Update from the Big Island

Thanks everyone for the letters and Hey thanks mom for the protein! I finally got it. I am almost out of protein bars again though.  I can pick a different kind up at Walmart if you don't want to have to send them so let me know.  Oh and before I forget I figured out that I can do insanity and P90x!  Well I can't do P90x because I don't have weights but will you buy me insanity?  You can use my card if you want. 

That's so great about your surprise visitor and text.  Also, I did know Tiarra was going to Tennessee again. Hope she does well.  She will probably be some huge star by the time I get back. 

How did dad's ride go?  He is going to have to take me on some rides when I get home. I am going to be so behind!  Hopefully with Cooper too! Haha

I'm doing great here in Ka'u.  Elder Gardner and I try to stay busy and work hard.  I'm so glad to have a companion who likes to work hard, even though we are both still learning. Haha.  Which reminds me, we had an assistant come out to Ka'u and stay with us for a couple of days.  It was awesome because he taught us so much in those 2 days. It pretty much changed our mission.  His name is Elder Biggs.  He really helped us to figure out how that the lessons don't always have to go as planned.  We are just supposed to go there and figure out what that particular investigator needs and help them out with it.  We had a couple kinds of weird lessons where we went in and didn't even cover what we had planned, we just listened to the spirit and opened our mouths.  It was an awesome experience.  This week me and Elder Gardner have been trying to really figure out why the Lord wants us in this place.  What exactly do we have that he wants us to utilize? So we have been trying to step out of our comfort zone and make mistakes so we can figure it out.  Elder Gardner learned to not tell me how to do things so much too because he now knows that he isn't teaching me to become him he is teaching me how to use my talents and characteristics which has helped me a lot to be more confident in what I say and do. 

We had an interesting experience while tracting, it seems like that's when we get the most "interesting experiences" Haha.  We walked up to the house, knocked on the door and a guy answered and just sat there and stared at us...  So I continued to tell him what we were and why we were there.  And then I asked him if he was religious and he replied "well in fact I am completely atheistic."  You probably can guess where this is going to go, haha.  He continued to rebuke us about how stupid it was to believe that some fairy in the sky saved us all and we would live with him some day.  He had no intention from the start to listen to us and I don't think he has really listened to anyone in his life.  Everyone was wrong but him.  So me and Elder Gardner just sat there and pretty much let him talk.  I never thought I was the bible bashing type but when someone is pretty much calling you stupid for what you believe it's hard not to prove him wrong. Haha, but I did keep my cool and after he was done ranting we just said well obviously you are not going to change your mind so have a nice day and we left.  But the best part was after we left one of his friends came up the driveway and we were next door.  We overheard him boasting to his friend about how he just gave us an awesome lecture and how he missed out, Haha. He was so proud of himself.  Well, at least we made someone feel good about themselves.  He will figure it out sooner or later, Haha.

Well that is my update for this week.  Oh, mom if you could find my camera USB cord and send it that would be great.  Thanks again for the last package.  That apex stuff actually tastes pretty good and I was in desperate need of more socks, so thanks for that too!

Love you all very much.  Keep sending letters and whatnot. 

Elder (insert name of choice)

All is Well Here in Ka'u

Well to answer your questions, my companion is from Orem and he has been out 5 months now I think. This is the only area he has served in too so he knows the island pretty well.  I am starting to figure out where I am.  It was weird at first because I didn't even know where north or south was. Haha! I am figuring it out though.  Oh and don't worry i will have plenty of pictures for you.  We went to south point which is the most southern part of the US and I got some awesome pictures of the ocean.  We are going to go back today because the whales are coming in so I might have some pictures of whales!

As for my experiences, we have two investigators with a baptismal date.  One girl, who is 11 and is super excited to be baptized (her mom is a member but is less active so we are working on her too) and another girl who is 13 and has been taking the lessons for a year.  We finally got the reason that she was waiting to get baptized.  Every time we would ask her she would just say I’m not ready or I don't know enough but finally she told us.  So we just told her of the blessings that she will get if she does get baptized and told her to pray again to find an answer to see if she should get baptized. So we will see what happens. 

It is getting easier to teach, I learn so much every day.  It's weird to think I have already been here for two weeks but it also seems like it has been a long time just because I have been doing so much stuff.  One thing I have been working on is teaching people not lessons.  I have been trying to teach with the spirit.  One thing that has helped me is when I was in the MTC we watched a talk by Elder Bednar who was talking about receiving personal revelation and the first thing he said was to stop worrying about it and it will come.  All my life in school and stuff they ask you to use your head and really think about things but then i come here and I have to stop thinking, Haha! I just have to listen and open my mouth.  Hopefully, I will get that down soon.

Oh and I did get Isaac’s email. I don't need a bike.  We drive a car everywhere because it is the biggest area in the mission!  We are out in the boonies!  We are a good hour and ten min from the nearest Walmart! Haha. But we do have a little store about 30 min away that we can go to.  It's so nice here though.   Na'alehu where I live is a little town kind of like Cedar Fort where everyone knows everyone and they are pretty much all related. Haha!

I placed my first Book of Mormon! I kind of stole Elder Gardners chance because he was talking most the time but I did bear my testimony and explained the Book of Mormon and he took it but he said he didn't really want to read it right now but he did like the message we gave him.  We will have to go back to see him.

Thanks for sending all the protein and stuff.  I haven't got it yet but it might come today.
Well, thanks for everyone's support. I love you all. Hopefully someday I can show you this place. 

Aloha!

My Snowboarding Companion

Have the craziest story!!!! And I almost forgot! My companion Elder Gardner was just getting to know me when we were on our way back from the airport and we got to talking about snowboarding. We both really like it but he was telling me about a huge wreck he had where he crashed on jump and some kid came flying off the jump after him and hit him in the neck with his snowboard and cut it wide open! SSSSSSAAAAAAAAMMMMMM it was Sam when he broke his arm! So insane! Me and Sam were wondering if the guy was dead and now he is my companion!

The Big Island! Ka'u, My First Area!

Well I will start off with the plane ride (P.S. Mom thanks for the outline that actually does help a lot).  We left the SLC airport at about 11:30am and got to Honolulu at about 3:30pm (but it was a seven hour flight.  You do the math).  The Assistance and the President were there to greet us.  They are all awesome!  My mission President is hilarious!  We then went to the President’s house where he gave us a little devotional thing about missionary work and being obedient in everything we do, then we had dinner.  His wife is also one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.  She takes care of all the missionaries like they are her own kids.  This was the first time I had fresh pineapple.  Sooooooo Goooood!  I love it!  After that we all opened our letters to see where our first area would be.  It was like we were opening our call over again!  It was so exciting to see where everyone is going.  Only three of us were sent off island.  Elder Grover went to Kauai (no sure how to spell that) and Elder Vanhille (my buddy in MTC) went to Maui serving in a tongan ward!  Way cool and I went to the Big Island!  Woohoo!  I got on another plane the next day after orientation and when I got there, Elder Gardner and I went straight to work.  We went from the airport to a lesson.  It was kinda hard to teach because I didn’t know them but I did the best I could and it actually turned out be a very spiritual lesson.  Bridget (the mom of the eleven year old who we were teaching who is less active member) broke down and started crying.  Hopefully she will start coming back to church.

I have been trying this whole week to figure out how to teach with the spirit and just forget about trying to teach the lesson.  Also this week we met the bishop a bunch of times.  We could not have a cooler bishop.  He is a recent convert and has had a huge turnaround from being like the biggest drug dealer in the area!  Oh my area is called Ka’u (ka-oo) in the Hilo district.  But anyway the bishop is an awesome worker and is such an amazing person!  We also lift weights with him every other day.  He is huge!  I will send pictures when I get my card back.  My mailing address is still the mission home and then they forward it over here.  It is pretty much as country as you can get here in Ka’u.  It is a really small town where everyone knows everyone.  It doesn’t exactly look like you would think Hawaii looks.  It is more lava rock and country looking land. Haha.  We have the biggest area in the mission!  It is bigger than the whole island of Oahu.  It was nice to go to church this Sunday so I could put names with faces of the people my companion is talking about all week.  Haha.  I will get it though.

We have had some crazy time tracting.  One guy in Oceanview, which is where all the crazy people go to hide I’m pretty sure, but anyway, we walked up this guys driveway and he started yelling at us that he wasn’t interested but we kept kinda talking to him then he got up to walk inside and he wasn’t wearing pants! And his brief underwear wasn’t exactly brief if you will.  He was pretty much naked…groooosssss!  On that note, hope this was a sufficient email.  If you have anymore questions, send me a letter!

Aloha!

01/12/2011 Only 48 Hours Til Serving the Lord in Paradise

I will be departing on Tuesday so I will be sending back a few things.  Just a little heads up. 

It is weird to think in 48 hours I will be in paradise serving the Lord.  I'm so very grateful for this opportunity and I can't say that enough.  I am so grateful for the spirit here at the MTC.  It is everywhere and in everyone. 

One of the last lessons I had was one of my favorites.  My teacher had us write down the question, "What is the most important aspect of missionary work?"  and then with that question in mind we went into the main building and looked at all the missionary paintings and pictures in the halls in complete silence.  I came across a picture of two missionaries walking down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, with no houses in sight.  When I looked at this I realized that it doesn't matter where you go or how successful you are.  All that matters is that you are serving the Lord and doing your best to help people to come to Christ.  When we got back to the class we all shared what we thought the answer was to the question at the beginning.  After we did that, our teacher told us the answer.  The most important aspect was to develop love for everyone and seeing them as a child of God, no matter what they have done, seeing them through Christ's eyes.  In my personal prayers I have been praying for the gift of charity.  This lesson helped me feel a little bit closer to achieving that goal.

I'm so grateful for the gospel and it is such a great happiness to share it with others.  I'm excited to see how I do in Hawaii.  Hopefully they taught me well in the MTC.  I think I will be okay because the biggest thing they taught us to do is to just listen to the spirit and listen to the investigator, so we didn't have to focus on memorizing the lesson.

It was awesome - one time we had to teach a lesson to an actor and our teacher before and they made us plan every single detail of the lesson we were going to teach.  When we had done  this she told us to review it and practice it on other missionaries.  I could not remember for the life of me what we had written down so I was feeling pretty mad at myself and pretty down.  When we got to the building we were supposed to teach in we had a prayer to invite the spirit as we teach.  When we went in, we taught the lesson almost flawlessly.  The spirit was there and it felt like we were really getting through to him.  This just shows how it is not us who are teaching these people, it is the spirit.  If we don't have the spirit it would be impossible. 

Sincerely,

Elder Pincock