karinea

This past week was an interesting one for sure. In the culture here, at any significant party (bootaki), all of the religious ministers are invited to attend. And in this last week, there were 3 parties: 2 graduation/moving up ceremonies for students and one for raising awareness for and opposing abuse. So that was interesting.
In this upcoming week the President of Kiribati is coming to the island. His name is Taneti Maumau.
We are going to be doing a service project this week to clean up the government buildings before his arrival.

The new word for the week is "karinea" which means "respect". Mosiah 3:19

Tiabo ngkami
Elder Farner

matintin

* Elder Farner hasn't had access to a computer for the last 2 weeks, so here is a compilation of his experiences taken from what he sent via an old cell phone!

Another difficult week to email so I will keep it short.. So last week was crazy, a lot of traveling. We only stayed in Tarawa for 5 days and my comp changed to Elder Scholle not Elder Bataua. I stayed in a super dirty house with 11 other elders . I'm glad I'm back in Marakei. My new companion is way better at the language. The mission tour was one day long of training about using the Book of Mormon and Preach My Gospel. Elder Ardern of the seventy came (he spoke in the last General Conference). I was washing my hands in the water fountain when he came up and started talking to me. He used to be the mission president over this mission when it was a part of the Fiji mission. He told me it was a privilege to build up the kingdom of God. True.

This last week was weird. But I'm sure more will come.

Word for the week: matintin means thick

Elder Farner

From 11-5-2017

Well we haven't actually done the mission tour. And to be completely honest I don't know the full plan for it. We were told 1 week ago that we would be coming in to Tarawa to hear Elder Ardern speak;  he is a seventy. But as to what that entails I have little idea. Then we were told that we were going to be flying on the 5th (fast Sunday) which was not cool... so we went to the airport yesterday and weighed our stuff at noon, and then we were told at 2 that our plane was cancelled. So we were going to try to get on the 2nd one and after waiting an hour for it we were told we couldn't get on it, and then after another hour we finally got our overweight luggage fees back... then we walked back to our house in the rain for a mile. Then this morning we had to bike 3 miles in the pouring rain to get a phone to email, and my bike chain was super loose so it fell off like 6 times.... Patience. Haha just a crazy day. Not sure if I will ever get on another bike again after this mission.

Also we were told that my comp is going to stay in Tarawa and I am going to get a new comp after the tour is over. His name is Elder Bataua, and he is a native of Nauru but he grew up speaking Kiribati and English so he should be a very helpful comp for learning Kiribati. He has already worked for 1 year and a couple of months so he should be good. I haven't met him yet as I am currently sitting in Marakei. We leave today at 2.