Week 9 - Guess Where...Burgers, all-nighter, and a Neon Moon

Chuuk Airport

So apparently transfers actually are a thing in Micronesia...

Sister Jones got feeling better about Tuesday and we had been working hard ever since. Saturday was awesome proselyting wise, Sister Jones and I got SO much done and had a ton of investigators set to come to church the next day. And we promised to walk with a lot of people. Sister Jones mentioned that transfer calls would come for Yap that day because of flights, but we didn't think much of it because, you know, I'm in the middle of training, was there for only 6 weeks, (technically more like 4 weeks because of the trips to Guam), and there are no other Sisters on Yap.

Well, we were teaching an investigator determining if he still wanted lessons or not. Anywho, we got a call and I had the cell phone. fun fun though, it was the assistants. I told Sister Jones and answered the phone full well knowing they'd only talk to her and she said to give her the phone. But I just said hello then handed it off. She took it and talked to them. And I tried to have a normal conversation with Tom (the investigator). I was panicking so it was far from normal. Sister Jones got off the phone and looked very solemn and panicked too. We said goodbye to Tom and as we walked away I said "What... What is happening?" She then said "Well.. I'm suppose to pack my stuff for 10 days... You're suppose to pack.. everything." And that was all we knew. Literally ALL. WE. KNEW. We had to call the airport to figure out which flight we were leaving on because we weren't told. There were only two flights that night though, usually there's only one. It was about 6pm then, and our brains could not function. We drove around for about 5 minutes trying to figure out if we were seeing investigators, going home to pack, telling the Elders what they needed to do for us at church tomorrow or what. We finally somehow got ourselves home and began panic packing.

Jones and I had Burgers at midnight the night we were going to fly out. and we played poker and ate oreos. Twas great. Then we flew out. Twas great too. Got to Guam at 4:30am and I did not sleep at all. Got to church with the Guam sisters, and Jones and I still don't know what's going on. All we know are that transfers are that day. Church was just wow. There was an actual chapel with pews and everything!! I hadn't seen that in a while. Kinglove is a kid I taught while on Guam last time and he remembered me and asked the sisters on Guam if I was coming back! He was at church that day and passed the sacrament for the first time! So exciting. I was with four other sisters on Sunday, and we taught five 8-10 year old little girls and it was so so cute and so fun! I told them a story about you Claire and how you're so kind and your kindness is so important in bringing the spirit into our home when everyone else is grumpy. Those little girls liked it and enjoyed the lesson :)

Anywho, we got to church and President Poston was there. President Poston was great to see. He walked in and walked up to me and asked how I'm doing I laughed and said I'm feeling all kinds of emotions. He laughed and said he expected as much. President then said, "come over here lets talk for a sec" and we talked. He told me I had a very important assignment and I would need to learn as much as I could because the island I was going to was about to lose all it's leadership and experienced missionaries. Then he stopped and said "wait, do you know where you're going?" I said no and he said "Oh I'll just tell you, you're going to Pohnpei. Your companion is an American and she is incredible. Speaks the language like a local and is a Baptizing machine--well, she's not a machine, she's a Sister, and a very incredible determined hard working sister, well you know what I mean. Anyways, you'll be whitewashing too in an Elders area." He then proceeded to tell me that I would finish training with her but I needed to learn as much as I can from her so I can be ready to train other missionaries and take on Leadership positions when I'm finished training. He didn't say it like "as soon as youre done training, your training others" but he wants me to be prepared for whatever comes. Crazy! But awesome :) and it all just felt so so right. Everything he said, the whole transfer, the leadership required of me, the island I'll be headed to, everything just felt so right and perfect and exactly just for me. President said he'd been really thinking about what to do with that island, and when he came to Yap and we went out to dinner (just the sisters and the grown ups) he said it was that night at dinner when I was sitting across from him that he got the spiritual impression that I was the one. I was the one who needed to be here on Pohnpei. Crazy but I love it :)

6:00am in Guam

That night, we got the transfer calls but I already knew so whatever. I decorated my transfer planner for the first time. It has horses and mountains on it :) Pretty sweet. I ate McDonalds for breakfast at 5am this morning on the way to the airport. twas great. I traveled here with a Sister from Chuuk and she was awesome. In the airport in Guam there was a song playing over the speakers. Very islander with those island metal drums and the vibratoey island singer. But the tune was SO familiar and I found my brain trying to sing along in a weird way. But it wasn't the words at all. It was in another language. Finally i realized it. the song was NEON MOON BY BROOKS AND DUNN. And it was island version!! Haha I died!!! 

Guam Airport with Sisters

Pre-flight with Sister Petrus

I just got to Pohnpei about an hour ago. And the plane stopped at Chuuk so I've been to Chuuk now too :) It is SO INSANELY GORGEOUS. Chuuk is just incredibly beautiful. oh my gosh the view from the plane was incredible and the water is just so BLUE BLUE BLUE!! It is SO bright!! 

Then to Pohnpei :) Pohnpei is beautiful too and has mountains. Those two islands both have mountains and open areas. They're so big compared to Yap and I love it. My heart just relaxed as we drove around pohnpei and it felt like I just came home. Like, seeing open space, and seeing the mountains (nothing like mountains back home, but still) I could literally feel my heart sink into relaxation. So Nice. I'm just so overwhelmed and stoked to rule the world!! Haha my companion is Sister Behling and she's from Payson :) She hasn't been to our home yet. We're whitewashing into an Elders area and we have no idea what the area, house, or anything will be like. She knows just about as much as I do :) Except she speaks Pohnpeian like a local and she's a stud. As for now, missionaries are playing poker in the room and it's great :) There's other missionaries in the world. It's pretty cool. Haha on Yap i didn't really see much of other missionaries. There's two zones here. That's all I know. Anywho, love you all! I'll update you next week!

Coming in to Pohnpei

Here's my new mailing address! Love you!! Love ya!
Sister Nicole Felt

P.O. Box 2203
Kolonia, Pohnpei
FM 96941

P.S. Also, President gave a talk in the sacrament meeting really encouraging members to be member missionaries. To help do so, he told the members to imagine us missionaries. then to imagine our mothers. and how much they love us. and then to imagine them praying and pleading for us back home. He said that the members need to be the answer to our mothers prayers. As you can imagine, all of us missionaries were in tears. Not nice president, not nice ;)

Week 8

This week I've been home bound due to my companion not feeling well. Shes getting better but since Tuesday I've been stuck inside. About Friday or Saturday I lost it patience wise and I moved the kitchen table and put on my hiking shoes, filled my backpack with a bunch of weight and walked around in circles for about 30 minutes. Varrying from brisk walking, to high knees, lunges, and running. It was awesome. I felt pretty stupid, but as I was just walking, my mind began to drift away into that place it goes whenever I hiked up in the mountains. I just kinda forgot about where I was and was lost in thought. Weird cuz i was in a kitchen, but still.

Tuesday morning though we went and did service for President Matthew. We showed up at his little place and sat on his porch and he made us eat local pancakes (fried flour and sugar. Really good) and raw sugar cane. You just chew on it and suck out the sugar then throw away the stalk. It was crazy cool :) Then we went and transplanted banana trees, fed the piglets, and weeded with our machetes. On our way back, Margarita (his wife who we worked with planting everything) grabbed us a couple pineapples and had her son climb a coconut tree and chop us down a couple of young coconuts. Then we went back, ate some more pancakes and sugar cane, cut open the pine apple, drank the coconut water, and watched the grey clouds roll in over the ocean and felt the cool breeze and enjoyed just sitting chatting. We also made madamads/nunu's which were flower crowns :) And then they gave them to us and sent us on our merry way! Now that's not exactly what I'd call service, but the people on this island are just so giving!

The rest of the day we contacted a lot of people and then Sister Jones got sick. I've been reading a lot in the book of mormon since we've been home bound (From Alma  29 to Helaman 14). And I'm a BIG fan of Teancum. Sister Jones say's hes an idiot, but oh my gosh that guy is just a BOSS. He's just SO COOL! I Love his story!

Anywho, That's about all I've done this week. Lots of reading, walking in circles, learning the language, and cleaning. I hope you're all doing all those good things that keep Christ the priority ;) Love ya lots!

P.S. The Centipedes here are legit poisonous and if they bite you that whole appendage just swells up and you cant move for like four days. And a few weeks ago, there was one on my pillow. Like 8 inches long and just disgusting. I grabbed my leather gloves and picked up my pillow and shook the centipede off outside. 

Aside from that, we always have geckos all over our apartment. They're just everywhere all the time. We've taken to practice throwing pencils at them. They mostly stick on the ceilings and walls, and they run away from moving things. But I've gotten to be a pretty good shot at hitting them with the pencils like a throwing knife.

Elders Winger, Marble (DL), Wolfgram (ZL), Bryant (came with me), Neilson (ZL), Emor (From Chuuk)
Me, Sister Jones

Week 7 - Courtesy of the Red White and Blue

Just so all of you living in yesterday know, 9/11 is a wonderful patriotic day and it's pretty good this year :) We've spent the last three or four days planning this All American Barbeque, a baseball game, and we've been prepping by singing (well, I've been singing) every patriotic country song I can remember, and belting the national anthem while Sister Jones runs around with her Kansas City Baseball flag. It's pretty wild.

Also our dog, Zombie, disappeared for a day or two and she had been looking pretty fat. I was convinced she was pregnant, and when she came back and she was teeny tiny Sister Jones and I freaked out. She had puppies! We haven't found them yet, but we totally will eventually. The people here always hit dogs and their kids. I think I'm the only one on the island who is nice to the animals. I saw a pig the other day in a  cage too small for it to stand up. It just kinda leaned up on it's knees to smell my hand, and then fell back over. It was so so sad. I wanted to punch the man who owned him, but then I remembered he's an investigator and he's a pretty cool dude. Way nice to us. Let's just say I had a moment of conflicting feelings and just tried to forget about the pig.

The roads here are really bad, there's like on main paved road that goes from one end of the island, and stops when it almost reaches the other end. Everything else is just dirt and pot holes. I would die for a truck out here. We mostly drive everywhere except for on Walking Wednesday, then we walk. Our area is just so huge! And we have twice as much work as we did before (there used to be four sisters here, not just two). 

I think it was Friday or Saturday that it rained really hard all day, and we went to go contact referrals. They said they were by the fish market, but we got to the fish market and there weren't any houses nearby, so we went trecking on a trail through the jungle. With my Keens and my Frogg Toggs, we splashed through the mud and rocks and made our way to some houses (huts) and yelled at the edge of the property (it's rude to walk onto Yapese land, so you have to "woo" or yell (not too loudly though, because that's rude) to get the owners attention and their permission to let you in.) They didn't know who we were asking for, and they didn't know where they would have lived. So we left and treked back through the jungle and rain to our car and the road. It was pretty cool :)

The Language is coming pretty well. We have little packets the mission has slowly come up with that I read through and memorize tense words, verbs, gospel words, and then phrases like "Today we're going to teach about the Restoration of Jesus Christ's Gospel" translated into Woleaian by previous missionaries. Sister Jones says every missionary that comes through is automatically better than the previous because we slowly get more and more information and words translated. The Language comes from the island of Woleai which is one of the outer islands between Yap and Chuuk, they are: ulithi, fais, urabic, woleai, efuluk, fashilup, falato, lamatric, sadawal. (I just slaughtered the spelling on those, but whatever) Each island has it's own different little dialect, but Woleai is the most common dialect. People who speak Sadawalese are the most different from Woleai and the hardest to understand. So once I learn woleai, then I kind of pick up the other dialects and adjust my language to where the people I'm talking to are from. Like when asking someone's name, In woleai I say "Metta itemwu?" (met-uh ee-tem) but in Sadawal they say "Metta Itomwu?" (met-uh eat-ohmm). Lots of little things are way different. But Woleai is close to Chuukese, and Sadawalese is super super close to Chuukese. None of them are anything close to Yapese though. Don't ask me why.

Crazy cool experiences lately. So I'm always way nervous about being able to communicate this awesome message perfectly enough that the people will understand what this Restored Gospel is all about. But I've been reading in Alma lately and I've been learning about Alma and Amulek as well as Ammon and the Sons of Mosiah. Something that has stuck with me is their faith as missionaires in the Lords ability to use them as instruments in his hands. And just how they give themselves wholly to the Lord and never lose that confident trust in him. So during this lesson with this woman Mochien (our mission president's wife found her when they were on our island) I was so so worried about being able to bare testimony, and I felt the spirit literally constraining me to speak. So in my heart I gave myself to the Lord and gave no thought as to what I, Sister Felt, would say, but I opened my mouth and let Him speak through me. Can I just say, that is SO much better-and easier-than trying to come up with words on my own! It's so easy and beautiful when I focus on baring testimony and then listen to what comes out of my mouth. Because it certainly is not all me. And I often learn a lot from what I say :) SO COOL.  

It happened last night as well, with our investigator Robert. Robert and Juanita are married and their Daughter Bentaquen and her daughter Emmee have been taking our lessons. Sister Jones said Robert has been an "Eternal Investigator" But last night his relative Emanuel was there and we met him before and he was passive aggressive with us about how he is "Roman Catholic" and beleives in "one God". Juanita doesn't really like to be apart of our lessons and the rest of the family that runs around doesn't really listen. But as we were teaching Robert about the Book of Mormon, Sister Jones was doing most of the talking. But then she ran out of things to say and turned it over to me. In my heart I had been praying to just be an instrument in the Lords hands. Emanuel had been listening but skeptically, and Juanita was just sitting nearby making food. As I spoke, I just bore testimony of the Book of Mormon and how it's the center of the doctrines of Jesus Christ and what not. Honestly I don't really know how or where my whole thing went, but I just let the lord teach through me. And by the end, Juanita was listening, Emanuel was nodding his head saying "that's good, thats good" Emmee was listening intently, and Robert said he wanted to follow Jesus and be baptized. Whaat :) It's pretty cool what happens when you get out of the Lord's way ;)

Love you all so much and I hope you're getting prepared for the Second Coming. From what I hear the world is falling apart, so keep your eyes peeled ;) Enjoy your 9/11, God Bless America, and pet a horse for me.

Love, 

Sister Nicole Felt

Yap Zone with President and Sister Poston

Week 6 - Taylor Swift at 2am

Hey everyone! This is gonna be a short one... But just some quick info about Yap!

Population: 11,377

Church Membership: 420

Island Size: 38.7 square miles

Language: Yapese and Woleaian

I'm the fourth sister ever to learn Woleaian, and there's maybe around 100 (at most) active members on Yap. Yap is the smallest island but the best because I'm here ;) Missionaries aren't allowed to eat Dog, Turkey Tail, Raw fish/meat, or Turtle. And I've been offered all except dog so far.

I don't know how to describe the houses, but they are very open. So they're mostly like tin roof structures (or grass roof) and some have no walls, others have walls, and then there's elevated 'floors' kind of like a giant wood box that's like three feet above ground that everyone sits on. And then there's actual enclosed rooms up in those maybe in the corner of the roof structure. They're all different but its all very open. And the kitchen is mostly dutch oven elevated in the other end of the roof structure or in a different roof structure. And the animals just run everywhere, in and out of the houses and all around. :) It's great! We don't live in a hut like other people do, just an apartment with real walls and a real door and real rooms and a real bathroom (another question I have.. Where do the people here use the bathroom??? There are zero public restrooms and I have yet to find an outhouse. I'll figure it out eventually I guess). 

There is no church material translated into Woleaian, so the work has been really hard. I was on Guam this past week for the Monthly Missionary Leadership conference. Pohnpei, Palau, Saipan, and Guam all have four or more sisters and Yap and Kosrae only have two (and of course Chuuk doesn't have any) so there are Sister Training Leaders on every island (because each Island is a zone) and every month the STLs and the Zone leaders come to Guam for Training (Mission Leadership Conference). And because there's only two of us on Yap, we both go to Guam even though Sister Jones is a Sister Training leader. There's suppose to be four sisters on Yap, and president said eventually there will be. But until then I'm going to Guam once a month. While we were on Guam, We met with Mission president. Even though I'm not an STL I sit in on all the meetings so my companion isn't the only female. During the meeting President kept asking if we had any questions and no one was saying anything. So finally, I asked about teaching people using the Book of Mormon when it's not in their native tongue and they speak very limited English. He taught us that we need to be those tools to teach the feelings and the message of the Book of Mormon to those people. I know and have learned that the prophets knowledge and accounts in the Book are incredible, pure, true, and simple. but because the people of Yap cannot understand it, I now have to be the interpreter of the feelings and message the Book of Mormon shares with people. I have to be like those prophets. And It's pretty cool :) So I've been studying the book mad crazy so I can know it forwards and back in order to perfectly explain the message of it to the people. And I also need to work on using simple English words to explain a powerful testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Teaching feelings (as mission president put it) is literally the only way we will baptize converts to the church. Because there's over 300 inactive members on Yap, I don't think we can afford to baptize anyone as casually as they have in the past. Baptism is a very serious covenant and as my good friend Dallas back home put it, it is definitely not Casual. So look out all you less actives on Yap, I'm comin for ya! ;)

So about the subject line... My trip to Guam was so much fun! Two sisters from every island came to Guam and we all stayed in the same apartment. We sort of got approval to stay up late for special occasions, and as most of us don't get to really see other sisters that often, we called it a special occasion and stayed up until 2am most nights laughing, talking, eating food, singing Taylor Swift songs, and telling crazy stories from our islands :) Each of us trying to make it sound like living conditions on our island is much worse than it is on theirs! haha we're all pretty hard core, tough girls with great sense of humor and funny dating stories, so it was a great week!

Also, I taught some people on Guam with Sister Memmott who is like a brunette me. We have like the exact same personality and she had the same experiences and feelings as me at the start of her mission. Anywho, we went to teach this one family and they had a bunch of children. Three of the girls came running up to me and started hugging me and grabbing my face and hair and said "You're face is missing brown, why is your hair missing black, you look like God" It was so funny and so cute!

Shout out to Justin Breinholt, Good luck in Mexico! A mission is crazy hard (sorry, "Challenging". My companion said we're not suppose to say 'hard' ) But I think I'm starting to see the good parts :) It's so worth it. And Hey everyone, read the Book of Mormon! Okay, pardon my French but good freaking heck (apparently 'freaking heck' is cussing out here in the mission world)! If you're not reading the Book of Mormon, WHY?! These people out here cannot understand even simple English sometimes and many of them spend hours on a few verses just desperately trying to understand it's words. It's a privilege to be able to have this book and to live in America, with 10 copies in your home all in your native language, and to leave that book and this gospel and these good doctrines just sitting on the shelf is just silly. I don't think any of us have any idea how lucky we are to have access to all of this knowledge and truth. And to have the ability to easily comprehend what the book is saying is something I've really come to appreciate (if you can't tell ;) ).

I love you all, and because I do I encourage you to maybe value the fact you live in the center of the restored gospel. Because it's freaking awesome :)

Much Love,

Sister Felt