July 21, 2014 - Ahona!

Hola familia!!!

This week has been spectacular! Highlights.. 

-On Wednesday we got to do service at Pearl Harbor! That was fun because I've never been there as a tourist, but I've always wanted to. We cleaned the Missouri battleship. Then the guy in charge of the volunteers gave us a free tour! So that was super fun and service-y and educational. :) 

-On Thursday there was a baptism for the Marshallese ward, so we went and took Jonah with us! It was cool because the whole thing was in Marshallese, and none of us understood a word of it... but the Spirit was so strong! And I know Jonah could feel it, because he loved it and was really glad he came. He said he knows he should get baptized too. He's not totally ready yet, but I know that he will be! We still meet with him a couple times a week though, so that's good. Oh and Jonah texted US this time... saying he just wanted to remind us that he's coming to church on Sunday! Haha we were super surprised... because like I said... it usually takes hundreds of calls and texts to get him to come. And even though he's progressing slowly, we can see the change in him. It's awesome... that's my favorite thing, seeing people change because of the gospel. 

-We have been doing service every week for an investigator, cleaning out her storage unit. It's crazy... there is so. much. stuff. We just spend like three hours pulling everything out, consolidating it into bags, and then putting it all back in. Lather, rinse and repeat. Every week.  But it's actually been so good to spend that time getting to know her and talk. She has NEVER been open to talking to missionaries, even after her daughter was baptized a year ago. But ever since we've been helping her and showing our love, she is waaaay more open to learning about the gospel! 

-We had two mini-missionaries from Thursday through Sunday, so there were five of us! Seriously, miracles always happen when we have minis. We were able to get more than double the amount of work done with them, I love it! 

-The people who we live with have a dog named Cuddles. And they're out of town right now.... so really WE have a dog named Cuddles. Not super relevant to missionary work.... but it's a highlight nonetheless. :) 

And mom to answer your questions...No I won't be transferred. That's the whole point of me being in a tripan here, so that someone who already knows the area can take it over. So that's a relief, because it's always stressful anticipating what will happen the next transfer! But I will miss both of my comps for sure!! 

I'm glad to hear you're all doing well!! Thanks for writing, and know that you're always in my prayers! Love you!!!

<3, Sister Sabey

Pictures:

1. us and our mini-missionary from the first week!

2. cuddles and sister curtis. 

July 19, 2014 - Dinner with the Horita Family

                         A wonderful family in my area! 

 The Horita Family!

July 14, 2014- Hellooo!

Aloha my people!

How is everyone doing?! I hope everything is going well! Tell me about all your adventures! 

This week has been awesome!! So. Many. Miracles. But for real, we have been so blessed!!! 

-Remember how I told you about Brenson last week?? He is doing SO good! We were able to teach him again, and it was the best lesson I've had on my mission! Not because of our teaching or anything, it was because Brenson is SO ready for this gospel! We got another mini-missionary this weekend, and I was on splits with her when we visited him. We had given him a Book of Mormon, and even though his English isn't super great, he totally read! In our lesson we read some more together, and he just absorbed everything. Then at the end, we asked him to say the closing prayer. He was really hesitant... he said he really wanted to but he thought his English wasn't good enough to pray. So he had us write down what to say to begin and end a prayer. He was kind of nervous because I guess he thought he had to use sophisticated words or something. But finally when he was ready he decided to say it. And seriously it was the sweetest prayer I've ever heard. It was so sincere, and straight from his heart. He was truly talking with God. When he finished, the Spirit was just flooding the room. It was definitely something I will remember the rest of my life! Then he told us that his family (who is currently in the mainland visiting grandparents) would love to learn about the church too as soon as they get back! Woo!! I want to teach a whole familyyyyyy because that would be spectacular if they all got baptized and went to the temple in a year! 

-So have I told you about Jonah yet? I can't remember. If so I'll tell you again. So one day when Sister Curtis was at Walmart before this transfer, a guy (Jonah) came up to them and was like, "hey, are you the mormons?" they said yes... and he asked if they could start teaching him! So that brings us to now, and we teach him every week! But the problem is that he never keeps his commitments, even though he always seems super interested. He has never really read on his own, and he has never come to church. For the past four weeks he's committed to coming to church, but hasn't. We call him every Sunday morning like 79 times, and one time we even went to his house to wake him up. (I feel like missionaries are allowed to be a little bit stalker-ish....it's all for a good cause right?) But this past week, we just decided that we can't force him to do anything, and if he doesn't keep his commitments we need to drop him. So we stopped trying to set up an appointment or getting him to come to church. Then Sunday comes around and he texted us like 30 minutes before church starts saying that he was coming! We were like... HA we've heard that one before. But 30 minutes later, we found him in the church parking lot waiting for us! It was a miracle! He stayed for sacrament meeting. He seemed a little bit nervous because he wasn't wearing church clothes or anything, but we were able to introduce him to tons of people who were super nice to him. Afterwards, we weren't really sure how he felt about it all.... then he texted us saying thank you so much, that was a very good and humbling experience, and I will definitely be coming back next week! We were so happy :) Heavenly Father is really softening his heart! 

-Not a lot of other crazy things happened this week. My companions were both sick for a couple of days, so I kind of had to chill a lot. (By chill, I mean read everything I'm allowed to read- Book of Mormon, Ensign, talks, etc.) Speaking of my companions, they're both dying in 18 days...! It's super weird killing two people at once. They get to bond about the fact that they can listen to normal music and movies in 18 days and I just can't relate... but that's okay, I really don't want to go home that soon anyway (no offence family:) Anyway I LOVE them and I'm so grateful Heavenly Father put us three together!!! Them dying also makes me realize how short my mission is! 18 months is nothing. Gotta live it up! YOSO (you only serve once, obvi) 

Anyway, I have to go but I hope you have a lovely week! Always remember that it's the little things you do that that matter. Keep on reading, praying, going to church serving, and all that jazz :) 

Love you all so much!

<3, sister sabeybaby

July 7, 2014 - Happy 4th of Julyyyy!

Salutations!

How is everyone doing?! I hope you had a fun 4th! This week has been awesome. It feels like last Monday was a year ago. But we've been super busy, and having tons of miracles! 

-About a week ago, we got a call on our phone from a random number. I answered and he said his name was Kalani, and he was a less active member for over 20+ years, but that he wanted to come back. We were so excited for him! So we set up a time and met with him on Wednesday. We were able to teach him about the Atonement, and the Spirit was so strong. It's the best when someone has a genuine desire to change and come unto Christ! It reminded me how much the Spirit is the one who changes people and softens their hearts. So now we meet with Kalani every week, and even since we met him we can see his faith growing! 

-We got a mini-missionary! Do they do anything like that in Mesa?? It's where a future missionary gets set apart as a missionary for four days and goes around with the missionaries to experience missionary life. So we picked up our mini on Thursday- Sister Naehu. She's Hawaiian and of course she grew up here so she already knows a lot of people. But let me tell you, it was SUCH a blessing to have her! I think Heavenly Father helps miracles to happen when there's a future missionary with us to show how important and wonderful missions are. We had more lessons on Saturday than I've ever had in one day!! It was SO good and productive. I am so happy when we're working hard. And with four of us, we were kind of like an army. Of Helaman. Or something like that. We were able to split up a few times, and do double lessons.. it was the best. :)

-So earlier this week we went to go see a former investigator. He's Chukkese, and we try stopping by all the time, but he's never home. Well when we went this time, someone else opened the door who we'd never met before. (sidenote: a million and a half people usually live in one apartment, so it's awesome when we teach one person in the home, because usually everyone else gets to hear it too whether they like it or not haha :) Anyway, his name is Brenson and he's probably in his late 40's. We just got to know him a little bit on his porch, and he was really open to the gospel! We just talked a little bit about eternal families and such, and he was super interested. So we set up a return appointment he became a new investigator! Then on Sunday night, our army split up to do double lessons again. Sister Naehu and I went to Brenson's house. He is so prepared and open!! We started teaching the restoration, then his brother in law who's visiting from Guam who was just in the next room like two feet away the whole time said he was a member! Less-active I think... but he would randomly chime in and bear his testimony, which was so good. The Spirit was really strong. Also, Sister Naehu rocked it. She did the whole first vision and all that, which was pretty awesome for never having had a real lesson with someone before. Anyway, everything just went perfectly, and he's super excited to read the Book of Mormon and come to church on Sunday! So I'll let you know how that goes! 

- Fourth of July!! It was so fun. We went to a member's house for lunch, and had watermelon and BBQ. It was so good and fouth-of-july-y. We also got permission from President to do a zone activity and have p-day after 5. So we went to a park and played volleyball, jammed to efy music, played our ukuleles, and watched fireworks. 

-On Thursday it was Sister Curtis's birthday! So of course she celebrated by eating bluet (I don't know if that's spelled right... you know what I'm talking about, the half-fertilized chicken egg?). Why, I don't know!!! Probably because she was feelin 22, and that everything would be alright! But really it was disgusting. Most of the elders in our zone did it with her too. I'll have to send you pictures next week when I have my camera with me! 

Yes mom, we are being very well taken care of by the members!  Really, every week we get groceries, and every day we get dinners, and even lunches and breakfasts sometimes. We get fed even better than I did in Laie, and that's saying something! haha. I don't want you to worry that we're under-fed- it’s anything but that!  haha :)

Wow, sorry my emails are always so long! I realized that it's harder to write short emails than it is to write long ones... sorry about that. :) Anyway, I love you sooo much!! thanks for being the bombdotcom. Keep on doing missionary work! CPR! Write me! <3 

<3,

sister sabey

#thefieldiswhite #harvesting

July 1, 2014- Hi from HI!

Aloha family!!!

How is everyone doing?! I hope all is well and summer has been lots of fun!

There have been so many miracles this week! So there's this former investigator, Bill, who the sisters here were teaching a long time ago. He's a super sweet 70 year old Chinese man. We were tracting in his area and decided to stop by. He was interested and wanted to start meeting with us again, so we set up an appointment for Thursday. We called about 10 minutes before the lesson to see if he could meet us at the park (since we can't go into his home unless a member is with us). He said no and ended up canceling the appointment because he didn't want to deal with the mosquitoes at the park. Then we were about to go out and visit some other people, when he called us back and said "never mind, let's meet at the park in 5 minutes!" It was super random, but we were happy. So we went to the park and taught him a lesson and it was SO good. Definitely one of the best lessons we've had. Even though our teaching was kind of shaky because we're trying to get used to teaching in a trio, the Spirit was super strong and I know Bill felt it. So that was great and we set up a return appointment and all that good stuff. So that was the first miracle.

Then after Bill left, we noticed some kids from our ward at the park so we went to go say hi. The Fongs- they're beautiful and  Fijian..the four kids are  RJ (12), Josh (10) Rinara(8) and Kianu(4). They're super less-active, so we know them really well. When we got over to them we noticed that Josh was sitting down and holding his leg like he was in a lot of pain. He showed it to us and there was a huge swollen bump, with a white infected bite-looking thing on it. I don't really know how to describe it, but it was gross.  (I'll send you a picture). It looked like a really really bad spider bite. The problem was that their dad works all day and they don't have a mom currently.... so they couldn't do anything about it. The bump kept growing bigger and bigger just in that 10 minutes we were there... so we were really worried. We ended up calling a doctor in our ward, and he looked at it, and said it had to be taken to the emergency room as soon as possible. We didn't know what to do because we aren't allowed to take them to the ER and no one was answering their phones. Then our phone rang, and an awesome lady in our ward said "Hi sisters, can I help you with anything?" Ah, talk about inspiration! So she came by and took him, and got it all taken care of. It was just so good that we were there at that time, even though Bill canceled the appointment, and that our ward members are so in-tuned with the Spirit. It was a miracle. Missionary work and saving a little boy's life all in one stealthy swoop!

I know that Heavenly Father really takes care of His children, and helps put us where we need to be at the right time! And Josh's leg is okay now, they got it all drained and disinfected. If it hadn't been taken care of, the infection could have spread to the muscle and up his leg.. and that would have been really bad, so we are so grateful!!  (Sidenote.. this also made me really want to be a nurse! I could handle saving people's lives every day.)  I know that God is always watching over us! He loves us so much, and will help us with the big things and the little things. He was aware of the Fong family and their needs, and he is aware of each of our individual needs as well. 

I love you all!! thanks for being awesome! Always read your scriptures and say your prayers! And follow every prompting from the Spirit!

<3,

sister sabey