I guess Halloween is tomorrow! No one out here celebrates Halloween.
I'll probably honor American Halloween culture by jumping out from behind a palm tree and scaring some little girls when it gets dark. The work here is going well. I'll write about my typical day and then talk about some of the people we are teaching. It is usually to hot to sleep by about 5:30 in the morning. This week I started using that extra hour to read from the Teachings of the Prophets books after praying. This week I read through the teachings of President Benson and will probably start Joseph Smith today. At 6:30 I start exercising. So far I have been pretty consistently doing 15 minutes of planks (5 front, 5 back, 2.5 each side), two sets of 50 push-ups and a 15 minute ab routine. I don't run much because we bike about 40 miles a week and I don't want to lose an unhealthy amount of weight. At 7:00 I do personal study, at 8:00 Elder Zamora and I do companionship study, at 9:00 I do language study, at 10 we prepare for the day, eat and head out and teach. Our time is divided between activities such as teaching seminary, having family home evenings, teaching less actives and investigators and having meal appointments with members and sharing spiritual thoughts. This past Saturday Tameri and Tien were baptized and were confirmed yesterday. The whole experience was very spiritual and uplifting for me. A lot of members and even a lot of nonmembers came out and had a picnic and played games after watching the baptism. Because the baptismal service takes so much effort and preparation on part of the members, we are going to wait until November 13th to baptize Tiaven, who is still progressing very well. The names of our most prospective investigators are Aabo, uneke, Tabeua, Toki and Kanriki. We have several others, but these are the ones that are progressing the most. Tameri and Tien's older sister is also coming back from Tarawa to Nikunau after having mental breakdowns from ghosts and we are hoping to start lessoning with her this week. All of the people here are fantastic people with incredible amounts of love and happiness. I am so glad to be here. I am so glad that you have spent so much of your time and effort bringing me to this point in my life. I love you Mom! Elder Morphonios So again I don't have much time and the internet here is pretty slow.
I just wanted to let you know very briefly that I arrived to Nikunau a couple of hours ago. (Wednesday, 1:00ish) I rode a super tiny dinky plain here and stopped in Beru at one point and am now here safe and sound. I was picked up by my trainer, Elder Zamora. He has been out for about sixteen months and is a hard worker and easy to get along with. I am sleeping in the same hut as my MTC teacher, which is really awesome. I am the ninth Elder to serve in Nikunau and am currently the only white person on the island. Elder Zamora is Mexican. The islanders are holding a welcome party for me tonight after we go do some teaching. I am the first counselor in the Branch Presidency, seminary teacher, institute teacher, sunday school teacher, ward clerk, Elder Zamora tried to tell me I was relief society president too. Elder Zamora and I are the only Elders on the island. I am very excited to be here. I will write you a good solid email on my p-day, which should be Sunday sometime for you. If you could, please tell mema I said thank you so much for the letter and prayers. She emailed me but I don't have any time to respond. My mission address is: P.O. Box 400 Bikenibeu, Tarawa Kiribati Central Pacific I love you Mom! Elder Morphonios |
About MeI'm Elder Joseph Morphonios, and I've chosen to serve a 2 year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Join me as I share my adventures about serving the good people of the Marshall Islands, and sharing the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ with them. Archives
December 2016
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