Toku palangi tena

Talofa! It's been another really great week in Tuvalu! I will admit we had a few desperate days last week where we didn't eat anything but crackers and water until dinner, but the people here in Tuvalu won't let us starve. Then our support finally came in, so it all worked out in the end.

We are still looking forward to the 13 baptisms that we have coming on the 29th of this month and almost all of them have finished the missionary lessons and are ready to be interviewed. Some missionaries were supposed to come from Fiji this week, but it looks like they will have to wait until next week on the 25th. I don't know why but it always seems hard to get a flight to Tuvalu...

This week we had a really good teaching week. We had 29 total lessons for the whole week, which is the highest I've had so far in my mission. We hope to keep it up so that we can really light up this area with the gospel. There's a lot of people that are really prepared. I wish I could share all of the people that we are teaching here in Tuvalu with you, but there is simply isn't time and you would get bored after reading about 5 or 6 of them but I will tell you about a few.

One funny story from this week is we were walking and I heard a little girl call out "Toku palangi tena." I didn't really understand, but Elder Key just started laughing. He said did you know what she said? I said something like there's that white guy or something. He said, "No she said There's my palangi (palangi is what they call white people.)" I just laughed. It was really funny!

There's one really good family that we teach called the Tanendoa family. They have probably 5 or six children that are older, my age or older mostly, and they all still live together. A lot of them are married, so needless to say, there are a lot of people at their house. Well we have been teaching them for two weeks maybe now and they are great. They invited us to a birthday party last week and so of course we went. There was so much food! And I surprised myself by eating a lot (remember we were very poor last week). Then before we left they had cake and ice cream. Well we all got a little piece of cake and then we were supposed to wait. Well me and my companion didn't know so we just started chowing down. Then I noticed that no one else was eating so I stopped, and I looked and Elder Key had eaten some cake too. I was way embarrassed! Then we said something like "Manuia te tausaga." which means like bless this year or something like that. I'm still kind of lost in Tuvaluan. Then the Father of the family ole Tanendoa himself said, "Shove it in!" We all laughed and then I finished my cake. It was really fun!

One really cool person we found this week is a girl named Hsiu. She is 19 years old like me and we were playing four square with some kids one day when her and her friend Precious came and started talking to us. We chatted with them and they told us all about how they were in Assemblies of God members and they really wanted us to study the scriptures with them some time. Then they went to go play volleyball with the youth of their church. We were on that side of the island again another day and we saw them. Hsiu said she wanted to ask a question but she wasn't really sure if she should. WE were worried. Then her question was, "What's the difference between your church and other churches?" What an excellent question!! That's our favorite question actually (ps we got asked that question like 4 times this week. That shows you how prepared Tuvalu and its people are.) So we share with her about prophets and the restoration of Christ's church through Joseph Smith. She really liked it and we're going to see her again this Wednesday.

I can't express how grateful I am to be here. It's surreal to see how the Lord has prepared these people! They are all so hungry for the truth.

Well I love you and I can't express how nice it is to receive your emails, even if they're only a line or two long.

Elder Paul Hill