Happy Birthday

Talofa Kaiga!!

It was so nice to talk to many of you today! I wish we could have talked for hours and hours but I know that we all have things we need to do! This week was exceptional, as they all are in Tuvalu. I turned 20 this week as many of you know, and it was a really good birthday week. My companion elder Whipple had his birthday on the 7th too, so we had a few birthday celebrations here on the island.

My birthday was a pretty ordinary day. Me and my companion took the other two that stayed with us to the airport and said good bye. We were once again the lone wolf missionaries here in Tuvalu. We then came home and drank some Dr. Peppers that my companion's mother sent him in his package. Elder Whipple got a really nice package for his birthday too, so we have been sharing the goodness. We then taught some lessons, ended up getting some of my very favorite fish (it's some red fish... maybe a red snapper or something.. I really have no idea.) and I had fish and rice for my birthday dinner. I loved it too! I really like rice and fish now, one of the blessings of being in Tuvalu. I don't think I would have been happy with that before.

We also had some great birthday celebrations this week. We went to a family named the Kaitus for a celebration, because it was their daughter's birthday the same day as Elder Whipple's. So we went to that and they fed us really good cake and we had fun talking with them and enjoying the evening. We also had a party at one of our recent convert's house, the Teikauea's family. They gave us more cake and took good care of us.

We also had a very funny experience this week. Elder Whipple really wanted to go to a cultural experience here in Tuvalu. Well, one day we were teaching this old lady and her granddaughter's were putting up signs for a dance show. We thought that sounds cool, so we decided to go. The show was called the "Wakawaka" show. Well we went and nothing starts on time here in Tuvalu. We had to get permission from the Assistants to the President too, and we got permission to go. Well when the show finally started it was a man dressed as a woman doing the cultural dances. It was not what we had expected! We waited for a little bit to see if the girl we knew would dance, and it turned out to all be cross dressers dancing the traditional dances. Needless to say, we soon got out of there and went home.

A highlight from this week was one of our investigators whose name is Jo. Jo is a fijian man and we met him when he is drunk. He really wanted to change though. So we met with his family and it went really well, they seemed really interested. The next time we came back, we only met with Jo, but he had read the Restoration pamphlet and wanted to know what the Book of Mormon was. We gave him a book of mormon and promised to bring one by in Fijian soon. When we came back yesterday, he had read all the way to 1 Nephi 9. He may be a drunk, but I think he really wants to change his life. Yesterday he asked if he can pray, even though he is drunk all the time. I was so happy that we could say, "Of course, your Heavenly Father loves you and wants to hear from you."

Everything is really good here! I hope you all have a wonderful Mother's Day and enjoy the last little bits of spring before the summer comes.

Love you
--
Elder Paul Leland Hill
Fiji Suva Mission