Week 42: Vava'u- I love it here so much

Dear Family,

I’m at a family history center. Yes, I ate giant bats for my birthday and I think that's the most delicious thing I have ever eaten here in Tonga. Really, my companion said it was scary how good it was!  I’m excited to eat it again. I also ate sea turtle, which was super good. I would like to try whale, but right now it's forbidden.

My comp is great and things are awesome. I don't have time for a big email because everyone wants to go to the beach. We’re super busy and never get a moment to sit down; it’s great. I love coming home exhausted and sleeping really well. I got to meet the new mission president finally and we went out on the mission boat, Alma. We go out on it like twice a week. I’m going to live in Vava'u at some point in my life, it's official. I love it here so much. You guys will freak when you get here. I’m sorry about a short email, I’ll get a big letter written to you guys with all my experiences and stuff since Leimatu'a. It’ll be delicious.

Ofa Atu,

Elder Sitaki

One of my favourite towns named Okoa. It's on two islands, connected by the land bridge I'm driving on.    

A festival we were at with lots of traditional dancing 

Me sitting in Nuapapu where I stayed the night. So far my favorite island.    

Week 41: Vava'u- Transfers

Dear Family,

I’m at the Lord of Vava'u’s house. He’s considered royalty and he's massive, like body wise. I think he is probably 350 pounds, and not fat. I think he is the strongest man I have ever seen. Like he's so wide, I could see him tearing a car in half or wrestling a small gorilla and winning. He’s also a really diligent member. Some really inspired members and a mission president introduced him to the gospel and he's awesome; I love to talk to him.

So I got moved, but not where I expected. I got a call Wednesday morning; it was from one of the zone leaders, Elder O. He told me I was going to be the new zone leader... so that was like, whoa. I kept asking him if he was joking because Elder A and Elder L kept joking all week that I was going to be the new zone leader and then it happened. I replace a guy from Utah named Elder S who finished his mission. Elder O and I are companions and we are in charge of the entire island; we have a car and drive all over the island. There are twenty missionaries in the zone, like 8 sisters and 12 elders; they are all chill. We visit the sisters a lot... not sure how that works, but I’m junior comp so until I get the hang of stuff, I’m just following. As zone leader I get to fly every month to Tonga and have a meeting with president.

I’ve been trying to become really good friends with the Tongans and when there are a lot of missionaries I try to hang out with the Tongans. We end up laughing a lot so it's great.

Umm... I don't think I’m sending a big email out this week; I don't want to use the governor’s computer for too long. All the missionaries are over playing on his pool table for P-day. We have zone P-days and sports are back on so we have lots of fun. Life has been super crazy. When you come to pick me up (if), you'll have to come to Vava’u and see the sights. It’s really the best place in the world. My favorite place is a little town called Okoa. It’s part of the main land then connected to a little island. I have a really cool investigator named Ona who is progressing really well. I’m excited, so yeah that's my life. I drive all over the place; I’m so exhausted every day. I come home and die. So yeah, short email but I’ll get a better one next week. I love you. Thank for remembering my birthday; I set up with this one member is a town called Utui to eat giant bats on Tuesday for my birthday. I’m really excited, It’s supposed to be delicious. Yeah, so that's life.

Ofa Atu,

Elder Sitaki

Week 40: Vava'u- The best way to eat big chunks of fat and stuff is to chew as much as you’re comfortable, then swallow

Dear family and friends,

So this week was good, and I learned a lot. Pretty usual for me, I guess. Nothing super exciting happened; I don't have very many funny stories or anything. That’s just life.

So lets see... Monday, after we went to town and got stuff we came to email. I emailed all you guys then got started on weaving a Kafa for Elder A (kafa is the rope like thing we wrap around ourselves). I had just learned how to do a bunch of different weaving from Elder T who is my district leader so that was kind of fun. I did a little bit every night and finished it Saturday night. So after we emailed and stuff we kind of did some work then went to Family Home Evening with this family. When we got there they had already finished. We were only 30 minutes late, which in Tonga is still way on time. I was really surprised they started on time. Anyway, so we sat and just talked to them forever.

Tuesday we had a district meeting in Tefisi and had a good time chilling there. Those meetings tend to be a lot of fun. One of the sisters was finishing so after the meeting we had a party at the bishop’s house in Tefisi. It was essentially just a feast, but we ate a baked dog. It was delicious and I learned how to eat ngaako. That means like any fat or grisly or not meat part of the animal. The best way to eat big chunks of fat and stuff is to chew as much as you’re comfortable, then swallow. It goes down pretty easy and the Tongans love to eat straight fat and skin so it's great. I love ngaako now. Tendons and cartilage aren’t too bad to eat either. (This wasn't on Tuesday, but at one point we ate raw fish. A guy was gutting fish and he was like hey, do you want some? So we were like yeah, so he scaled a couple and we just ate it right off the bones, 100% raw. I also ate the liver of the fish, also raw. Pretty good, a little fatty, but not bad. Its the equivalent of my catching a trout out of a lake, taking off the scales and guts then eating the fish right there, I can't wait to do it once I’m back in America.) Tongans are happy when we eat their food and the people here want blessing and want to feed the missionaries. When we politely decline food it makes them sad and mad because we are denying them the blessings of feeding us and helping us. I always thought this was odd, but we are trying to do better with accepting people's food when they offer because it makes them a lot happier.

Wednesday, oh, I played checkers!! So in Tonga they play a lot of checkers; it's called vei maau. It’s like basic checkers but there are a lot of really random, weird rules that kind of don't make sense, but once you know how to play, it is really fun. I always go to this one house and play with these two little girls. I think they are 11 and 12, but they are like the champions at checkers; they repeatedly beat the snot out of me. On Wednesday I was finally able to beat one of them, but the other still kicks by butt. I don't really care about the game, but it gives us a break and it makes the family happy to come watch me get whooped and pretend mad. Lots of laughing.

Thursday.... ummm..... To be honest I can't remember what I did Thursday.

Friday we went to the elementary school. The word in Tongan is Api

lau Tohi, which translates directly to "house of reading book". Every Friday at 9am the missionaries have been assigned to teach the religion class. So we went there and I learned that I will never, ever, ever be a school teacher. I love all the little kids, they are the nicest cutest most wonderful people ever, but trying to teach a lesson to them is the hardest, most frustrating thing in the world. I understand why they have rulers in all the classrooms to hit kids when they are being naughty. So we tried to do a game and we made two teams. Both teams ended up getting mad, even the team that won. So they game was bad. Then I tried to do a tree of life activity. Yeah, that failed miserably. I lost complete control of the class.

Saturday, just working; nothing special, really.

Sunday was a great day! So church was awesome. It’s hard to explain how important the sacrament is to me now. It’s like the most refreshing shower. It takes a week of frustration and disappointment and pain and smootths them out like wrinkles in a shirt when you iron. All the bad gets swallowed up in Christ, all the imperfection is gone, and you get to come back and stand before God pure again. You can face the week again, excited to improve. Obviously the imperfections and weaknesses don't go away, but it's like taking a break and coming back with full force of effort. It heals the wounds so well. Even when something new comes up you have the strength to endure as if you were never hurt before. So yeah, after the sacrament we went about our duties; we celebrated a birthday for one of our members and ate really well at their house. Then we came back to our house and did studies. It was the most peaceful Sabbath day in the world. I had a long talk with Elder L about loving the people, something I struggle with. I have hope and optimism that I can succeed; the scriptures spoke to me. It was great. Eventually we made it to the night and we had one last experience. It was at the house of a lady whose husband didn't want their family to do anything with the church, but she desperately wants to come back. The husband was away so she asked us to do a little lesson about how prayer can help. Afterwards, her kids were all falling asleep, (she has the cutest kids in the whole wide world) and they sang “I am a child of God” with these sleepy eyes and man, it was such a tender moment. Ko ia pe.

Ofa atu,

Elder Sitaki

Week 39: Vava'u- Two weeks worth

Dear friends, families, people I associate with and co-workers,

I wasn't able to email last week; we went from town to town to find Internet (with permission) and we finally found it in Tefisi. We had about 2 hours time and both of my companions were dying to use the computer and talk to people so I tried to be a good Samaritan and I gave up my emailing for the week.

Last Friday we got an addition of Elder L. His companion went back to Tonga for certain reasons so we have him until the end of the transfer, roughly two weeks. The day that we got Elder L we had a baptism of a 12-year-old kid we've been teaching. His name is F, which translates roughly to "spreading lots of love". He’s a pretty cool little guy. Then Sunday we confirmed F and made him a member; it was a really good day. In the afternoon we had a huge kai pola, which means feast. It was for the bishop's wife's mother's birthday, and man we ate really well. Following these events on Monday I had the no emailing day. Really frustrating and I was kind of just fed up.

We had a big ward Family Home Evening that night, so we started off with a prayer and song and then every family did a short activity involving other people or just them. It was super fun and just a good time. I did the activity of musical chairs with all the youth and everyone died laughing watching the kids fight over chairs. Someone did an activity where they got all the Melchizedek priesthood holders to dance in really funny ways (including me) and after the activities we had food and ice cream. It was really great because a lot of less-active people came to the activity and we got to talk to everyone and have a good time. Church yesterday was noticeably more people.

Tuesday we had a district meeting, which was good. I ended up teaching for most of it, which funny enough I did a lesson about love and it was especially good, more myself because I saw all the places where I was lacking.

I learned another cool thing this past week: Faith is about quality, not quantity. So this week I’ve been struggling to do the work, not from lack of effort though. So I try to bust my butt everyday trying to do the work, which is great, that's what I need to get a lot done. But I haven't been in the right mindset. I haven't been serving with all my mind. Sure it's great to serve with all your might and strength, but you need your heart and your mind to actually get lots of stuff done and help lots of people. I realized I was doing a lot of this for myself, not for others. I was working hard, not out of a desire to help others, but out of a selfish desire to become the best, so I was lacking those traits. In the scriptures, faith is likened unto a mustard seed; a mustard seed isn't very big, but it can move mountains. Now let’s say you have a haystack worth of seeds, like a bunch! But they are all dead, then you got nothing. I keep all the rules, I work as hard as I can, but it’s meaningless unless I do it for the right purpose. If I do all those and don't have the right desire, it's dead. But anyone can get a mustard seeds worth of faith, and do miracles. So I’ve been trying to change myself, to not just do the

missionary things, but to be the missionary, which is exactly what President Tupou (my mission president) taught all the missionaries last week. His whole point was the difference between doing and being. You see how my president is guided by revelation, to know my problem before I know it myself. Doesn’t that give you a little bit of faith that this is God's work and church? Funny enough, we got a new mission president this past week. I have never met him but I assume I will someday.

We spent one night in Mataika, which is a neighboring town because our room was going to be painted. I will educate all you in a little Tongan Culture with this experience. So on Friday, the day we got Elder L, the painters came in the morning and said they would come at noon. They didn't show up until Tuesday the next week, and they painted the outside and said they would be back tomorrow to paint the inside. So we moved all our crap to the next town over, and what do you know, they didn't come. So that night we moved everything back and went to work the next day. To our great frustration, they came Thursday, made a massive mess of our house, clothes and suitcases all stack in a huge pile in the middle, and got paint everywhere. We moved our stuff again to the next town over and slept there because the paint wasn't dry and they said we'd get sick if we slept there. We came back the next day and cleaned for like three hours to return the house to where it was.

Sunday was great. I was trying really hard to have that grain of faith and it turned out okay. We had a vilo hoa with a guy who was just baptized and we had a really good spiritual experience. We went to visit a lady who is less active. In Tonga if a woman is Catholic and marries a guy who is Pentecost, she is obligated by culture to join the church of her husband. The same with Mormons, many LDS girls marry outside of the church and they are bullied by the people and culture to join the other church. Rarely, does that bring other people into our church, which is odd... Anyways, she really wants to go back to church but her husband won't let her so she stays in another church.  So we went to this woman's house and she was kind of just chilling. She was really happy to see us and we were able to help her with some stuff after which we shared some spiritual thoughts, mostly about how she should keep the commandments and trust the God knows her position and will help her with what she needs. So that's my week.

Ofa atu,

Elder Sitaki