This week was pretty good. Rained a lot.
Tons of good stuff. Brief Summary:
Monday: We were finally able to talk with Melaia again, and it was one
of my favorite lessons ever. Easily one of the best. She speaks
perfect english, so Elder Grant didn't have any problem saying what he
needed to, but the rest of the conversation went smoothly in Tongan.
We taught her about the restoration and she couldnt stop smiling. She
had so many questions about why all these churches here do so many
different things and it was awesome to just see her eyes light up when
the lightbulb went off. At the end of the lesson we shared the first
vision with her, and it was so powerful. I asked her what she felt
during it and she spent a good five minutes telling us about how she
had never felt so much peace and warmth inside her heart before. It
was so cool. I explained to her about how that was the holy ghost
testifying to her of truth, and she had another light bulb go off. It
was way fun. I love teachings like that. She asked us to speak again
the next day.
Tuesday: Witnessed one of the chinese store owners jump over his
counter and chase down a little tongan kid that had stolen a dollar
soda. Was pretty funny actually.
Wednesday: Had some more great teachings with some new investigators,
then at the end of the day we went on a companion exchange with the
zone leaders. Elder Gardiner has these really cool blowdarts, like
legit hunting blowdarts... I didnt even know that was a real thing...
Anyway I played around with that for a good while. Really fun.
Snagging lizards and so on. Gardiner woke up one night with Vele'ika
and Tai pointing two of the dart guns at his bed, there was a rat, and
it got killed with darts. Fun to hunt with them haha. Anyway, that
night Gardiner and I went back to Hihifo to start the exchange and we
had a good time, we actually ended up having a really great talk that
went on for nearly 7 hours!! Didnt even realize it until we looked at
the clock at 4:50 am... Jeesh. Good talk though. I have incredible
blackmail material on him now hahaha. Man I love that guy.
Thursday: A dog tore my nice slippers to shreds...dangit.
Friday: Had an awesome teaching with the doctor at the Ha'apai
hospital. Cool guy. I love teaching people with lots of questions.
Saturday: Locked ourselves out of the MQ and learned how to brake in
with a knife and hanger.
Sunday: Two of our recent converts were given the priesthood last
week, so they got to help us with the sacrament during church. That
was cool. Also transfers. Elder Grant is getting moved to Vava'u.
Lucky dude. I'm staying and being comps with Elder Siale from Arizona.
He's a cool guy so it should be fun. He gets here later today.
Anyway thats the week.
Ofa Atu kiate kimoutolu Fakafo'ituitui!! Mou fai lelei, fakatefito kia
Luke! Oua toe faikovi he fale ako! masi'i., Taylor
Friday, March 31, 2017
Week 75 in Ha'apai
This week was pretty good. Slow. We had a baptism on saturday though and got to confirm her on sunday. At one point during the week a drunk man tried to kiss Elder Grant, pulling him towards him hahaha.
We also likely met the lady in "the other side of heaven" who if you remember, tried to seduce Kolipoki in Niua. Shes 85 now, but still remembers Kolipoki really dearly.
Lots of good teachings with people. And very ta'emahino people that is sometimes frustrating.
Anyway good week. Really really hot.
Ofa atu kiamoutolu, Tay
Monday, March 6, 2017
Week 74 in Ha'apai
Was a pretty good week. Lots and lots of rain.
Weekly events
One of our members told me on monday "DESPAIN,,, I LOVE YOU". It was Saia Taufa, an older awesome member, and when he's trying to get his point across emphatically he tries to speak in english haha so that was awesome. Great guy.
Tuesday: came up with "instant pasta" instead of instant noodles while eating my cup of noodles. Would be way cool. Instead of adding spices, add spiced pasta sauce. Also had a really cool experience during a family home evening where I was given what I needed to say on the spot.
Wednesday: finished teaching a kid named Tamafua and had him interviewed for baptism, then after the zones left, found out that the kid was actually eight years old, and is a ward baptism haha. well, at least that kid really knows what repentance means now, we spent a good while on that.
Friday: Baptized some of our investigators, and got ice cream with all the crazy kids after. Our bishop is the best.
Saturday: Taught a minister for the Penticostal church, met a lot of cool people.
Sunday: Got to confirm our investigators that were baptized on friday.
Good week. Hope you guys are all well. Ofa Atu, Taylor DeSpain,
sorry pic attachments keep failing...
Week 73 in Ha'apai
This week was pretty same old same old. Lots of walking around and talking to people in the rain. Got splashed from trucks going through puddles a couple of times, that type of stuff.
Here's a pic of one of our baptisms this week.
There was some really cool stuff that happened though.
First, to start off: two weeks ago we held a family home evening with a man named Palu Matakaiongo and his two kids. Five days later, we watched him get buried at the nearby cemetery after having died of too much alcohol in his system. (He was found dead under a tree with a beer bottle in his hand) something like that, and we watched the neighborhood bury him at the cemetery. That was crazy to us because we had just met with the guy a couple of days earlier and got to know him. THEN... yesterday, a week and a half later, we were going around shaking everybody's hands before church as usual, and then I shook his hand....... Palu Matakaiongo was sitting ready for church........................
Also, an eighty year old woman possessed with a demon from hell scared the freak out of me. We were trying to find one of our investigators and went to the neighbors house, where this woman cursed us out and yelled at us to disappear and never come back or that she would call the cops. She also told us how incredibly much she hated us and what we were doing. "Going around causing problems". I have never seen so much hate in someones eyes my entire life. It was quite possibly, literally out of this world. So much hate and anger. It was crazy.
my response- "Sorry Maam, all we're doing is trying to bring happiness and peace to others by sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ"...... we walked away from a verbal assault.
"And that there is a crazy lady"- Nacho.
Good week. Love being out here.
Ofa Atu, Taylor DeSpain
Here's a pic of one of our baptisms this week.
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Week 72 in Ha'apai
Monday- Ran out of ranch dressing. Sad day. No more crouton tasting breakfast crackers. Lots of teachings.
Tuesday- I got attacked by a vicious mother chicken, and yes indeed "the chickens have large talons." Went tracting around in the rain. Fun time. Lots of lessons.
Wednesday- Met a crazy lawyer, ex-stockmarket conman from new zealand. Very very interesting conversation with him. He was actually a very smart guy, but also kind of crazy. Fun combination. More teachings. I freaking love our Bishop too, he is the man, so helpful. The family that we were teaching in his home this night, they've accepted the invitation to be baptized and they told us "we have been waiting for missionaries to come back for three years". That was awesome.
Thursday- We went tracting in the rain again and at one point the rain started falling so hard that we hid under a mango tree. Grant saw a fallen coconut and asked if I wanted a drink and I said yeah, throw it against the tree. So he did weakly and I picked it up and said "no grant, you gotta throw it hard like this" it was much more prepared to break than I thought it was, and shattered violently against the tree, pouring coconut water all over Grants shirt and tie.... hahah oops. One less white shirt for grant. Taught a minister of a another church just after that, and he asked us to come back. Also, we went searching for a guys house deep in uta (the forest/bush) and Grant started talking about how cool it would be to wander upon a tribe of really native tongan people walking around with loincloths around their waists and being super dark and all this crazy stuff, and then we both freaked out as our hearts stopped for a second and saw what looked exactly like the type of person we were describing staring at us. Turned out that it was a statue, loincloth and all. Super freaky. The freakiest part was that we walked another hundred feet or so and looked back at the statue... and it was turned around facing us! Freaking freaky tongan voodoo magic going on. Freaky.
Later that day, we had fafanga at one of our members homes and the twenty four-ish year old guy there told us all about his time in Australia trying to learn english and being compounded with the refugees for overstaying, his iran refugee girlfriend and so on haha. At one point he told us that he didn't learn about the FLDS people (polygamists that call themselves mormons) until after a long while of people calling out "multiple wives eh!", and him not knowing english, yelling back "io!!!" (Yeah!!) hahahaha.
Friday- Met a crazy breadman who told us all about his row team days. Fun church activity where we taught. Good food. Reminded me of the good old days when X and I would hangout and talk for hours while eating food on the couches in the church hallways at church activities back home. Good times.
Saturday& Sunday- lots of great teachings.
All in all this week was great. Things are going awesome right now. We have 8 baptisms set up for the next three coming weeks and are teaching 24 people. Its great. Nothing is more fulfilling. Its amazing how someone can change their lives so drastically by deciding to listen to the missionary messages. Its awesome. Love it out here. Hope you guys are all doing well too.
Ofa Atu, Elder DeSpain
Ofa Atu, Elder DeSpain
Week 71 in Ha'apai
This past week was great. Summary of what happened, plus the week before since I didn’t say anything last week.
Tuesday 31st- Got food poisoning.
Wednesday 1st - Suffered from food poisoning, then at 5:30 pm I decided I was done with food poisoning and so I asked Grant to give me a blessing and “just heal me now, not eventually”. So he gave me the blessing and I felt better. But then later in the day I had to decide whether or not I felt well enough to go to a family home evening with Pisope. Still wasn’t feeling amazing, but I decided it would be a test of my faith in the blessing, and that afterwards I would most definitely feel way better, because that’s how it works right? Faith and works before results. I thought for sure it would work. Then I got home from the family home evening and experienced the most violent projectile combinations of sickness I never imagines possible at the same time. Lesson learned, not my will be done…
Thursday 2nd- Got over sickness eventually. That night Grant and I talked until 4:30 am about a bunch of stuff. Didn’t even realize it. Good talks.
Friday 3rd- First day with the new missionary schedule. Pretty cool. That night we had to do a vilo hoa so that we could get to all of our teachings. I taught at our stake Presidents house w/ Elder Gardiner. It was an awesome lesson. Haha at one point I told our President “thank you for your repentance” instead of thank you for your explanation” because the words are so similar. Also in that lesson Elder Gardiner, instead of saying “na’e fai e sisu ha ngaahi mana” or “jesus did many miracles” he said “na’e fai mana e sisu” or “jesus did magic” hahahaha. It was a great lesson though. Afterwards Gardiner and I went back to the MQ to wait for the other guys to finish up and we just talked and so on, at one point he asked me what some noise was and I responded “The wind keeps knocking my thing off the thing” and he busted up laughing and said “you’ve been in tonga too long” hahaha. True true. (cuz everythings interpretive with things in tongan).
Sunday 5th- Got out of the shower and found a little boy named Mosese clipping his fingernails at our table. What the heck. He just walked in out of nowhere.
Tuesday – For fafanga we bought jam and peanut butter at the store so that we could make pb&j sandwiches! So we were really excited about that. Also, that night, we had to do another vilo hoa to teach two lessons at the same time. So Elder Hau and I went to Saia Taufa’s house (the dad of Xaviers mtc comp), and we taught their investigator the gospel of Christ. Haha, during that lesson, I messed up the joke I sometimes use when teaching enduring to the end really really bad. Instead of saying “kapau ko ia, mahalo pe te tau viviku he taimi kotoa” or “if that was it, we would always be wet” (talking about how being rebaptized is unnecessary), I said “kapau koi a, te ke viku he taimi kotoa” or “if that was it, you’d be peeing all the time” hahaha.
Thursday – Discovered that ranch and breakfast crackers tastes like croutons. Delicious.
Sunday – Bunch of great teachings and tons of new bapitismal dates set up. Good stuff.
Great week.
Love you guys, Tay
Love you guys, Tay
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