tauannene

Mauri ngkami!

This past week was an interesting one. I ate turtle (which may be illegal, but I was tracting so I will blame the culture) and also lobster. Then I ate dog as well (on my brother's birthday, Happy Birthday Nairne!).

Got some news that we will all be going to a mission tour in a week so I will be leaving Marakei, only for a short time hopefully! Not even sure if I will come back or be transferred so that's a little worrisome.

The message this week: God is our loving Heavenly Father. We are all children of God and he loves us all perfectly and equally. Equally. So it is important to remember that we serve God to show our love Him and not to try to top our neighbor to be the favorite child or whatnot. We are given various callings as well to help people know of Gods love for them through our ministry. Callings are important, although some require extensive effort (right Dad?) I  am grateful for all of those faithful members who fulfilled their callings to help me become a better person and to manifest that there

is a loving Father in Heaven.

Thanks for all of the support! 

Elder Farner

(Word of the week: tauannene, it is a word to describe someone who doesn't want their family or friends to leave their proverbial fold, but usually in a forceful way)

korobun

Mauringkami!

The word of the week should be one that you all can use because there really isn't a word for it in English. The word is "korobun"; It describes the feeling you get when you eat too much  and it gets stuck in your chest and you need water to wash it down. Pretty cool.

This past week and really past transfer has really been about church attendance and what we mean by enduring to the end. Why do we attend church? Why is it a "primary answer"? Well let's look at Jesus Christ's gospel. He preached faith on His name and power to save, repentance, baptism by immersion and the proper authority, and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands and lastly enduring to the end.  So we show our faith by choosing to repent, and we know that the "firstfruits of repentace is baptism" and that baptism isnt complete unless it is by water and spirit, or fire and water, so that means we need the Holy Ghost too. Once the first 4 "steps" are done, what do we do? We endure to the end. Jesus Christ said "Look unto me and endure to the end and ye shall live; for unto him that endureth to the end will i give eternal life" (3 Nephi 15:9)

I will take a break from the previous lecture with the story of a recent investigator. Her name is Tekunrerei and she is 75 years old. She started lessons with missionaries 3 months ago and has been frequently attending church and Family Home Evenings. Last Thursday we were teaching her about the Book of Mormon and she told us she believed it was true. So we invited her to be baptized at which point she told us that she was already baptized 30 years ago.....the point is that church attendance and church activities helped this lady remember her testimony. She is very strong in the church right now. 

When we go to church, we show our faith, we receive cleanliness from the Sacrament and renew all of our covenants and thus repent and are "rebaptized" and also are promised the Holy Ghost in our lives. In other words, when we go to church we actually are living the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore I encourage all of those who read this to evaluate how important church attendance is on your list of priorities and maybe readjust. Is it more important to watch a football game than stay for the full three hours established by prophets of God? Is it really that bad of a stomach/head ache to ignore the need for spiritual healing? Is it really that difficult to get up at 7:30am on the Lord's day? 

You all are awesome! Keep it up! 

Miss you all,

Elder Farner

mwakerukeru

This week was a quick one. We had another bootaki (party) for Teachers' day and that was a pretty cool experience. They do a dance every time where they basically have one person stand up and dance until they pass the dance on to the next person who stands up and passes it and so on. So of course, the third person to get asked to dance was myself so I got up and everyone thought it was hilarious. If a foreigner tries anything in the culture it usually makes people laugh.  

 

bootaki

We have a few solid investigators but there always is a problem it seems that comes up when trying to keep a commitment. But then again, its not just the investigators that have a hard time keeping commitments but also myself and members of the church as a whole. Sometimes we focus on the mote in the other's eye and forget the beam or don't even notice it in our own eye. Or in Elder Holland's talk, we accept the release of our 10000 talent debt but don't forgive others their 10 pence debt. And so on.

We are told to lose ourselves in the service of others, which also includes losing our personal opinions on how people should act or personal desires on how we want things to go. We are supposed to serve, not command.

D&C 6:36:  "Look unto me in every thought, doubt not, fear not"

We never know what might happen as we continue to work diligently in our respective callings, things can change very quickly in peoples lives, although the build-up to that change can seem very slow.

Word for the week: mwakerukeru (mah kiddu kiddu):  Means crunchy.

There is a sister in our ward who feeds us a lot and this one time she made a peanut brittle thing. It was really good and I was calling it cake and the sister, named Totite, said that it wasn't cake but " the crunchy mena" (mena just means "thing"). The crunchy thing. It was pretty funny because she was speaking half English half Kiribati. 

Anyway keep on moving forward.

Miss you all 

Tiabo

Elder Farner 

ingainga

Well there goes September. Started it off on Tarawa and finished it here in Marakei. It is weird how essentially you just live a completely different life in such a short amount of time.

Anyway, we set a goal about 2 or 3 weeks ago to get 80 people at church and then have a picnic to celebrate. The first Sunday we had 60 people at church, the next Sunday we had 62; the following we had 66 and then this last week, according to the count by the branch presidency, we had 78 people. So close!   We also had a service project last week and about 25 people showed up which was cool too.

There are also 7 families that will potentially be going to the temple in the next couple of weeks so that is cool too.

Some information about Marakei that I have yet to share- 

Population: about 2800-3000

Villages: 7: Rawannawi, Raweai, Tekarakan, Bwainuna, Noorauea, Tekuanga and Antai

I would guess that most people here are Catholic,- then Protestant and then LDS. There are also some seventh day adventists too.

Marakei is shaped like a circle and I think it is about 18 miles around. There are a couple things Marakei is known for and being good at dancing is one of them

There is also something about some people randomly having really fair complexions sometimes, something about a recessive gene but I haven't seen it.

And the food it is known for: bwabwai which to me tastes a little like chalk and elmers glue mixed together.... haha But I will get used to it, everyone loves it here.

That's a little bit about Marakei. It is a pretty cool place, I figure I might be out here for a several more months but you never know. The Elder I replaced was only here for 6 weeks and he thought he would be here for months.

Another thing that's pretty cool is that I baptized someone, a child of record who turned 8.  The water in the font was too low so I had to do it a second time and kneel and he also knelt so I could get him under the water.

Word of the week: ingainga - Means "excited" as in we were excited for our Fast Sunday yesterday because everyone could come to church together, as we rented a car.

So that's about it. 

Miss you all, keep on keeping on,

Elder Farner