MTC Wiiki tenuia (week 3)

Mauri ni kabane!!

The third week of the MTC has been just as good as the first two. It's so weird not being the new elders anymore. Now others are asking us for directions!

Kiribati is still coming strong. We study like crazy, so we are making a lot of progress. On Wednesday, we memorized 70 verbs in an hour. And yes, we still remember all of them. And it's a good thing we did...we teach our investigators pretty much every day (except Fridays and Sundays). Yesterday alone we planned and taught three different lessons. We taught Biiri, Taonakira, and a new investigator named Fred (yes, real name). They are all pretty awesome. We were able to teach the Plan of Salvation and the Restoration, as well as talk about church, families, and baptism, all in Kiribati. When you teach with the Spirit, the words just come!

Kiribati is so fun to speak! It just rolls of the tongue and sounds so cool! Yes, the grammar and vocab can be a little confusing, but it's coming. You do have to be careful, though. Ironically, the words for "The Savior" and "the Destroyer" are ridiculously similar. Also, the words for "awesome" and "ugly" are really close. I'll have to look out for those ones...

Our teacher is a returned missionary from Kiribati. He said that the main islands are pretty crowded, but the outer ones aren't. You have to take a two week boat ride (!) to get to them, and they use shredded coconut as currency. Six bags of coconut equals one bag of rice. So, on their p-days they shred coconut and help people cut sticks for their houses. That would be so cool!! There are actually a lot of people from Kiribati here. They are all super short and laugh a lot. They've done more backflips while playing volleyball than anyone I've ever seen (I know, not saying much). But still...they are awesome.

I've made so many new habits here. Instead of pulling out my cell phone when I have nothing to do, I got a pocket Book of Mormon. It's about the same size, so it works pretty well. Also, my companions and I have memorized a new scripture every day. We have fifteen so far. I'm going to try to keep it up for the next two years. At first it's really difficult, but now we can read it over four or five times and have it down. Try it!!

I'm so glad I chose to do this. I'm not going to lie, it was probably the hardest thing I've ever done to leave my family like that. But the Lord makes up for it. He really strengthens missionaries.

I kakoaua bwa rinanon ana Makuri ni Kimauo, si ni kabane n rikibwa itiaki. E tangirira Iesu Krist ao te Atua. Rinanon ana kaukaki Euangkerio, ti kona ni karekea te karau nano ao namakin te Tamnei ae Raoiroai.

Akea te kanganga,

Elder Barker