So for everyone's information I took a plane to Fiji. I took a plane to Kiritimati and I will take a plane when I go back. We're not animals.
The hotel's pretty nice. We have two basically small bedroom sized rooms. One for cooking/whatever and one for sleeping. We'll see if it lasts cause it's pretty expensive....
Weird cause on Kiritimati they don't even speak Kiribati so I guess I have to learn a whole new language for here so that's been rough...it's chill though
Christmas is like a half outy half Tarawa. One store with a lot of American stuff flown out from Hawaii. Expensive but we bought and cooked pancakes with peanut butter for breakfast so it's cool.
We have a shower here, cold water but that's typical. But I will tell you what, that one hot shower I took in Fiji was really something. Oh in Fiji we worked with the airport elders and went on splits and each taught a couple lessons. Fiji has so many different dialects and Indians so it's rough to get good at the language...
Elder Stone is 18 turns 19 in april. He's from Illinois but grew up till middle school in Provo. Planning on going to BYU and walking on to the football team when he gets back. Quiet around other people but me and him have no problem talking or getting along. Love the guy. He's way good at Kiribati too so that's legit. We both like to work hard and be obedient and since almost everysingle missionary that comes to Christmas leaves about 20 pounds fatter, we are planning to work way hard and leave in better shape than we came, which we're already at.
Kiritimati is awesome. The people here are legit and it's kinda nice taking a tiny trip back to civilization for a bit and it will be way awesome when president comes on Wednesday. (The mission president, President Weir, is planning to come to Kiritimati on March 18 and stay for a week.)
Spiritual experience? We got two district meetings last week: one in Fiji (Tuesday) and one in Kiritimati (Thursday) and they were both way good and have really made me want to start off really well here in Christmas. One of the ideas is praying for things by just giving thanks. Or in other words think more on the blessings I have received in the past and giving thanks rather than asking for the new ones I would like to be given. I have thus really tried to to minimize blessings for myself to just a few and have the majority of my prayers be for my investigators and other people (aka family aka you guys ;) and thanks for the blessings I have already been blessed with. I will tell you all what, this past week has been a really good week. I am always so happy to be a missionary and I am really grateful for that and I hope you are all happy for where you all are.
In other words, there are about a million spiritual experiences I would like to tell all of you but they would all take too long to explain. To give the short version of one: Tareka's family lives here. We visited them. His younger brother is now taking lessons and really seeing a quick change in his life all because I think he was touched when I told them that I pray for Tareka all of the time because I love him and they can too. He really took hold of that idea and so now this 10 year old is praying daily for his brother and he came to church on Sunday and really liked it.
Elder Stone has this one inspiring talk he plays every morning before workouts and it says "if you're not happy where you are, then what are You going to do about it."
I'll tell you all what, I'm really maturing out here. And that is really something I am fully realizing that hard work and faith are a very dangerous combination because they can accomplish soo much.
Anywho love you all, internet is really bad here but I'll try to get pictures out
Love,
Elder Pettingill
If you want to see the hotel where they are living, search Captain Cook Hotel Kiritimati. There are lots of pictures on tripadvisor.
If you want to see the hotel where they are living, search Captain Cook Hotel Kiritimati. There are lots of pictures on tripadvisor.
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