Ivie's Missionary Journey

Aloha and magandang hapon!  Thank you to everyone who sent me an email of encouragement this week! I have the best friends and family in the world. I love you all and am so grateful for each and every one of you. Nothing too crazy happened this week. We decided that we're going to eat at one of the like three restaurants here called Pele's after district/zone council on Tuesdays. It's good to get out and we want people to see us. The restaurant is really good but we paid $40. 😭 Oh man I gotta get used to that.  We had Mission Conference on Thursday! We talked about obedience and diligence. I pick a christlike attribute to work on every transfer, and this transfer is diligence. It's so important to be 100% obedient and diligent as a missionary. Especially on Lanai, because we don't have anyone keeping us on track. We have to be diligent and do it ourselves.  We pretty much do online proselyting all day. So what we do is we join groups on FB and talk to people. We fo...

Aloha! Oh man, this will probably be a long email so I am sorry. This week was insane. I was SO nervous on Tuesday and Wednesday to come to Lanai. I wasn't sleeping great because I was so nervous. I cry when I'm super tired, so I was crying a lot haha. I also hated saying goodbye to everyone. The plane ride to Lanai was only about 20 minutes. It was a VERY turbulent flight, so I was a little nervous. I was flying by myself with no other missionaries, so that didn't help.  Lanai is similar to Utah tbh. It's about 10 degrees cooler here and it's more dry here. So I've been freezing here! Our pad is cold too. I don't mind though because I get to wear socks and my sweater! I also get to actually sleep with a blanket, lol. I'd rather be cold than dying hot anytime. The high has been in the low 70's and it gets down to the 50's at night...now listen I know that's not cold for Utah. But I've been used to 85 degree weather and humidity for four m...

Aloha!  We have transfers this week and I was 95% sure that I was going to stay in Htown and that Sister Israelsen was leaving....LIES. I'M GOING TO LANAI!!!!! Lanai is a tiny secluded island by Maui. It's the smallest island that missionaries serve on. And it's only me and my new companion, Sister Gumil, on the entire Island. There are 4,500 people on the Island and most of them are Phillipino. Most of the people speak Tagalog, including Sister Gumil. English is her second language, but she's basically fluent in English now. I am so excited but so nervous! I got a covid test today and then I think I'll fly to Lanai tomorrow! This transfer is Sister Gumil's last transfer, so they told me that I'm going over there to take over when she leaves...this was the last thing that I was expecting. Not many missionaries serve on Lanai and the first Sister missionaries got sent there last transfer, so this is pretty rare. I'm probably going to be the only white per...

Malo e lelei! 🤙🏼  Wow a lot has happened in the last two weeks. I finished training, so that's cool I guess. I hated when missionaries asked me how long I still had in training so I'm finally done. 😂 Honestly the work has been pretty slow during the holidays. Rafael was on the mainland for the holidays so we weren't able to teach him. Also, he did end up moving..he moved on base by Pearl Harbor. So he is no longer in our area, so we're working with the Elders over that area to get him baptized. Michael hasn't come to church in about two weeks..he isn't really responding to us anymore. We know that he is struggling with some things though so we think that he might need some time. He did ask about baptism a few weeks ago though, so that was  pretty cool!  Our mission has the goal of having 100 baptisms in the month of January! That would mean that each companionship would need at least one baptism! We've been asked to pray for that miracle in EVERY prayer t...