Week 28: MELE KALIKIMAKA

Hey ya'll! 

First off, I hope you all are enjoying your Christmas! We went on a hike today and I guess as an early Christmas present Santa let us see a whale!! That's right. Spurting up water and everything. Pretty cool I'd say. Merry Christmas Elder Gleave. 

I guess I'll start off with a really cool experience this week.   My comp and I were done with dinner, and we had no appointments, so we decided to street contact all the way to Wal-Mart. Things weren't going too well. No one really wanted to talk, so I was like DANG this sucks. But I was still trying, still being diligent. Then something cool happened. When we were in line to check out at Wal-Mart, some guy came up to me and was like "Hey. My friend is a member of your Church, and she works at 24 Fitness. She was talking me this morning, and I wanted to meet up with you guys and ask you some questions." So we exchanged info, and then parted ways. So after a few phone calls during the week, I invited him to our Christmas party which was Saturday morning. He said that sounded good, and that we'd see him then. On Saturday, he showed up, and I was like "Oh cool! He actually showed up." He was super excited, so he went around and met all the people. He's really good at slack key guitar, so during the party he just got up on stage and started playing and singing Christmas songs! It was awesome. We then thought it would be a good idea to take him on a tour of the church building. When we went into the chapel, you could just feel the spirit. The party was all loud and lots of commotion going on, then in the chapel it was just completely still. I could tell he felt it. He even told me! After talking to him a little while, we went back into the gym and I shared a little bit about the restoration and the priesthood, and he completely understood. After the party, he came up to me with a big smile on his face and he pulled me aside and said, "Just between you and me, I want in. I want to be a part of this Church." I was so excited! So I invited him to be baptized, and he was like "Oh yeah! In 10 weeks though. Not 8. not 9. 10." The bad news is that he's not in my ward boundaries, so we explained that and then he went to the Manoa Ward's (the ward he's in) Christmas party that night! He absolutely loved it. The next day he came to Church, and the same thing, he was so excited. He caught the spark. The Manoa missionaries taught him a lesson yesterday, and committed him to baptism and he said, "Who would say no?" Then they committed him to the 10th of January and he was like "Can I be baptized sooner?" Anyway, just a heart-warming story. He has found the pearl of great price. 

We have a really awesome family we are working with. They always feed us on Thursday nights! The Dad is a lawyer, but a goofy, jokester lawyer, and the Mom is completely down to earth. The more and more we talk to him, the more and more he's seeing the Mormon Church is the true Church. They are going on a trip this week to California, and they told us they intend on reading the Book of Mormon cover to cover during that time. That sounds pretty promising yeah? They have 3 kids, the oldest being 13 and the youngest being 7. The Dad is really smart, so it's fun teaching him because he grasps concepts really well. At dinner, we played a make shift jeopardy game with the dad being Alex Trebek and we all chose our own categories. It was really fun! 

This week the gospel principles' teacher called me, and asked if I could teach gospel principles 10 minutes before Church started. And it was on the gathering of Israel. There's only so much you can talk about the gathering of Israel, especially with only sacrament meeting to prepare. But the members were nice and rolled with the punches, and participated a lot. 

Things are different here in Hawaii. Not too many decorations, so it doesn't really seem like Christmas! The only thing I have to keep the spirit in my heart is replays of Elf scenes in my mind. Sometimes I could just tell investigators, "You gotta keep your promises if you wanna keep your friends." --Turbo Man. I think that's a good way of helping them come to Church. 

So I'll email you next week and let you know about skyping, okay? I'll try to get a package for Christmas out today! Well, until next week! I love you all! Pray for Marcus btw, he hurt his knees and they're still swollen a week later. 

Much love! 

Elder Whale Watcher

Week 27--JOY TO DA WORLD!

Hello,

I wish I knew pigeon. It's such a funny language. When people are blessing the sacrament, they have to do it over because they say "O God, da eternal fada." I guess the gospel is in every language.

Okay sorry about that. Just kinda popped into my head. SO here's the deal.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! I know it's not Christmas but I just love it so much that I have to tell everyone that. Things are a little bit different here. I don't know if it is because everyone is Asian, or we are in the city, or it's a warm area but there's not many Christmas lights. Makes me sad. That's okay, the real Christmas spirit lies within your heart and not by how many decorations there are. But I do miss Christmas music. Good thing McDonalds plays it...

So here's the deal, this week has been a turn in my mission. I've always heard that the Lord has "prepared" people for the gospel, but I never really have seen it on my mission. And I have seen all these missionaries baptizing a lot of people, and I have never really seen that for me. I have been struggling to have a testimony that I could do missionary work. I knew missionary work was real and important, but I was struggling becuase I didn't thnk I could do it. Well anyway, they introduced something into the mission called QGC, or quality gospel conversations, and it is basically just a way to count how many people you've talked to in a day. And I really loved the idea. I knew right away this is what I needed. But it was hard to just talk to people on the street. We've been struggling to find even a single investigator, and we were only teaching maybe one lesson a week. But I really wanted to talk to everyone, I just couldn't find the courage to do it. 

But on Saturday, I went on exchanges with one of the zone leaders, and one of the AP's came with us, and we did 6 and a half hours of straight street contacting. We had been averaging 3 to 4 qgcs per companion, and on Saturday we three missionaries decided that wasn't enough. We were going to talk to everyone! We set a goal of 30 QGCs and placing 10 Books of Mormon. I was skeptical. That's a lot. But right away, when we went out, we were just being incredibly bold. Long story short, we reached our goal of getting 30 QGCs, and actually ended up getting 36. We placed all of the Books of Mormon we brought, and had one person even asking for one that we brought back the next day. We have 2 new incredibly solid investigators that want to meet up now and two new investigators that are going to be gone till after Christmas, but wanna talk with us, and a couple investigators for other areas. 

There was a lot of conversations with people that didn't go very well, and they weren't interested, but we found those few that were "prepared" by the Lord. We talked with two people in particular, who were smoking cigarettes. Two separate occasions. Usually I would never talk with people smoking because I just assumed they weren't interested, but I was being bold, and now that I think of it, they need it more than anyone else. Anyway, they were telling us how they have hard lives, and how much they didn't know what life was about, and after talking to them for a litte about Christ, you could see how much they wanted to know more. I found the key to missionary work TALK TO EVERYONE. I can't really explain how great that day was. Probably top 3 best days on the mission. The whole day I felt the spirit, and the whole day I was having so much fun. It felt almost like a dream. Incredibly stress free. I now know what it means to "get lost in the work".

Anyway, got to go! I love you all so much! Merry Christmas and keep in mind the true meaning of Christmas. May the Lord bless you all in your righteous endeavors. A Hui Ho and much Aloha

Elder Rednose Gleave

Week 26--SHALOHA

WHAT'S UP MY HOMIES!

I named this email Shaloha because there's this guy in our ward, who dresses up like a Jewish guy, and wears a yamaka and has a long beard and he is a temple recommend holder. Weirdest thing. But he bore his testimony and started by saying Shaloha, then started talking about how excited he is that Christmas and Hanukkah are so close together. Welcome to the city...

Things are getting better around here! It's not so intimidating living in the big city. I guess Will and I are meant to be in the same boat! If you have any problems big man, I know how you feel. Anyway, my comp needs to email soon, so I gotta be quick! But here's a recount of what's been happening lately.

Since this area is pretty slow, and pretty hard to work in, I spend a lot of time in my thoughts and in the books. I have been a reading fiend! When I wake up in the morning, I always read the Ensign to wake me up (cuz let's be honest, at 6:30 am, the scriptures will put me to sleep).  I have been pondering about our Divine potential lately, and how each one of us has specific talents and specific traits that make us, US. The Lord shapes us into who he needs us to be, so we shouldn't strive to be someone different than we are. We should just be ourselves, and be comfortable with ourselves. The Lord isn't ashamed of who were are, and we shouldn't be either. If you are nerdy, MORE POWER TO YA! That's awesome! If you are a big goofball, keep that good sence of humor. If you are on the reserved side, don't push yourself to who your aren't suppose to be. The Lord has a specific plan for all of us, and he needs us to be us. As long as we are relying on the Lord, and putting Heavenly Father first, before everything, I know things will work out. Maybe someone will need a friend who is reserved, or nerdy, or whatever it may be, and Heavenly Father will put you in a place to personally minister to that person with your Divine talents. Anyway, back to the Ensign, I was reading an article that discussed this and I believe this pretty much sums it up (with a little missionary emphasis too), "As Latter-day Saints we are blessed to be living in this time when the Lord is hastening His work. Because God has a purpose in placing us on earth at this time, we have the capacity to do more than we think we can." I just love that. We have the capacity to do more than we think we can. What a privilege it is to be here on the Earth during such a special time.

A couple cool things have happened this week. I called Jacob! We live pretty close to each other, so I plan on seeing him soon.  It was such a brightener to my day!

Turkey Day came and passed. I couldn't stop thinking about home and cold and football. But we had a good one! We ate on the 9th floor of a apartment building, that had a pool there. It was with a bunch of young couples in the ward, so it was nice to eat with them. They all are in their mid to late 20's, so I kinda relate to them. One couple is really funny. They both grew up in NC, but the husband is a Duke fan and the wife is a UNC fan. Its like those "Sports is Crazy" ESPN commercial. But the husband is pretty hyped about Jabari.

Things have been pretty humbling of late. That's okay, the Lord just loves to teach me patience. But who can complain? I'M IN HAWAII!!

Christmas time is here.... I love it! As usual. Kinda makes me homesick though. I wish I could just sit next to a warm fire watching movies. NAME THE MOVIE: "YOU'RE NOT SANTA, YOU SMELL LIKE BEEF AND CHEESE"

Gotta go though! Hope you are all feel the Christmas spirit in my honor. The Church is true, the Lord lives.  I'm a witness.

BYE

ELDER TOPELF GLEAVE

Week 25--Elder Gleave and the Adventures of Downtown Honolulu

What"s up everyone! I believe one of the greatest things about serving a mission is all the challenges that you are presented with, and watching the Lord work through you to accomplish things that you would never accomplish by yourself.

 So if you all didn't know, I got transferred this week! I went from straight country, to complete town (that's what they call city here). I'm literally in downtown Honolulu! I went from 14,000 people in the space of 20 miles, to 548937583490257398 people in space of a few miles. Things are very, very different. It was rare to find a 3-story building in Waialua, and now I'm surrounded by 20 to 30-story apartments. Buildings are EVERYWHERE! It's literally the concrete jungle. I live next to an on-ramp for the H-1, which is the main highway here. There's lots of lots of noise! I live in like a triplex structure, and my neighbors smoke all da time. So sometimes it seeps into our place and I'm walking which is fun. Kinda...at least I'll be skinny! We probably walk like 10 miles a day, which isn't too bad. It's very overwhelming. I've been in mostly small town/country areas my whole mission, so it's definitely an adjustment! Things are for sure a struggle at first. The area I was in just had two baptisms, which was awesome, but now we aren't teaching many people. We kinda have been just walking around everywhere, knocking on people's doors, but no one is home. Things are looking up though! I saw a homeless man doing shadow puppets in the park, so that made my day a little bit better! Plus there's a 7-11 near by, so I guess you could say unlimited slurrrrrppppiiieeesssss.

On a good note, I have an awesome district! And zone! There's lots of really, really funny people here in Honolulu. There's also a lot of pressure. We see the AP's a lot, and the president is just down the road, so we gotta make sure we're on point! The first night here, we were watching a movie with our ward, and it is the "Silent Night" movie about the making of the song. Anyway, it said they were in Austria in the film, and my comp turns to me and says, "That doesn't look like Australia..." hahahaha speaking of which! My companion is really cool. He's from an island called Sipan, which is just above Guam. He speaks English really well, because they speak English there hahaha. He's really mellow and quiet, but when he says stuff, he's a funny guy! He's the only member of his family, so he's got quite the strong testimony. He's only been out 3 months, so we are still learning together.

Sunday was such a relief! I love the ward here. TONS of young couples, and they all like to talk about sports. Which is awesome. I don't think I have ever looked forward to Sunday so much. Something familiar. We have one girl, Nui, who is the girlfriend of a returned missionary that we will be teaching, so I guess there will be a baptism soon! Anyway, all in all, it's just a completely different experience. Not a bad one, just different. And I know that with the help of the Lord, I will have wonderful experiences here. I already am! I miss home a lot! especially when I got sick last week and now when things are pretty hard. I kinda wish I could just be home drinking hot chocolate doing a puzzle. BUT THE WORK MUST GO ON. He who puts his hand to the plough and looks back isn't fit for the Kingdom of God. I just wish it would change seasons....Everyone's like, oh the weather there is so nice! And I'm like where's the cold.... That's okay! I love the mission, and I love the Lord.

 I hope everyone has a good turkey day! There's so much to be thankful for here. I'm thankful for My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. For the example of enduring to the end. For the persecution and the struggles he went through everyday just to put his gospel on this Earth. He went through so much for me, I know that I can walk a few more miles for him. I'm thankful for my Father in Heaven. For his loving hand he always bestows in my life. For his continued help and mercy to someone as simple as me. I know he lives, and loves me everyday. Without these two I know I would be lost! I would be nothing. I'm thankful for Joseph Smith, and the persecution and the rage he went through to establish Christ's true church on the Earth again, and the fact that I could be a part of it. I am also thankful for you all. I love you guys so much. I'm thankful for the love and support I get each day, and the prayers you send my way! This is by far the hardest thing I've done, but it is easily the most rewarding. Anyway, I'm in the Makiki ward, which is not the ward the mission president is in (thankful).

I hope Annie gets better! Try some natural antibiotics until you know what it is!

I'm sad the donkeys lost, but it's a little bit easier being on a mission to not care as much!

Anyway, I've been doing a lot of research about the second coming and Heavenly Father. Cool stuff! Should be interesting when it happens.

Anyway, I love saying anyway, but I hope you all have a good Thanksgiving! Shout out to all my Waialua homies--you guys are missed!

KEEP STRONG IN THE GOSPEL.

The gobble king.
Elder Gleave