Week 57 - Ngehi mehn Uh, Whatcha gonna do

I'm going to Uh!!!!
Master has given dobby a sock........
FREEEEEE
I'm going to Uh :) I'm gonna be with Sister Palanite
I'm so stocked to be RID of the ciy. The people here, I will dearly miss. The languages, I will miss. But I am excited for pure pohnepian and for the jungle again. I'm gonna have to take some serious work to the Uh house though and scrub out the water tank, clean the pipes on the roof and such so we can have clean water to shower in (hahahah yes!!!! I get to do the jungle water again!! ! haaaaa!!!!!! :DDDDD)

Trying on baptismal clothes at Nui's house

Buuuuut, this week we had a baptism!!! Nui Benjamin from the Borong family :) His whole family is less active, but they all came to church this week to see him get the gift of the holy ghost. There's the mom and Dad, Esther and Salter. they've been maybe 3 or 4 years no longer going to church. the fam was baptized in 2006 or 2008. The girls, Trisha-19. has a 1 year old child. Lucy 25 or something. 2 kids. other families adopted them. Rachel 16. still good :) No children. She's nice. Nui is just the darn cutest thing. And like Spencer, he doesn't say much and when you tell him to talk and respond to strangers he just gets quieter and more frustrated. But he really opens up when we talk about his baptism and confirmation!! Esther is SUPER sarcastic and never serious, but she's gotten to be a kind of serious humble as the baptism as gotten closer and closer. At church, she seemed very humbled and very kind and soft and quiet. I hope it's a good thing!!!

Nui's baptism

Nelson still has to push his baptismal date back. Word of Wisdom is hard for him because the town of Pohnraiked is like Las Vegas when it comes to alcohol and drugs only everyone knows everyone, so it's like a high school full of peer pressure. He just feels a lot of peer pressure to drink and smoke. Dang. But he likes to repent!!! And he has dang good enthusiasm.

Umm..... I don't know what else happened. We made a fort last night and watched the bible videos and I ate like 6 candy bars and okra pickles. ya, that's right. Pickles. Your taste preference changes i guess with stress or something lol. I'm funny. maybe it's not stress.

In the fort with Sister Caldwell

But ya. Sister Caldwell is staying in Kolonia and training. I'm stoked for her :) Elder Charlton is moving to Paliker to be a Zone Leader. And with this new transfer, MLC (which consits of 25 missionaires) will now have at least 8 from my intake as Zone Leaders and My as Sister training leader. Go intake!! So grateful to have come in with such great people. Thank heaven for Good people!!

Love you all! Gotta go run sister Caldwell to the air port. We've had a lot of fun the past couple of days and really enjoyed our time with each other. I hope you don't forget to always include a little fun in your lives no matter what stage of life your in :) William was right when he said 'always remember to have fun'. A mission really isn't suppose to be 100% serious dead work all the time. My bad.... I've maybe been doing that and It's been driving the spirit of charity away haha lol my bad. But I've repented!! :)

Love you!
Sister Felt

Week 56 - Kapwoupwoud

Nelson and Mercida got married this week!!! Wahooo!!!!! Nelson is one of our investigators from Kapingamarangi. He was raised on Guam so he really knows English best, so thats the language we teach him in. but Mercida is the daughter of Bro. and Sis. Duiai, a really strong member family in Pahnasang Ward. Bro. Duiai dosen't want his kids marrying anyone not a member of the church (even though none of his kids are active members of the church), so because Mercida and Nelson were living together, bro duiai slipped us a secret paper with nelsons name on it as a referral. Why the secret paper? I'll explain...

So in Kapingese culture, dating isn't really a thing. Boys and girls just kind of start hanging out in secret. why in secret? I don't know i think it's dumb.. but actually it's because this culture has developed that boys can NOT go up to the house of the girls parents they're dating and they absolutely cannot speak to the parent's unless spoken to. Same for girls to the boys family. But after some time of breaking the law of chastity or dating or whatever it is they do (i'm not a fan), the boy goes to his parents, tells them he wants to marry this girl. And then they go to the girls parents, and they talk about it. The boy and the girl are not involved. and they cant be together in public, cant sit next to each other in meetings, cant enter into rooms at the same time, ride in the same taxi, cant be seen in the same house. Nothing!! TBH i think its derived from a culture of arranged marriages. But after the boy and girl get married, the boy can go to the parents house with the girl vice versa.

Nukoro family we're teaching. They wanted pictures with white people
so we're like "sure!!" and got some too! :)

nelson and mercida have been living together. and when we finally arranged the marriage, no one communcated about it because of culture. and everyone just looked at me and caldwell when it came to organizing when and what time the marriage was going to be at and they'd just say "I dunno, it's up to you". They really just don't care. But we had it at the chapel and it helped get some investigators there too. I felt like the wedding was like the one on Up, the Movie. Everyone was like the groom's family, and I was pretty much the bride's family in the movie. It was really funny :)

Nelson missed his baptismal date (for the day they got married) but maybe he;ll be baptzied this week!! I hope so!! As well as Nui!

I held a banana spider at Nui's house. it was nuts. super huge too, like the size of a baseball.

The spider was moving too fast to get a still picture of it.

Love you all!

Week 55

Ya, this week has been preeetty darn great! I LOVE getting to see all the wonderful Sisters. MLC was really really good. We talked about finding God's will for our area. Really seeking how many people he has ready and he wants to be baptized in a month. Then believing that number, stoking the fire of faith, as president puts it. And then going out and working our tails off with love because we really believe no matter what we do, God's Will will be fulfilled because that's just what happens. So we just work, sometimes blindly, not knowing how 3 baptisms (or whatever) will come about, but it will! Kinda fun :) I loved it, it really answered a lot of questions I had about setting goals and stuff.

Red Bananas and Sarina Saickuhl

Anywho, it's been a good week. Have two weeks left in this transfer. I don't know what will happen. I've been in Kolonia for almost 7 months now. But i don't know.

Sister Taunauta came back to Pohnpei with us. And it was Sister Bennett's first MLC, but she's been companions with an STL her entire mission. So she's always had to deal with it. When she was on Kosrae she'd also go to Guam once a month for MLC like I did on Yap, because there's only one companionship of sisters there.

GOATS

Sister Caldwell just read in her email that a missionry in california did service cleaning horse stalls. what the heck that's not even service that's a treat.

BTW I got your letter Ma. It was really awesome, I got it right before I checked into the airport so I had all that time to read it and love it and drool over the pictures :) I hope you had a great trip!! I hope you were 'seisei' which means successful in pohnpeian.

Facials with Sister Caldwell

Love you!
Sister Felt

Week 54 - SquEEeeeeEEEUE!!!

Pohnpei

This week was another week of good good work! The last family I wrote about that had questions about which church is true has been good. They're always so nice and sweet and humble. But one day, they didn't read their book of mormon the day before, and they were so attacking about everything we taught. We taught them about Baptism and confirmation because Binina wanted to know where in the bible it says you can be baptized twice, into another religion and that's okay. Her church (who's leader is an apostate mormon) say's you'll go to hell if you're baptized twice. But binina also told us they 'trick' baptized her? I don't know. But I do know that because they didn't read the book of mormon they were NOT as kind and humble!! I can literally see it every time we visit people. When they read, they're receptive, when they don't, they're not. I don't even have to ask people anymore if they read. We could have a little conversation and after 5 minutes I could tell you if they've read or not since the last visit. Anywho, I think it's good we're giving them, and the rest of our area, some time this week when I go to Guam. Caldwell will go to Kitti with Palanite (from Uh) and Schow (who just got emergency transfered to Kitti). So ya.

STL's at July MLC

I had been getting really tired of the same ole proseltying. I've been working hard, but it just has been the exact same stuff with no progression. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. SO we went friending in a brand new part of our area I have never set foot in before. We found apartments. Ya that's right, with stairs and doors and everything. It was legit :) We knocked ALL 16 doors of the apartment (haha 16, it's so many, right?) and it felt SOOO refreshing! Just to get 8 new approaches, new impressions, and new people. People who have never ever seen me before. I feel like everyone here knows me now. 6 months will do that to ya...

So we had a great week with lots of fun!!

Wedensday something happened.... The Kitti sisters would tell you a Drunk man tried to get in their house.. but I can tell you what really went down......
We had locked our keys in our house Wednesday night, so at 9:20 we had to find a Key. All the sisters on island have spare keys to our house, and Kitti was closer. So we got a hold of our District and Zone Leaders and started the drive out to Kitti. Halfway through the 30 minute drive I realized, oh my gosh, they don't know we're coming! We have to use this to our advantage..!
We plotted and planned.... 😏We were going to have some fun

It was dark and in the middle of the jungle, we parked our car up the road aways and walked up to the back of the house. Theres a ton of pigs that live right by so you hear them during personal study and sometimes they go running around the house. So i decided to imitate one and just began screaming at the top of my lungs and banging on the windows. The sisters were on the phone with their dl for call in's and I heard them just ingore it and laugh, so I had to step it up!! I went running/screaming around to the front of the house and banged on all the windows. I ran up onto the porch and threw myself into the door at what I thought was pig level and then ran around to the other door. and did the same just screaming and making a mess of it all hahaha sister caldwell was dying!! after a couple minutes of that I knocked on the front door. No answer. It was dead silent. I looked over in the crack in the window and ther were the two sisters, hudled together over the phone with shock and fear on their faces. I had such a wide cheeky grin on my face and we stared at each other for about 30 seconds before they realized it was ME! Hahahah sister schow just threw something at me at the window and laugh/yelled at me! Sister Bennett seemed legit angry and I was like oh crap I guessed wrong, she is NOT one for pranks. AFter a minute though she laughed and we all thought it was really funny. They did NOT think I was a pig at all, they thought I was a drunk man, and they had left their door unlocked so they thought I was for sure gonna get in and be a drunk man in their house. Crazy. But apartently they had had a rough day and so just making a fun joke out of things really relieved some of the pressure. I believe it was inspired ;) The Holy Ghost knows what we need to have a little fun sometimes!!

Anywho, that's all. Love you! Have a good week! Remember to read your Book of Mormon's because I can tell.... God knooooowwwss..

Pohnpei Zone Conference

Love,
Sister Felt