It's me again. I'm writing you from the farthest south town of the United States. It is called Naalehu. My area is the Ka'u area in the Kea'au district of the Hilo zone on the big island of Hawaii. My area is about the size of all of Oahu, but it's not super populated and Hawaii Volcano National Park takes up a lot of the northern part of my area. Sorry Geo, Kimi, and Jake: I have your emails but I forgot to remember them so you will just have to get it forwarded one more week. I guess you could email me and then I will have it forever ha ha.
It was great to talk to you guys from the airport. It was a treat for sure. I felt bad for hanging up so early after I saw how long everyone else chatted with family. Things were fairly uneventful to Hawaii. Unfortunately I didn't get to really share the gospel with anyone on the plane. On the way to phoenix it was me and 2 other elders in our row, and then on the way to Hawaii the couple I sat next to quickly informed me that they already had a religion and didn't need to hear about mine ha ha. They were friendly though and we chatted a little about our families and where we were both from.
We made it to Honolulu around 2:30pm Hawaiian and got out of the airport around 4pm, headed to the mission home and there we talked with President Dalton about obedience for about an hour or so, and then had lasagna for dinner. After dinner, we had a little get to know you talk and then all 21 of us (16 elders, 5 sisters) opened our letter of our 1st area. It was like Christmas morning. :) After that we had interviews with the president and called it a night at 10:30pm. I had successfully stayed up 23 straight hours. I got no sleep on the plane and had been up since 11:30pm Hawaiian the night before. Sister Dalton reminds me a lot of you Mom, so its kinda hard to be homesick.
Wednesday, we were up and running and out the door by 7:30 to get to the Hawaii Tabernacle for the big transfer meeting. There, I ran into Elder Toone briefly. He seemed to be doing pretty well. Also, an Elder came up and said he had just come from Kaneohe and had talked to George. I think he was from the Philippines but not real sure. So that was exciting. I stayed there until about 2pm doing more orientation. All the new guys also went out on the streets to get our feet wet with a little street contacting. It was a pretty good time and the Hawaiians are so friendly. Even if they aren't interested, they will take a pamphlet or pass along card and chat for a bit. From there, me and about 7 other Elders headed for the airport to catch planes to our various islands. My flight was scheduled for 3:30pm, luckily security was really short. I made it to the portal all by myself (I was the only new guy flying into Hilo). There I found out my plane had problems and would be delayed for 1 hour.
Eventually I made it to Hilo around 5pm local time and boy was I exhausted. Elder Wilson, my companion, and the zone leaders were there to pick me up and welcome me to the Big Island. We drove for an hour and a half to get to our area. We had a late dinner set up with the Naboa family. It was a great dinner of chicken and and corn and rice. Dessert on the other hand was a different story! Can you guess what it might have been? Yep, you're right. MOKI! I managed to force one down. Really not sure how, but I did, and I hope I never have see it again in my life. After that we just headed home and I crashed just after writing in my journal.
Friday, we committed a golden investigator named Tui to baptism. He accepted and seems ready to go, just need to wait the 3 weeks to make sure he attends church and what not. I got to go around and meet lots of the members and get to know them a little. The bishop is really young and energetic.
Saturday was the big day of celebrations for the 4th. Our church had a free pancake breakfast before the parade. Lots of non-members came out and we got to talk with lots of people. The parade started at 10am and lasted a good 10 minutes. ha ha no fireworks or anything. I guess it's not as big a deal here as it is on the main land.
Sunday, church was great. I met the rest of the ward. There are about 100 people who are active and about the same number that are inactive. We stayed for choir and then studied for a bit. Around 3pm we drove out to Discovery Harbor, a little subdivision of about 30 houses to follow up on a family who wanted us to teach there 10-year-old son. We met the son and set up an appointment for Saturday. Hopefully things will end up in baptism there too.
That's about what I have been doing to this point. Just some fun facts about the area:
- Our area contains 5 towns all about the size of Erda. The people are really nice, but right now we just have 2 committed for baptism and no other investigators, so hopefully we can find some and get the work on fire down here.
- We live in an apartment behind the church building. It is pretty nice, we both have queen size beds to sleep on, which definitely beat my bunk back at the MTC.
- The church is on mainstreet, up on a hill overlooking the whole town. Mainstreet Naalehu is also home to 8 other churches. Pretty crazy stuff compared to back home in Utah.
- If I had a dollar for every private property, no trespassing, and beware of dog sign here, I would never have to work another day in my life haha.
- So far, I have only had to kill 3 centipedes the largest being a good 5 inches long in our apartment. ha ha apparently they had been sprayed for, so they aren't able to really run away when we try to stomp them.
- Down on The Point, milk is about $10 a gallon and ice cream is $20 a gallon. Luckily we have district meeting in Hilo weekly and there is a Walmart there, where prices are about the same as the rest of Hawaii.
Well, hope this email all finds you safe and well. Sounds like you guys are having a great time in Utah with the Hawaii Tripps out there. Monday is our P-day and I'm hopefully going to send home some pictures this week that will have my Ka'u address but you can also send letters to the mission home and as long as its with the us postal service, the mission home will forward it to me from there. Please put the mission home address on facebook. It should be in the booklet with my mission call. Oh and one last thing I had been warned that it is really easy to gain weight here, but I am down 10 pounds since I left home, and 4 pounds since I have made it to Hawaii. So I guess that means I'm working hard, right? :)
I love you all, can't wait to hear from you again! ALOHA!
Love, Elder Tripp
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