"Hey everyone!! Well this week has been pretty good for the most part. Last week I was still feeling pretty weak but I'm starting to back to normal. Even starting to get back into my daily exercises that way I don't come back home too weak. haha! I first of all wanted to comment on the awesome conference sessions we got to watch this weekend. It was pretty amazing. I really enjoyed the talks and uplifting messages. However, I will say that I prefer listening to the talks in English. I understand all the words in the Spanish conference but I miss hearing the actual voices of the speakers. This week has been pretty productive. We've been traveling around a lot lately on other islands to share the gospel and its paying off. The best part, the 3 islands we visit most often not including our island that we live on called Carti Tupile (Coibita, Yandup, Sugdup) are all pretty close together. This week we found 3 new investigators that are taking the lessons and progressing really well. One we found while visiting a less active family in Carti Tupile, another we found in Yandup, and the other we found at church. We thought he was a member because hes been coming to church but hes never been baptized though. Our other investigator in Yandup is doing well. Her name is Yari and we have the baptism scheduled for this weekend. Hoping all goes well with that. This week has been kind of difficult though due to water. Usually we can get water from pipes that lead over to the mainland and bring in water from rivers in the jungle. However, for some reason it hasn't been working. This entire week we've had no water from the pipes. Since me and my comp live on the second level of a building we cant just put buckets out in front of the house on the ground to collect rainwater running off. Too many little kids running around that like to throw sand all over the place. With no water to drink and running out of options of ways to cook (much of what we eat requires water to cook) me and my comp started brainstorming ways we could find a solution. Sure enough, we found two old rain gutters that our landlord wasn't using. We asked permission to use them. We then found a way to fashion the gutters to the roof in a manner that we could collect as much of the water as we could with minimal effort. We angled the gutters to run the water to the same point allowing us to just stick a pot off the balcony and collect rain water. After a few days of nothing but buying drinks we were lucky that a storm hit and we got a test run with our device. It was freakn awesome! In like half an hour we had 4 and a half large water jugs completely full. This has been holding us over the past few days. We could probably even find a way to funnel the water leading from the two rain gutters into a large metal pot we have so that it wouldn't even be necessary to hold a pot out and gather the water by hand. We haven't done that yet though. I'm hoping that it will rain again soon so we can get more water again. Have about half a jug left right now. We also have to go every other day showering right now because the barrel we've been using to collect rain water and bath is running low. I'm having a good time with my companion Elder Ricks. We've been getting along good and finding a lot of new people and less actives to visit. Our house is pretty good too. Only thing...it has bats too. They told us we were the only building on the island with them. Probably true. I killed two bats this week. I've already had the rabies injections so I should be fine. I'm keeping them away from my comp though. I also killed a rat I found in the house this week. It was huge..haha! I'm basically a rodent/bat terminator when you give me a machette and broom. Kind of gross. Its funny though that this is my favorite home that Ive lived in during all my time in the mission. When we had general conference this week me and my companion got a lot of exercise in. We had to make trips back and forth between two separate islands. We promised the recent convert Martinez family from Yandup that we would take them to Carti Tupile where the church is since they have no boat. That's 5 people. We took them to Carti Tupile to see conference both Saturday and Sunday. I was really surprised by their strong desire to go. Only 1 out of the 5 people in the family even understands Spanish. Yet, they all wanted to go because they told us they feel the spirit. That to me was really awesome to hear. They are a wonderful family and I really do love them. On Sunday we not only brought the Martinez family but brought two investigators from Coibita that we've been teaching. We also brought 4 little kids that were relatives of them. Getting them to come was a real challenge but they agreed and came. They stayed for one session then asked us to take them home so they could eat and take care of the little kids. Midway between Carti Tupile and Coibita a storm came out of nowhere. It started pouring down rain and the waves got really strong. With 8 people in the boat including us, the strong current was pulling us the opposite direction, and water was pouring down on us (like a waterfall..literally) we managed to get them home despite not being able to see well. We nearly tipped over from this one big wave but got lucky we didn't. I was worried the family would have been irritated getting wet but they were all happy. I guess they had a good time watching two gringo struggle to get them home. I'm sure they appreciated it though. I said to them jokingly "Be mar Obe" which translates roughly to..you all bath. ha! they thought that was funny. When we returned back for the second session we were soaking wet and just sat through the rest of conference soaking wet because we knew we would get wet taking the Martinez family home too (which we did). Fun fact..I timed me and my companion in a lesson this week with people that speak no Spanish and only understand Dulegaya. We survived about 10 min just talking. Not including the hymn or prayers. For us that's pretty good because we honestly have the vocabulary of like a 5 year old. O well..Its a process and we don't have a book to really study the language. A couple small dictionaries but not much about talking in the past, future, or other forms of speech. I can bare my testimony in Dulegaya and I'm trying to learn how to pray. Ive decided to start reading the Bible lately. About two weeks I started. I'm now in the 5th book of Moses called Deuteronomy about 250 pages in. We find more down time here in Blas since things basically shut down at 6 Pm when the village calls a meeting of nearly everyone on the island. I've mentioned it before (called congress). For some reason they've been calling it nearly every day this week. Well...I think that's pretty much it for this week. I cant really think of much else to say. I would like to comment though on how grateful I am to live in a time where we have a prophet and apostles called of god. That can teach us in a time with a world full of changing values and perceptions of morality. Family and friends..when we have the gospel we know how we need to live. Our church is guided by god and given the precepts that we need to return back to the presence of our Heavenly Father and Savior. If we follow the example and the commandments of the Savior we know where we will find ourself. We will walk the narrow path and find eternal happiness in the kingdom of god. Where families can be eternal and without end. As are the possibilities of what we can achieve and contribute to our eternal father.
I love you guys! Hope all of you have a good week!
Below is a picture of our contraption that we made to collect water. People crowded around watching us as we put it up. Many saying that it wouldn't work and we were silly mergis (gringos).
Ha..the other picture shows how we proved them wrong ;)
-Elder Hawes
"One of these pictures is me gathering water using the contraption that we made.
The other picture is me with the Martinez family. Our investigator Yari with the baptism date set for this upcoming Saturday is standing in the back row. Shes wearing the blue shirt. The other girl standing next to her is Rudeliz. Shes been helping us to translate things so her family so they understand better. She even invited one of her friends to start taking lessons. Shes a recent convert and hopes to serve a mission too in a few years. Already trying to bring people to the gospel. That's when missionaries have success. When members invite others to the gospel and work with the missionaries. I love the little girl in this picture. Every time she sees us she runs over to us and gives us a high five. Shes really cute."
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