Thursday: The flight was super long and tiring. The President of Kiribati and his wife who visited us in the MTC were also on our flight so that was cool. My legs started to cramp up towards the end of the flight so that was so awesome. haha
When we came in sight of Tarawa from the plane, it finally hit me that I'm on a mission. As we got closer and closer i was like dang, i could be teaching people in like an hour. When we landed and got out of the plane, it was about 5 seconds before everyone was dripping sweat haha. There were a ton of people outside to greet us because a couple missionaries were going home, so that was scary haha. I heard people yelling the language to each other and me and the other missionaries looked at each other and lost our minds. It is insane how fast people talk here, and it doesn't help that they mumble because you can't understand them at all. We put our bags in the truck and drove to the stake center for orientation. It was so crazy driving down the road and seeing what people live in. When we got to the stake center we met our companions, other missionaries, and did our orientation. My companion is super awesome and way chill. His name is Elder Wright and is from Spanish Fork Utah. We are super similar people which is awesome. The mission president and his wife are super awesome. After orientation, we went back to the house where we were supposed to stay for one night, but ended up staying there until Sunday.
Friday: We woke up around 6:35, then went outside and played volleyball for 2 hours. It was a ton of fun. We then left to the warf to get on a boat to go to our area, but when we got there the boat had already left. So we had to stay until Sunday because that's when the next boat came. So we just hung out the rest of the day in the house.
Saturday: My companion and I went on a 7 mile run in the morning, and let me tell you that I am way out of shape hahaha. When we came back, the sisters came over and we played volleyball from 7:30 - 10 because we can't do anything else cause we are not in our area. After volleyball we went to the store and bought Lava Lavas. I also got to hold a 5 foot Tuna but forgot my camera so I didn't get a picture. Later in the day we went to a Baptism in the ocean, and it was so awesome. There was also a huge party for a couple who just got married so we went to that. The was a ton of food and dancing and singing. It was a sweet experience.
Sunday: We didn't go to church today because we had an 3 hour boat/canoe ride to our area. When we came within a mile of the shore the water was super shallow, so we had to carry our bags all the way into shore through knee deep water. We put our things down and then walked back to help other people bring in their stuff. Man that was so tiring. We then got to our "House", took a bucket shower. We had dinner at our "neighbors" hut. They served us bone fish, rice and some for of plant. It was really good. They are feeding us tonight as well.
Well that's all that has happened so far.
Love you all.
Elder Jeppson
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| Our house on Abaokoro |
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| Kiribati kids |
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| Elder Rangi and I |
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| Elder Wright carrying our luggage to the island from the "boat" |
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| Abaokoro |
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| This is how crowded the boat gets - we came on this to the island |
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| First night sunset |
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| Elder Wright and I |
Sounds like quite the adventure... can't wait to see and hear about your experiences serving the people of the Marshall Islands.
ReplyDeleteDavid Stone