zone conference and milestones

Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2016 4:41 PM (MDT)
         Wednesday, August 31, 2016 9:41 AM (Vanuatu)

this week seemed really short and really long. time passes weird in general as missionaries.

honestly i can't remember all that much that happened this week and the journal that i recorded it all in is at my apartment so.

we had quite a few new investigators this week. relatively. it was kinda great. like one time we went to a return appointment but she wasn't there. and when we were asking her husband about her and such, her coworker's husband was standing nearby and it started to rain. you people in america don't know what rain is. anyway. he(our investigator's coworker's husband) invited us to go and hide in his house and wait out the rain! and that was a really awesome teaching opportunity. and he had a lot of really good questions and we had to be like. 'good questions. good stuff. that question is answered in lesson 2, different section of our doctrine. we'll talk about that next time.' really great stuff.

the truck to take all the investigators to sacrament actually came this week! we had 40 attendance at sacrament! it was really awesome. like. dang son. i also taught sunday school and priesthood. had a really good lesson with a investigator that can now be deemed progressing! his name is also matthew and he put on his only button up shirt to talk to us. he's p awesome.

hey guys. don't forget that the book of mormon is the most important thing in our religion(a religion being a system of beliefs-thanks dictionary). its truthfulness and feeling the holy ghost is basically the whole goal of missionary work.

zone conference!!! my mission pres is better than your mission pres! he is really awesome and i got a lot of revelation and application points of how i need to and can improve to become. 'remember who you are and what god expects you to become'  -thomas s monson

oh yeah. parents/all others who can and want to look at the fb page. i found out that the mission president's wife maintains a facebook page of the mission. vanuatu port vila mission 2015-2018. look it up and maybe find more pictures and videos of yours truly? i don't know i can't go on it. but you can!

theres other stuff i could talk about but. eh. live is good. life is looking up. zone conference pumps me up to be a better missionary. to try new things. to be better. to work harder. yep.

that's all for now!

elder hyatt vi

1.      a spring(river?) thing next to the road that we got some much needed refreshment from

2.      it was so cloudy and rainy you couldn't see aore.(the other island across the bay channel thing. i failed geography)

3.      cool beach picture

4.      zone conference lunch

5.      zone conference

6.      zone conference

7.      zone conference

goals and productivity

Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2016 6:28 PM (MDT)

         Monday, August 22, 2016 11:28 AM (Vanuatu) 

hello one and all. welcome to an email!
how are you doing? are you good? ya happy? i hope so.

anywho! my week! lots of stuff happened! missionary work! i don't remember all that much but just stuff that happened on saturday and sunday so. anyway.

zone training at the beginning of the week! yay! got some more liahonas and some books of mormon and announcements!

wednesday it rained and rained and rained. it's the equivalent of spring right now? i think? so theres a lot of rain and a lot of clouds. which is actually kinda nice. we waited out the rain for a bit with one of our investigators leya. good stuff.

over all this week i've been taking stock of my teaching powers/abilities and it's the 1/2 way mark of my first born and he's so great. on thursday we went to crossroads, the farthest little village thing from our house(i think like a 12 hour walk? if we walked? thank goodness for trucks!) that village is like 2 hours walk from the chapel and theres only like 2 or 3 members of the church there. we had some really spiritually intense lessons. p good. we only spent like 2 hours there because we really needed to get a ride back before dark. but it was really awesome.

on saturday, we went on splits with the zone leaders, one of whom worked in our area before us. i went with elder harding and elder 'atuake went with elder thomas. really good stuff. learned a lot and got a whole heck ton done over the course of the day between the four of us.

sunday was district conference! all like, 700ish? members from all the northern islands of vanuatu came and it was really awesome. some of our investigators came and some of our less active members who haven't come to church in like forever, came and i was super happy. after, we went to kevin anderson(plantation/village thing named after the dude who owns the plantation) and had a really awesome lesson with mama dayla. my branch, well, it's actually a unit right now, is really awesome and im super grateful to be here and be able to grow every day.

that's pretty much it,

Elder Hyatt VI

yep. pictures.

1.      cool sunn clouds n stuff while we were waiting for a taxi

2.      selfie with some missionaries at district conference before it started

3.      like 10 minutes before it started, more people kept coming in

4.      looking out the back of my apartment at 2 animal friends

where to start

Sent: Monday, August 15, 2016 4:50 PM (MDT)

         Tuesday, August 15, 2016 9:50 AM (Vanuatu)

this week tho. lots of stuff.

a bunch of other missionaries do this whole day by day thing so let's see how that works out.

monday

so on monday we went to berol and went fishing for a p day activity! theres a bunch of coral and really colorful tiny fish like everywhere. didn't catch anything tho. but it was pretty fun. people here don't use fishing poles. just fishing line wrapped around a small bottle and if the fish swims away with the bottle, just wait till he gets tired then pull him in.

tuesday

we met mama eloty! she's really cool. she has a really awesome family and her kids are great. we sat on a bench under a tree during the lesson and during the lesson. a bird took a really really big dump on my comp's shirt. i just about died laughing. it's all good tho it washed out eventually.

wednesday

went all the way to nasonun. it was a pretty great day. a truck picked us up and took us all the way there. taught some less actives. cuz everything is really far away, a lot of members say they can't come to church cuz it's too far of a walk so. we're working with the district president to try and get a transport to go to all of the different villages to take everyone to church. the kids here in the farther villages(tanavoli and nasonun) have a ces/seminary class thing once a week taught by one of the mamas and it's really really great! because like. the kids invite their friends and so we have like 4 referrals from that class and all of the referrals for sure want to know more about the gospel so it's really really awesome.

thursday

heh.. didn't get much done on thrusday. kinda had a emergency we had to take care of. but we went and taught one papa who works to smoke cobra. like. he stands up there while the fires going and moves around the coconut for optimal smoky flavor? orsomething? i don't really know. but all that stuff is coconut.

friday

weekly planning fun!!!! it was a pretty relaxed day cuz we didn't leave the apartment until 1pm but it was good. time well spent to plan for the future so we can be very focused when we're out in the villages! taught mama eloty again. she's really awesome. her husband is like a night security dude so he's kinda hard to get a hold of.. it's kinda frustrating/annoying when people make an appointment with you and then you show up and they're deliberately not there...

saturday

we went to crossroads! the farthest village for the first time! it was really really far and there's only a few members there but it was really worth it. a humbling experience sitting with a mama who faithfully walks for 2 hours to church every sunday. it's also kinda funny when little kids who haven't seen a white person before see me and are like. 'GASPPPP MAMA MAMA'

sunday

sacrament and such. the transport is still in the works so we had sacrament at berol with the authority of the district pres. walked to mama dayla and talked with a bunch of members that were gathered. it's super weird being the person people look to for the final say in decisions. weirddddd

been studying about grace and the atonement this week

i doubt i'll write a letter like this one again. #toolong

oh well.

that's all for now.

Elder Hyatt VI

pictures:

1.      coconut smoking place to get it (cobra) ready for exporting

2.      the cobra

3.      mama eloty and her family

4.      really cool lookin sunset when we were leaving usa(oosha)

5.      me fishing

6.      me and my comp fishing

7.      A BIRD POOPED ON MY COMP

8.      awesome cliff thing down to the beach in one of my villages

9.      a really really good dish mama dayla gave us. she called it buniea or something. it's like kumala cooked with coconut cream in the middle. it was super super goodddddd - hard to make in america cuz you gotta dig a pit and heat up a bunch of stones and a bunch of coconuts and banana leaves. but yeah.

the rains came down and the smiles came up

Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2016 6:32 PM (MDT)
     Monday, August 08, 2016 11:32 AM (Vanuatu)

hello!

this week has been an experience. we're doing our best to strengthen the branch here and as in all branches and wards, the branch/ward is only as strong as the families within it. so we've been working with our less active families a lot and doing our best to uplift and strengthen them.

for 3 days of the week this week it was really rainy and windy and cold. one mama said my hair looks like that of a wet cat when it's wet. heh. kinda funny. we've bought a bush knife and the long term benefits of that purchase have been very evident. so when we walk down the road and there's some coconut trees, if we find some navara, we can just cut it open and eat right there, a very big blessing when walking the long road far from our house.

my mission president counseled me to re-teach the lessons to the less actives and the benefits/blessings of that counsel are plentiful. these people were baptized forever ago, and haven't heard the basic principles of the gospel in a long time. wonderful and spiritual experiences during those lessons lemme tell you. so i'd recommend all who read this to somehow find the missionary pamphlets and spend some time studying the basics if you have time for personal study.

my companion is tongan right? so in tongan people eat/roast pigs all the time and we/i havent had good pork in months. so we're trying to find a pig to eat. like. going to a village. asking how much one of their pigs would be. bargaining a price. a lot of them are pretty expensive. trying to find a good cheap one to partake of.

one thing that i can definitely testify of is the power of prayer. while cutting navara one time, (knife in one hand, coconut in the other) the knife kinda missed and hit my arm. luckily, we had remembered to pray for protection that morning and the knife didn't even break my skin. the lord protects and blesses those who do his (missionary)work and follow his commandments.

i've had the opportunity to study some old liahonas from general conferences in the past. while listening to general conference is certainly an experience and should be watched, But! in reading, there is the scripture references that they don't say in their short 10 minute talk that have been a great blessing to study.

i'm really starting to love these people. now all i have to do is show them the love the savior has for them. im up for the opportunity. im grateful to be here. im grateful for all that i have and have experienced. we are all enlisted!

that's all for now!

pictures::::

helping a mama get water in the rain at a river

a beach at one of the villages-lots of coral

more beach with one of the little boats they use(called kenu)((pronounced ken oo))

scenic river shot

spiritually self reliant

Sent: Monday, August 01, 2016 4:32 PM (MDT)
     Tuesday, August 02, 2016 9:32 AM (Vanuatu)

hullo there

this week felt really fast but each day was really slow. since saturday was the 30th we thought sunday was the 1st. so we fasted and then got to sacrament meeting anddddd it wasn't fast sunday. kinda awkward but it's all good.

life is good here in this.. place. i dunno what to call it. to be honest i don't know what to talk about right now.

ooooh ok i know

so this week was a celebration week. like last sunday was 'children's day ' and saturday was vanuatu's independance day. so this whole week there was just. a lot of celebrating. and in the hopes of getting a ridiculous number of refferals, our leaders decided to have a 'market stall' so like. at show ground(a area/town/village/place??) there is a community park and a bunch of people made stalls out of branches, coconut leaves, nails and fabric. really legit. and we met a lot of people there and it was really awesome.

we're getting a lot closer with/better at teaching and talking with less actives. theres one village that's nothing but less actives. so we have lots of people to teach whenever we go to that village so it's pretty great. they're pretty receptive. teaching them about how to be spiritually self reliant. yes you can feel the spirit and want to change when the missionaries are there. but, it's not worth anything unless you do something about it when the missionaries aren't there. reading. and praying. and desiring after good things when the missionaries aren't there. conversion is obedience and faith over time. the gospel isn't a one time deal. it's a lifetime deal.

one of the less actives we're teaching is really cool. his name is robin and he's really chill. we got talking about slingshots and such one time before a lesson and he said he'd make me a slingshot. so. guess who has a slingshot now. *childhood me jumping for joy* it's really useful for scaring bad dogs away and passing the time when we're walking down the really really long road between villages.

we finally met all of the members in the whole branch. which is really positive. in this area there's not a lot of new investigator kind of proselyting but a lot of re-activation/ re-inviting less actives kinda proselyting. which is nice. when we teach/ have discussions with less actives we have a lot more doctrinal questions that we can clarify and help them with than those of investigators. everything in the gospel is super simple. but everything connects to everything. obedience connects to the plan of salvation, baptism, enduring to the end, the restoration, the atonement, ect. and same for every other doctrinal point. simple but complex.

last thing. so our apartment is really old missionaries wise. like. missionaries have been in this area for a long time. and so there's a ridiculous number of really old liahonas(the best by far of the church magazines)((also the only one that's accessible here)) and being able to read the articles, words of apostles and prophets that i maybe haven't heard before or havent seriously considered before is really awesome. one quote that i found is really awesome and sorry for any/all of you who haven't been inside the temple yet, this probably won't make as much sense to you. anyway.
"real personal sacrifice never was placing an animal on the altar. instead it was a willingness to put the animal in us upon the altar and letting it be consumed" - Elder Neal A. Maxwell

really good stuff.

that's all for now.

good week and goodbye for now.

Elder Hyatt VI

Pictures:

navara, before and after it's cut cuz it was probably a bit confusing last time

a picture of us and some other elders arriving at the showground park for the market stall

me holding some un cut fresh navara and a green coconut ready to drink

me pumping water out for a old lady member in nasonuna
really dope beach with some cool trees in usa(pronounced oosa)

lil hermit crab that we found while contacting at the market stall