Crew-sion

Haha, I am pretty sure Cam will be the only one to understand the subject line......

Well,  Bula na noqu matavuvale! kei na noqu itokani!  I swear, in this language you use a lot more (q)s then any language I know.  Which is narrow, considering I only know 2.

Well,  the week picked up, and neither Elder Pence or I got transferred. So Elder Pence has made it to September. We redrew the boundaries, and immediately we got 10 times (not exaggerating this was the actual math) the number of lessons........ Way easy with the piece we just got.

Anyways, internet is way bad today and stuff..... I can not open anything without it loading it up....... Luckily, I can still type. As for event stuff, or in other words, random actions, and then service day. Well.... Service day. 

So to explain something first, it has been pretty windy here. Which has made it way enjoyable for me, being that it got way colder from it! Well, in our house our door slams shut from the wind. Well, before we left I opened the door only to remember I needed to grab my gloves. As soon as I grabbed the gloves, (me still being in the same mind set of jumping off tall stuff, tucking and rolling and stuff) I turned around, immediately tossing the gloves to stop the door. The gloves were caught, and stopped the door from being slammed, but I got the gloves so well placed, that the door was slightly harder to open with them stuck in the door.

Well, we set out..... Once we got to our service assignment, which was collecting fire wood, which I thought was simple task. Well, we took 4 sacks, and 2 seles out to the veikau or forest, which was about 4 miles away. I will have pictures of what I carried those 4 miles. After that we busted concrete with a metal bar........ fun stuff!

On Sunday, Raul made the four missionaries in the first ward bracelets, so I will leave a picture of that! Fun stuff! 7 new missionaries added to the mission!

Til next week, Elder MacLeod

The slowest week (thus far)

I am pretty sure number wise, you can not (let me repeat myself) Can not get less numbers than us anywhere else in the mission.

I do not think I explained Lautoka very well. Lautoka is the rich, gated community, that opened last September. It has been a very slow area ever since its opening last year.  Now we are finally....... finally redrawing the area boundaries. Hopefully, the sisters don't complain that we are taking "a small area." Cause knowing them, they will be like "we need it!" When they don't even go there past 6 in the evening!

Anyways, I will try and recollect the moments of mention, per-say, to help this be entertaining. We bought Bula shirts! Nagindas had a sale so we bought Bula shirts. I will leave a picture! 

I also had to participate in the Distict training as the other missionaries' investigator. The First Lesson in English. The second in Fijian, which made me feel way good about myself since the sister from Samoa who has been here 10 months,..... well, lets just say I got good Fijian.......

Well, another thing that goes on around here, is that people in Lautoka, since it is rich, see white (kai valagis) people often. From either New Zealand, or Austrailia (straya as the Aussies would say),  not to often from America.  Well, they jokingly say words, or just speak English, cause they don't think we know Fijian. So this lady we passed by,  we spoke a good amount of Fijian to, and she walked away saying per-exact quote, "vinaka, wow yous way smart!"  We had a good laugh.

I am also the most worried about of all the missionaries to the members..... Normally, they drop the missionaries into the fire, and just make them quickly accustom to the culture. They all pretty much are sheltering me....... Like Saturday, a member said for service the next week, we could gather fire wood, but then for some odd reason, asked if I would be able to do that........ I had to argue with her over me being able to do service. Imagine that, arguing to do work. I said,"Io rawa!" so many times!

We make jokes about it often. One of our members birthday was yesterday, so she offered to give us cake today. She called us this morning, and said, " Hey are you coming to town? Well, come and stop by and get some cake." So I won't argue with her. As for weight. I weighed in the MTC at 97 KGs when I left. Last I weighed in, the scale said 84 KGs. 1 KG=2.2 lbs. So essentially I lost 26+ some pounds. 

Anyways bye!!!!!  Elder MacLeod

Spiders, fall throughs. and such...

Alright! Spiders (or at least one), fall through(s), and such.......

Sorry I had to quickly email last week. Got busy with stuff, but Sa oti macawa ivakataotioti,oqo na macawa vou tekivu! (the last week ended this new week started!) Nothing of importance happened Monday or Tuesday, really. Wednesday was when we started to do interesting stuff. So, we took a bus to the far reaches of our area to meet Ronil, and Shavani! They are awesome! Well, when heading out there, neither of us knew where Teidamu is, so we drove past it. Elder Pence asked the guy next to him who said we were in Tubu, and Teidamu was back a ways. So we got off the bus in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, Ronil has a van. He came and picked us up. Then they gave us tin fish and pepper sandwiches with sprite. It was there that the spider in the picture below was sitting over my head the whole time we were there. I did not notice it until we were getting ready to leave. As Ronil and Shavani left (to get us a popou which is a really sweet fruit), we got to work on the spider. I took a picture, but Elder Pence thought it was fried (mate or dead). So I poked at it with my pen, well it jumped.  So, we countered with a(n) hand towel a less active gave me. Elder Pence missed, so it hid where we could not see it on the other side of the board. We used the towel, cause you can not bring shoes into a house. It is tabu sara ga! Well, he drove us back, but we didn't tell him about the stuff with the spider. (I asked Connor about the a(n) reference and he said it is from a you tube video or something that the kids used to laugh at.  He has to put them in his emails to keep his identity and not lose himself while he is gone.  The same goes for the movie references to come later.)

Later the same day, we bought TP! Well, it turned into us going to teach, and Elder Pence left it at our investigators house! They got free TP. Where as that night I was face palming over this discovery...... Well, we bought some more the next day.

We visited another members house, where they gave us 20 FJD and a bag of food items. They said the missionaries used to come home (since everyone in Fiji says come home, there is no our house, or my house) and visit all the time, and we were the first in 5 months. They were so excited! Well, when we get money we have to spend it all that night so we ran into town to eat at mammus.  There was a bunch of drunk Kai Jaina (the Fijian for Asian) in the place. They were up dancing about, but it was the only place close that was open, so we stayed.

There was also Elder Pence eating the fish eyeball. He has a video, but we can not upload it. Sorry......

The rest of the week was slow, with fall throughs, walking a lot with Elder Abplanalp, and me doing missionary paperwork. The boring stuff. Veitalia though. Until next week enjoy the an spee-I-der! And happy anniversary mom and dad here is a pic of remembrance! (I can't believe he remembered our anniversary.  What a good son!)

(This is Connor's remembrance of our anniversary on July 11.)

Na daukaulotu Peresidenti kavou

Well, another short email since we have a lot to do.  Mostly, cause the Zone Leaders are eating turtle with us, then running to Nadi.  So, we had to make our schedule with them. We had to cut time out of email for it. Alright, so we had our Zone Training meeting start during P-day last week. My companion and I were unable to do all we needed for the day. Whatever though. We went back to our flat, which had like no food at all, with the Ba Elders. Well, we still had Tuna my companion had bought, so I had to stomache it...... (Connor despises tuna.)  The next morning we went back to Nadi. This was our introduction to the Mission President. Since the airport is in the West, he visits us first. My interview would be the next day, so 3 days of traveling back and forth between Nadi and Lautoka. On Tuesday, we had pizza. Huge pizzas. They got about 12 pizzas for the 32 people there, and I am pretty sure I ate one by myself. That is what Fiji does to you. You become a consumer of a lot of food. 

As for crazy people, the award goes to Peter, this guy who asked us for a job and bus fair to feed his children. I am pretty sure he just wanted money for alcohol, since some Fijians work on boats just to come back buy some booze, then work again.... They is quite the pirates business.  In other news, Elder Pence got his package, so with the last Sour warheads, we have been handing them out to people and filming them eat them. The reaction of the people is priceless! They do not enjoy them here at all. I cannot send videos, but when I get this card back home at the end, I will show it. Also, as for food we had crab. WAY GOOD. We ate it with Ika va Miti, which is like coconut milk mixed with lemon juice, and other vegetables. It is super good. So we cracked open the various pieces of the crab, and put the meat into a bowl (this is lunch with an investigator), then pour the miti in the bowl too. Best thing ever!  I will try to get the picture of the crabs from Elder Pence. Also this week, we got into a Taxi where the guy said he was looking for us. We are going to go ahead and teach him and his wife soon. That was the week, sorry I am short on time! Still busy!

 

Love, Elder MacLeod

Landscape picture of Fiji

Crab dinner with investigator