Week 35-Transfer 5

 6/10/13

Aloooooha!

Hola Familia! 

This week has been super busy with all the changes and everything but it has been so good! My new companion's name is Sister Hoskins and...I'm training her! I didn't find that out until I met her at transfer meeting on Wednesday. This is actually her second transfer so I'm her second trainer which makes it interesting at times and kind of daunting but with communication things are going great:). She is 19 years old (almost 20 as she told me;) and is so sweet. She is from Colorado Springs and is so excited to be here on her mission. We have been having a great time just geting to know eachother and doing the work. 

So I found out as I got here that Kahala is the richest zip code in America. It is funny however the diversity. There are some streets that have multi million dollar houses and others that live in little run down places. I swear some of them are professional pack rats! One of the houses we had dinner at was like Noah's ark! They had 2 dogs, 2 cats, 2 ducks, and i'm pretty sure I saw at least 2 cockroaches. It was such a crazy house with the animals crawling all over the place and random objects in the most random places around the house and the couple were so funny! They fed us...fish. You know how much I like that stuff...We did get a new investigator out of it so I guess it was worth it:) It is so fun and interesting though. 

I am loving tracting:) It is fun to see the other side of things. You know, at the Visitor Center we got a lot of people who would argue with us or get mad at us for silly things or practically run from us when we saw them, but there were also people who we would have a really good spiritual lesson with and then they would tell us how they have seen the missionaries around and have shut the door on a few of them as well. So the first time I had a door slammed in my face I just started laughing and Sister Hoskins just looked at me like I was crazy. :) It is just so funny to me to be on this side of things:P We go out tracting alot here. We do what we call the "Prayer Approach" which is something that I have been practicing since I got to Hawaii, we just didn't use it as much in Laie. Anyways, we just go door to door offering to leave the Saviors peace and blessing with them and thier families through prayer and then we ask them how they feel afterwards and invite them to be baptized. It's amazing the miracles we see from that. We found a few new invesigators doing it. It's also quite amusing the responses some people give. One super rich guy said, "No thanks, we definitely have plenty of blessings." (with a smug look on his face I might add) and onother lady said, "No, I'm Japanese" and then slammed the door. As if that is some kind of an excuse;)

We are teaching some really awesome people though. We have a baptism schedualed for this Saturday for a Japanese girl named Rio. Hopefully that will go well. We also did have a baptism schedualed for a guy named Keoni who we had to push back for but he is getting there. Today we are going to teach a new investigator Mika who is also Japanese and is so cute! She went to church with a friend and sang in the chior just becasue she likes to sing. I was lucky enough to be sitting right next to her:) Before the choir sang, I had been asked to give a "missionary moment" so I got to get up and bear my testimony about coming closer to Christ so others will see that in you and you will be able to share the gospel with power and conviction. When I finished and went to sit down I noticed that Mika was crying. She later told me that she really enjoyed the talk I gave. After Relief Society we talked to her again and I asked if she would be interested in learning more. She said yes! that she really wanted to learn more about the church and about Christ. I am so excited to teach her! She is so sweet! 

I love this work more and more each day! So did Tiffany ever get my card? Did you ever get my mother's day present? Did you move or something? I hope not cause I just sent Dad's father's day present in the mail;) It also contains the little recorder with plenty of recordings to keep you busy for a while. I didn't really get a chance to listen to them again so hopefully it's ok. Hopefully Tiffany will find a way to put them on the computer in the right format cause there are things on there that I don't want to lose! Can't wait to hear more from all of you:P. I love you all so much! You are all the best! As always, I continue to pray for you each day! I love you!

Te Quiero,

Hermana Rowley (Shayla)

Here is some of me and mi companera nueva. All that food is what the ward gave us after the fireside. I have to admit, the ward here makes sure we get fet a lot better than the YSA wards;) I guess that's to be expected:) I love this ward so much all ready though! They are all so fun with such interesting stories! Love you all!