Week 37-Transfer 5

 Alooooha! 6-24-13

 Hola familia! 

Thank you so much for the packages mom! I was definitely not expecting all that! I am very appreciative though:) I did not get to eat the muffins yet because we only have a little foil cupcake pan and no cooking spray or anything. Haha, you can see how much we cook here:) We will figure something out though. I'm sure that the lady we live with will have something we could use. That was the perfect idea for a mission birthday! I especially loved the mini "Abish" puzzle:) I have completed it at least 3 or 4 times now:) Sister Hoskins was really sweet for my birthday. She loves birthdays so she made a ton of signs and posted them around our room and blew up some balloons and then threw one at my head to wake me up. 

It was an interesting day that day. We spent the morning at the Dr. for Sister Hoskins. She is ok, just needed something checked. That night though we got to go to a "Pops" concert that was geared so that us missionaries could bring our investigators. Unfortunately, none of the investigators who could have come showed up. It was a super good concert though. All about America and with a full orchestra, adult and children's stake choirs, guest singers, and a drill team. We got to hand out programs by a table with a bunch of missionary commissary on it. They do this concert 2x/year and a ton of non-members show up so it was good to be able to talk to everyone. One of our investigators though, Mika, actually was in the choir! She just loves to sing so she joined the stake choir:) 

This week we are really praying for miracles as a mission. Since it is President's last month here we have been praying and working hard to reach our goal of 200 baptisms this month for the mission. Something that has never been done before in this mission. For our zone, the goal is 40 baptisms, way above what we have ever done before. However, I'm pretty sure we are going to make it. As of yesterday, our zone had 34 baptisms for the month! They are definitely coming through miracles! I'm pretty sure the number jumps up like 3 every day. Most of those are coming from the Chukese and Marshallese areas. They are like the Spanish people for Hawaii. They are all so receptive to the gospel. It really is amazing. Sister Hoskins and I are doing everything we can to add to the number. We certainly will need a miracle though. I wish investigators will just keep there commitments! 

One of the new investigators that we got this week, Rod, is actually a former investigator of some elders but new to us. He kept making and canceling appts. with us but finally we called after weeks and he came! We had a really good lesson. He is really afraid of not being perfect and of not ever being good enough to be baptized. We talked a lot about that, about how baptism does not mean that you are perfect. There are certain things that you need to prepare yourself for to be baptized but we promised him that if he kept his commitments of reading the Book of Mormon, praying sincerely, continue being taught by us and coming to church, the rest would come and he would be able to be prepared for baptism. He seemed really excited and promised he would come to church (especially since we were singing). He said that he really wanted to change and he would do as we asked. However, Sunday came, no Rod:( In fact, none of our investigators who promised they would come were there. It would have been so good to have him there that day too because President Dalton and his wife gave such good talks! We did have a less-active there who hadn't been to church in 20 years! He was crying during President's talk and afterwards said, "That was so touching! I want to do something like that and help people like that!" It was so neat! We were so excited that he came this Sunday! This is definitely the Lords work and is in His hands.

So our song actually went ok! Sister Hoskins was soooooo nervous because she had NEVER sung in front of people before and then I kind of threw her in to the deep end and we sang "Abide with me tis Eventide" A Capella! We each sang a solo part too! I was so proud of her! She did amazing! 

That night we did watch the missionary broadcast of course. Our dinner appt. got out late and we missed the first 15 min. Is that when they showed Hawaii because I don't remember seeing that. The broadcast was amazing though! Missionary work is definitely stepping up. I wonder when our mission will start going that digital. That will certainly make things a bit easier with contacting people here! The biggest excuse here is "too busy." And it's true! Everybody has too much going on in their lives! It leaves no time for us to teach them. We got a referral from the Visitor Center (that was exciting for me:)) the other day and we called her and she was like, "yeah, i'm interested. But I am super busy and never home. I'm working 3 jobs and don't really have any set time off." She even asked if she could keep in touch through gmail! The best we could do was to tell her to call us if she has some time and to keep in touch with the sisters at the visitor center through email. Hopefully that will work for now. 

Something cool this week, I'm making friends with some of the deaf people in the deaf group in our ward! They said that I need to learn ASL so they have been teaching me some things. I now know all the question words so I can ask "what's that?" or "What?" or "Who?" or "How?" or "Why?" or "When?" They think it is pretty funny that I go around asking questions all day:) 

I am still loving what I am doing here. I really can't decide if it is going by fast or not. I look back and say what happened to all the time when at the same time the days are so long here. I guess that's the best way to do it:) I am so grateful for how much Heavenly Father loves me. I learn more and more each day how imperfect I am and yet he still trusts me to teach his children. I loved what it said in the fireside last night. How Heavenly Father will never let my imperfections stop His work. Sometimes that is hard to believe when I think of all my imperfections that I’m sure are affecting my investigators, but as long as I am trying, the Lord will not let me fail! That was super comforting! I love you all so much! I hope you know that by now:) I'm so excited for Tonya and Kyle to move to Utah and I can't wait to meet my new nephew and niece when I get home. And mom, about my bank account. I got permission from Pres. to check it to see what you were talking about. Those $4 fees should not be there as far as I know. I don't use an ATM here and they say they are a bank fee. Could you please check up on that with the bank, cause that makes no sense. Thank you for checking my account for me:). I love you all and pray for you always! Thanks for all the love and support!

Te Quiero!

Hermana Rowley

Week 36-Transfer 5

 6/17/13

Aloooooha!

Hola familia!

What a week! I'm so glad dad got his present in time:) I thought it was pretty funny:) I can't believe Tyson is going to dances now! How fun! I can't believe it is my birthday already! Can you believe that this time last year I was getting my surgery done?! It seems like such a short period of time! I can use guitar chords on an Ukulele, as long as they are simple:) I can't put music on my ipod but I can listen to the CD. I'm sorry Tiff didn't ever get my card! I promise I sent one! I will have to find another one. Did you ever get my Mother's day present mom? Did you like the sticker? I'm glad you are enjoying my recordings. I had a lot of fun doing them. I thought it was really funny when Brandon first called us his "elephants" then he told us the story and it was just cute:) I just realized though that I should have kept the recorder a little longer because my companion and I are singing in church this week. Sis. Hoskins has never sung in public before. She has a good voice but she has been really self conscious about it so she doesn't sing very much. I have changed that for her;) We have been singing hymns together at members houses and such and I do the alto part and she does the soprano and the members always say how good we sound together. So I was able to convince her that we need to sing in church and I even got her to agree to do a little solo:). I am so proud:)  She is super nervous about it though. We decided to do it this next week because that is when our mission president, President and Sister Dalton are giving their farewell talks. We are lucky enough to be serving in the ward they are in so we can be there for that. It is going to be so sad though. Our new mission president and his wife, the Warners, will arrive July 1st and get right to work. Apparently Sister Warner has been in the Tabernacle Choir and has a beautiful singing voice so that will be fun. 

I'm doing great here in the Kahala ward. There are so many interesting people here it is so fun! One of the members here is really good friends with Bill Cosby and says that she is waiting for the right moment to give him a copy of the Book of Mormon:). Wouldn't that be cool:) I really do love the ward. This fourth of July is going to be so awesome! Our ward mission leader, Brother Cloward, is having a huge BBQ party in the backyard of his mansion. He has the most beautiful backyard that has his own private entrance to the beach. I will for sure take pictures. We get to man the name tag table so that we can see if any people we don't know show up. Hopefully we can get all our investigators to go too. We have 5 progressing investigators as of right now and they are each so very different. We have one Japanese girl who has had a date set a few times and is totally ready to be baptized but wants things with her family and everything to go smoothly so she has postponed it again. We have another Japanese girl who is so super sweet and comes to church and sat by me in the ward choir last week. She is very interested but has no background or knowledge of God at all. We are taking it slowly with her. We have another lady who loves God but doesn't believe in evil at all. Another guy who doesn't understand why he has to quit smoking before he is baptized. And my favorite is someone who has been talking the missionary lessons off and on since 2005. He is so funny and crazy but I also know that his testimony is growing. He even said that he wants to go to church, but the problem is that his wife is super less active and he doesn't want to grow apart in religion with her so he said that he will only go if she goes with him and she doesn't want to go. He said he might go if he could bring his dog with him...haha, yeah. We are praying so hard for him. His lessons are always fun because he is so very honest and doesn't always have a filter. hahaha. I'm not sure if I could even explain some of the things that he has said:) I think that he will get there eventually. Heavenly Father has definitely been working with him. 

Tracting this week has been a bit rough with a lot of non interested people. We did meet a few interesting people:) So every house we go to we ask if we can say a prayer with them. Well it is always fun when they say yes and then start offering their own prayer. After we ask if we can say the prayer next and then they say, "yes, mmhm, thank you God" all through our prayer:) People also have the funniest excuses. I now understand Chelsea's feelings about dogs... I think I have met 2 friendly dogs this whole time and I'm pretty sure they are at every house we go to. The work does go on though. 

My testimony continues to grow everyday. It is very humbling to be training someone else and realize that you don't know everything. I am learning so much though and I am so grateful for this opportunity. I also worked it out and I should be able to finish the Spanish Book of Mormon by July 10th, my 9 month mark...eek! I have not met a single person out here in Honolulu who understands a word I say if I say it in Spanish (unless you count the elders who find it hilarious to say hola to me) but I still enjoy my language study. There truly is power in el Libro de Mormon. 

I love you all so much and I love this work. I have a strong testimony in prayer and scripture study  and in the love Heavenly Father has for each of us individually. I love you all so much!  I miss you all and pray for you always! 

Les Qiero,

Hermana Rowley (Shayla)

PS. Next week I will have to put pictures of the awesome hike that we did today through the jungle:)!

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!

Week 34-Transfer 4

6/4/2013

Alooooohaaa!

Aloha familia!

What a horse for Alexa???!!! That is the best prescription ever!!!!! So fun! And I'm so excited for Tonya and Kyle to move to Utah! By the way, I was never told...am I having a niece or a nephew?? I can't believe it is already June! So crazy! I really feel like it was just barely December!

So news for transfers......................................I'm going out full proselyting! I was not expecting it at all and am kinda overwhelmed now. I will be going to the Kahala area which is in Honolulu. Hermana Rodriguez should be excited cause that's the area that she was in! I guess that's turned into the "Hermana" area;). I don't know who my companion will be but I will find out in transfer meeting on Wednesday. It is going to be so strange because we are getting 7 new sisters here at the VC and I won't know any of them when I come back! I am kinda sad because Sister Jones and I only got to be in this area for 3 weeks! I was just saying yesterday how much I LOVE our wards and the people here! I love teaching the Marshallese so much! Tom finally set a date to get baptized on June 15th and Nercy is soooo close! I am really sad that I will miss their baptisms and I won't be able to teach them any longer but I am so grateful to have had the chance to teach them! They are all so humble and fun and it has been so fun to learn bits of Marshallese:) They all get big smiles and shout "Iakwe!" When they see us. Yesterday we got to tell them the story of Ammon and King Lamoni and Aaron and King Lamoni's father because that is what they are learning about in their Book of Mormon class that they are taking. They all decided that they really like Ammon a lot and were really in to the story. It was so cute:) 

It's amazing how the Lord works and blesses us. I am so grateful that I got to be with Sister Jones for this short period of time. I have been learning so much more about relying on the Lord. It was hard because of me being sick for those few days and then Sister Jones injured her neck at the beginning of this week and she could not move for 3 or 4 days. I got the privilege of helping her the way you helped me mom, after my surgery last year;) It was difficult being stuck in the apartment for that long and Satan tried really hard to discourage us. However, as soon as we could we went right back to work and received so many blessings and miracles! People we had been trying to get a hold of for days were finally home and we were able to make several appts. And then there are the wonderful Marshallese who are all growing in the gospel and so ready to learn. Heavenly Father has really strengthened me this transfer so much! I am a bit nervous for the big changes but I am excited as well. I know that is where the Lord wants me and that is all that is important. 

So just so everyone knows, don't send anything to the Visitor Center any more. Send it to the Mission Office and it will get to me. That address is:

1500 S Beretania St Ste 416

Honolulu, HI 96826

I love you all so much! I know I say it all the time but you are the best family ever! I still pray for you every day and I will pray harder this week for Alexa. Sounds like she is going to be having a rough time of it. 

Thank you so much! I love you all! 

Les Quiero!

Hermana Rowley

So this is me and Sister Jones and the food is fish that the Marshellese men caught and the women cooked and fed to us...yes it is still looking at us and yes I ate it and told them that I loved it...it was...fishy...