to everyone to get more referrals.  

Funny note:  Tuvaluans love their Bingo.  They play all the time.  And when they play, they don't care about anything else.  We tried to talk to a guy while he was playing and he straight up ignored us!  Haha it is an interesting place.

Love you all!  Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Harris

The end (bottom) of the island

This is a cool little hut we had a lesson in the other day

The Nikos.  They're awesome!  They took us to a restaurant and bought a ton of food!  They're the reason this branch is still here.  At one point, the church had struggles and they kept having sacrament meeting in their house with just their family.  He has been branch president for a really long time, but they decided recently to give him a break and put him as 1st counselor.  They're awesome!

Haha we asked our recent convert (13 years old) to get us some fish so he showed up to our flat with a really big one and a bucket full of small ones.  He would only take $5 for it.