Holy Cow!!

September 10, 2017

So yeah, I'm in Fiji!

Ghhaghaaggkk

There's a lot I want to say but I've already shredded 38 min of my time so here it goes.

The travel was all good but I threw up on the bus to the mission home after landing in Fiji. Maybe it was the airplane food. 

The Mission President and his wife are soooo extremely nice and warm and welcoming and Fiji is beautiful. My companion is Elder Rakatia, a native Fijian. I think I'll learn a lot of Fijian in this companionship - though mostly through trial by fire because he can talk fluently to the people and I can't understand almost a single thing they say. But it's ok, they will talk in English if they need to. They all just talk so dang FAST!!! AAAAA but it's gonna be ok.

The people are all so nice and polite though, they always ask if I want to keep eating in the meals and I have to try not to offend if I've eaten a lot already but they aren't offended by stuff like that so its ok. The food isn't spectacular but it is pretty good still so that's not really an issue. Wearing the sulus (island skirts for males) wasn't as spectacular as I thought either but it's still awesome and waaaay better than wearing pants, I can already tell.

As for the place itself, the frequency of animals compared to America is like this: the dogs are like pigeons, the pigeons are l --- ok never mind there's a lot of dogs around and cats too but the dogs are always in the streets. The pigeons are only really concentrated at one place by the shore/downtown but at that one spot there's hundreds of them. 

There're little geckos that chill on the walls by the ceilings in the flat and I'll see three or four every night - they're super flinchy though, they're harder to catch than the colored stripey lizards in Winslow. 

 

The flat itself is ok - I mean nothing is super nice in Fiji that's just how it is but we've got a pretty nice setup. I'm comfortable there. The little universal media player is awesome, you can put in DVD's or USB's or even SD's and then look at pictures or watch videos or listen to music or talks.

   

   

Uh there's a mission conference this week on like Wednesday that we'll have to make a trip back into Suva for that I really hope we can make but we may not if we don't get more money for the fare. 

Yesterday we had church and I introduced myself/bore my testimony and there was a lot of emotion building up to that point beforehand with the Sacrament hymns because I was feeling super uncomfortable with the whole there's two years ahead of stuff like this but it's ok because I just need to get used to it and learn the language but I don't right now and how long will it take -

But I know that the Lord has helped and will continue to help me along my way. I'm trying to make sure I'm obedient to the rules and that I know what's going on so I can make sure I'm a good missionary. I love the people and want to serve them, I just need to learn the language so I can.

I love you all so so much and I love to hear from you and see the pictures. Please know I love you and I'm grateful for what you do and have done.

Bye, Love

Reed