WEEK 8 SPRINGDALE (WEEK 101 OF MISSION)

iokwe iokwe ej et mour? 

I hope everybody had a great week.  We had a lot of fun and success here. One big problem however is that the ward really needs to be strengthened from the inside out.  With everybody in our ward virtually being converts there is a lot of strengthening in our ward to do.

There are over 600 members on our ward roster and about 80 on average.  We have realized that we needed to refocus our efforts.  It has been tough aligning rides for investigators etc.  When really the ward has a lot of people for us to work with already.  A lot of part-member families and with tight knit families all over with a lot of non-members we need to just refocus our efforts on working with ward members more.

The language is still going okay, I feel like I have almost hit a road block but hopefully I will get over the hump and start to have it click.  I can teach the Restoration and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and I have helped with a little translation here and there but I really need a lot more practice.  Elder Wisden is a genius though and is catching up to speed with me very quickly! 

We had a really cool experience this week. We are really wanting to baptize to help inspire the branch etc.  But it has been hard with a lot of marriages and divorces that still need to be finalized with families before they can be baptized.  However, this past week we had two girls move from the Marshall Islands, both who live with active member families and who are ready to be baptized soon!  I am really excited and grateful God answered our prayer!

I love you all.  I am so proud of all my friends that have completed their missions or will shortly!  I would like to especially give a shoutout to my best friend Jared Holman who I owe a lot of me being out here on my mission to, who will return home this week! Love you holmyyyyy 

Love you all I hope you have a great week!

Kojerraman woj

WEEK 7 SPRINGDALE (WEEK 100 OF MISSION)

iokwe iokwe! Ej et mour baamle eo ao? (hello, hello how are you my family?)

Hello everybody I cant believe I have entered this last transfer but I am doing great!!!  Elder Wisden is here and he is picking up the language fast.  A Marshallese kid living in Washington was just assigned to come here and be a missionary speaking Marshallese and so everybody is really excited to finally have a native speaker here. 

Looks like a serious companionship!

Elders Durrant, Mikey, Smith and Radford.

Fun in the car with
Radford, Smith, Durrant and Mikey.

We had an awesome week, Jason is doing really well still, he is ready to be baptized he is just waiting on feeling like he is ready and so that is great!!!

Dickson and Grace we are just working on getting a marriage certificate and then getting their family in town for the baptism!  It is really exciting, we find so many new people every day out here just because of the open and humble hearts of the Marshallese people

I am starting to feel more and more comfortable with the language, I can finally understand what people are saying to me haha and I can reply and not sound ridiculous it’s been nice.

We had another member have a Kemem at the church this Saturday night and it was absolutely insane haha.  I danced with my branch mission leader’s wife and we got some of the coolest necklaces given to us as the guests of honor and ate a lot more fish and all the native food I love.  It was really awesome!  Elder Wisden is settling in I think and I will miss old Smithy Boy but I am excited for this last transfer!

 

Mikey and Elder Wisden at the Kemem.

Love you all,

Elder Green

WEEK 6 SPRINGDALE (WEEK 99 OF MISSION)

Mikey didn't have time to write a group letter today.  It was his last transfer and he was super busy.  He got a new companion named, Elder Wisden, that he really likes and he says he is really smart and will do well with the Marshallese language.

When Sister Loveland was talking to Todd about Mikey's foot a couple weeks ago she said that she thought Mikey would finish out is mission in Springdale and train someone to take over that could stay there a long time and keep the work with the Marshallese moving forward.

Mikey said he is doing great!  I asked him if he needed anything and he said his basketball shoes are getting pretty worn out, haha.

I had a bridal shower for our neighbor, Lizzie Hunsaker, who just happens to be marrying President Loveland's nephew so the Lovelands' daughter (also named Lizzie) attended the shower.  It was so fun to get to meet her and talk to her.  She was such a sweetheart and knew some funny stories about Mikey from when she has visited her parents on their mission.  Such a small, small world!!!

Lizzie Loveland (President Loveland's Daughter) at our house!!!

WEEK 5 SPRINGDALE (WEEK 98 OF MISSION)

Hellooooo my dear friends and family iakwe iakwe! 

The Marshallese is going okay.  I am still trash but I am starting to be able to distinguish different words and make out what people are saying... as far as me speaking it and pronouncing things correctly, I still has a lot of work to do!

But big news.  So this week two Marshallese speaking missionaries from the OKC mission came over to our mission and are staying with us and teaching us the ins and outs of serving Marshallese.  One is named Elder Oberender.  He is from Cali and is on scholarship to play volleyball at BYU when he goes home!  He is like 6 foot 7 and is very, very good at Marshallese.  He has been speaking it for almost two years now.  He has been a huge step in helping me learn the language and we are so grateful here in our branch for him coming to help us.

The next missionary is Elder Lazuras and he is from the Marshall Islands!!!  He is from the Island Majuro and he has been on his mission almost a year now and he is really good at English for only speaking it a year.  Everybody here absolutely loves him and he has a ton of family and old friends here in Springdale and of course he speaks great Marshallese and is a huge help with us in teaching people etc... it has been going really well!

We found a lot of new people this past week as well as continue to see progression in our investigators we have.  Dickson and Grace were supposed to be baptized but we need to get record of their marriage or go get a certificate from the courthouse here so things have kind of stalled.  But their faith hasn’t.

Romeo and his wife Tata are awesome!  This week Tata said she just felt pulled to come out and join the lessons when before she was resisting listening because of her previous faith in a different church. Them and their family are doing awesome! 

Other than that things are great. I got a chance to speak Swahili again this past week. The missionaries in Fayeteville found some Congolese refugees and it was an awesome miracle when we went to go teach them.  I was on an exchange with Elder Roberts, my old companion, and he had a general idea of where they lived but there were a lot of complications in finding their address and also we were just on foot in a very large city.  After walking ten miles haha we found the home of a lady named Heli, a refugee that I got the chance to speak with.  However, her family was gone, she was Muslim, and did not let us in to teach her.  We left feeling pretty down and like we had failed.  Well on our way out to go home we walked this random way and across the parking lot were two black men wearing flip flops (a dead give away of refugees) so me and Elder Roberts shouted JAMBO!  They both turned with huge smiles and replied, “Habari yako??” (whats your news) haha and we got to speak with them and found a whole bunch of new people who they can teach in Fayetville because these two 20 year old young men have all the connections and phone numbers to all refugees in Fayetville!

Anyway it has been a great week!  I hope yours has as well!  Happy

Fourth of July last week!!!

Love you all 

Elder Green

WEEK 4 SPRINGDALE (WEEK 97 OF MISSION)

Iokwe iokwe how is everybody?? Miss you all and hope you had a good week! 

Alive and well and doing great!  Mikey with Sister and President Loveland.

Things are going really well still out here.  The language seems to be coming around finally I could start to make out the jist of what people were saying yesterday at church!  It is a weird kind of balance because basically every Marshallese person speaks English, but to really understand the gospel it takes being taught in their native language so it is important to learn the language.

Dickson and Grace are doing great.  They just need to figure out church really and they will be baptized this month.

A kid named Jason who just got here from the Marshall islands who is the nephew of a member of our ward is looking to be baptized soon as well!

We just taught these people yesterday that we are really excited about. They seemed really sincere etc. One thing that is good and bad about this area is that the Marshallese people are so nice that they will almost never tell you no haha but a lot of times they really are unsure about things they just don’t want to be rude.  They always will feed anybody as well they are just really, really nice people!!!

Anyway I am doing good!  Love you all and hope you have a great week!

Happy 4th of JULY!!!