It's a Small World

Im'aain ae Nna waaki, Nna tabekaa te b'anaa ni kamauri nakoimi ni kabane, ao moaara riki, b'anaau ni katekeraoi nakon te Kiritimati aei ae e nang roko!!!!

This week was the last week of my eleventh transfer in my mission. This transfer sure flew by quickly!! It seems like just the other day I was stuck out in Nikunau with Elder Miller...

Seriously, though. Time goes crazy fast out in the mission field. I have heard so many missionaries tell me that, but I never really believed it. Granted, some days go by pretty slowly (fast Sundays...), but the weeks and months fly. Where does the time go?!?!

The last wiiki of transfers is always the craziest. No work gets done in our area because of Zone Conference, the new intake coming in, and organizing all of the other missionaries' transfer flights. So yeah, usually we are just stuck bussing people around and planning logistics and stuff. But Elder Miller and I set a goal to not get robbed of our time. He leaves on December 18th, so we are going to sprint to the finish for him. This past week we had pretty much the best week we've ever had together (as far as work goes). Despite having Zone Conference for most of the day on Wednesday, we were able to get in six lessons with a few of our investigators that we have not had time to see for a while. On Thursday we went and picked up the new intake from the airport. There were supposed to be nine of them, but only seven got of the plane. That is NOT what you want to hear. So after a bit of scrambling around, we finally figured it out and things calmed down. We had a nice orientation with them, then...got out to work! I was able to work with one of the new Elders named Elder Robishaw-Denton. He's from Arizona and is really quick at picking up the language. I was able to work with him for three days or so, and we got a lot of work done! It was really fun to answer questions and help him with his language. I feel like the new intakes are so much more prepared than I was when I first came in.

We ended the week with eleven people with baptismal dates, seven at church, 4 new investigators, 36 lessons, and 29 investigators total. It feels really good, especially after a few weeks where the progress has been really slow.

Yesterday we tracked down this guy's house that was a referral from one of our current investigators. We started talking with him and his wife, and it turns out that I know both of their families in Onotoa!!! We were in the process of teaching her dad and her brother, and her sister and grandmother are the two strongest members on the entire island. Small world! I'm super excited to see where this new family goes. There are no such thing as coincidences, right?

Other than that, this week doesn't really have much else to it. We ate a lot of toast. We visited a lot of people. We got really excited for Christmas. I learned some new words ("tekarinraraa" - blood transfusion, "maneka"- not fully healed....yep, boils are not fun). We got super excited when a family came to church for the first time. Basically, it was just a solid week of being a missionary in Kiribati! What more could I ask for?

MERRY CHRISTMAS (cue sleigh bells)!!!!

Elder Barker