It's easy, when you do it right!

Aloha!!

Another good week. We picked up 2 new investigators, and one more with a date so that was nice. Its weird that this coming up Sunday is transfer Sunday once again. Although I already I will be staying with Elder Boyle it is still exciting to see how many brand new elders will come to Hilo. Things seem to be going really great in Hawaii. You might remember that we set a goal of 115 at the start of the month. On Tuesday at district meeting we learned that going into the last 2 weekends, there had already been 44 baptisms, and 99 investigators had baptismal dates for the last 2 weekends. So that is exciting. Max is going to fly out Thursday, and he asked me to speak at his baptism so that should be a good experience coming up. It should be a win for Utah as well since the day of the BYU game, we had Lovey's baptism, day of Pitt game Tatiyana's baptism. Alona was baptized on the 27 of august, the following Thursday Utah won. Coincidence? I think not. Baptism = Win! lol

Tuesday was just a typical district meeting day. I love district meeting, but I feel like it just takes a bunch of time out of our day, we got back to our area around 3 and visited a few less actives and then headed up to dinner at L&L with some members. I also had my 1st apple on Tuesday. We really don't see them much here. It was nice to take a break from the usual mangos, starfruit, lilikoi (passion fruit), papaya, bananas and Pineapple.

I don't remember a ton from Wednesday and Thursday except that we taught Pule both days and did a lot of tracting nothing really of note happened. We taught 2 lessons while tracting which was cool, but they weren't really interested in having us back which was kinda disappointing. Thursday night we ate at L&L again with members. I have found my new favorite is the Seafood combo, It still comes with my favorite Katsu, but it also has fried shrimp and mahi mahi.

Friday we went to Pahala for most of the day. We did some quick service in town before lunch, and then headed down to visit some part member families. Things are going pretty well with brother Akana. He has now come to church 3 straight weeks, but he is still not quite ready. That night we went to teach Candice. Bishop Oyama was there with her husband doing some welding and trying to really fellowship with him. They were schoolmates so they are pretty good friends already. Dinner was dropped off to our pad and guess what it was? L&L :)

Saturday was ward garden day, but since most of the members were at the temple to support 2 sisters who are recent converts going through the temple for the 1st time, there wasn't a huge turn out. It was still a good time. After lunch we went with Moki Simmons to visit lots of less actives it went pretty good. After we had dinner with sister Smith. She was one that had just been to the temple that morning. It was so cool how excited she was, and how it just made her day awesome. The temple truly is an awesome place to be.

Sunday was good as well. We only had 1 investigator at church, but that is ok We still don't have a ward mission leader so I taught gospel principles once again. It was on the Millenium which is fairly tricky and people really like to speculate, but I thought it went pretty well. Just a cool story. We were out on a window to tracting. It was raining and windy, and not prime conditions to be out walking. Anyway we had set a goal this week to find 2 new investigators and we hadn't found any yet. we weren't having success, no one really wanted to hear anything we had to say until the last house we knocked on. They were Filipino and they invited us right in. Apparently their children were all members of the church and joined in the Philippines, but they were always working and never could come to church so they aren't members. Now that they are retired so they have time and they want to hear the lessons again! :) They also fed us......which was interesting..... It included another encounter with Balut, Dog adobo, and some kind of egg and eggplant they called it Torta or something and then papaya. It was kinda crazy, but I ate everything they gave me, and it really helped gain trust with them. Too bad i didn't have a camera. lol Apparently they wanted us to try "salted" (pickled) egg but they didn't have any. Darn!! ;)

Haha good to hear about Grantsville thanks for all you guys do. I am curious to hear the report that was received about Ocean View Hope all goes well with the elections coming up and everything else that is going on in the Tripp family. Thanks for all the support I love you all Aloha!!
               Love, Elder Peniamina Tripp
                 (Samoan easy for pule to remember)