Elder Huntsman: Slow Week in Vava'u

Malo 'e lelei 'eku famili! Oku ou fiefia feingamalie ki tohi aho'ni! My Tongan is coming along! It isn’t fully making sense but I am getting the vocab! The sentence structure will come eventually! They seem to be understanding me somewhat so that is good! This week was slow! We cooked a lot of pigs, helping a family get ready for a welcome home of a missionary! We walk a lot back and forth from Koloa to Holeva to Koloa haha but it is nice! It gets so hot here after it rains! But when it is raining I am always cold! haha I love it here though!

We have a baptism tomorrow for a girl named 'E____! She came to church with us yesterday, we taught her the commandments lesson, than committed her to baptism on Tuesday! Exciting cuz this time I actually understood everything that was going on haha and I am doing the baptism so hopefully this time they go down hahaha! Saturday we helped Peni collect coconuts in the bush, than move his cows then went and killed the pig and roasted it for fafanga! It was good!!! My companion, Elder Finau is funny! ha he told me this story about how one of his friends from school is a twin, their mom is a twin, dad is a twin, grandpa is a twin, and so that family is just called the twin family haha. I taught him how to play Go Fish and he seemed to really enjoy it haha. We have a lot of down time because we don’t go out in the down pour of rain so we don’t get sick so one night after fafanga it was starting to rain so we went and hurried to our house and played Go Fish for the rest of the night! Other than that it was just walking around talking and trying to get people to teach! There are areas here where either EVERYONE is LDS or only a few families are LDS, where I am at is the few families! ha This village is barely a ward and Holeva is still a branch! but i love it here! I just can’t wait til I can fully communicate with everyone!

Answers to your questions: I got my new tupenu's…the long ones, one grey which I look good in ;) and one black one! A lot more comfortable!!! My house is small the chapel is 3 years old so probably the nicest in Tonga! The food is getting better! I just don’t like eating cold food. My comp is very nice and a good trainer! He is 23! He is from my first area Tokomololo and if we can’t go out we study all day!!!! My home is small but still pretty nice compared to a lot of the other ones! All the church buildings are the nicest buildings on the islands! There are stores in every village, but little tiny ones that only sell food or toiletries. The food isn’t very good in the stores in my villages ha! Someone stole the slippers (flip flops) I bought so I have been wearing Aunt Bettyann’s slippers all week so I am thankful I brought them! But they are already starting to rip a little so I need new ones but the zone leaders will never take me to buy new ones or won’t buy me them when I ask them to so once these rip, it’s barefoot til I can get some new ones!

I haven’t gotten your package or any mail even though President Tupou says it should only take a week or two to get here from the States. Whenever leaders come out or when the zone leaders go to the main island for their meeting they are supposed to come back with mail! We just had the missionary couple and the AP's here for conference and they didn’t bring anything for me so I don’t know what’s up.

I shared my testimony at a baptism the other day. I am truly grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ! Without it I do not know where I would be today! I am grateful for the faith I have to know the things I know! I am grateful for the opportunity to repent and be forgiven of my sins and to be able to help others recognize their sins and bring them closer to Christ through repentance and baptism! I know that without baptism we cannot enter into the kingdom of our Heavenly Father! I know that if we endure to the end, continually repenting, that we will be able to live with our Father again! I love this Gospel and the opportunities it gives me!!!

Love you all! Keep the emails coming everyone! I love hearing from you! See you in 20 months!!!