KONICHIWA!

Aloha everyone!!!

FACT: Hawaii is hard. 

So the thing about the locals here, is that they've lived here...forever....and not only them, but their parents, their parents' parents' and ALL of their aunts, uncles, cousins, whatever, and so they've all been in the same area, usually same house, meaning same ward, for forever. And not only that, but they remember....EVERYTHING....which is great....but bad....because no one here, can do ANYTHING without EVERYONE knowing about it, and no one can do ANYTHING and not have EVERYONE remember it. It's awful. Because there's a lot of inactive here. And no one feels comfortable coming to church because so many people in the ward refuse to forget the bad things that people did when they were young. They bring up things like, "oh yeah, remember that one time 5 years ago when that one guy brought that creepy guy to church? " Seriously....that was FIVE YEARS AGO!!!!!!! And it's SO hard for them to see change because all they see is the "old" version of that person, they refuse to let go of the past. But as missionaries we can't do anything about it because all the leaders in the church do the same thing because that's their culture.......yeah...it's hard......not gonna lie, I have NEVER been more grateful for being a military brat in my LIFE! At least everytime I move not a SINGLE person knows my past so unless I tell them, it's like a totally new start for me and NO one can come up to me and try to bring up stupid things I did when I was young or what my family did or what my friend did or whatever, because they don't know....that's a blessing folks, let me tell ya.

So this week me and Sis. Christensen have really buckled down and worked our butts off to try and reach our goals and get in contact and teach as many inactives and less actives as possible. AND amazing things have come from it let me tell ya. In one day we were able to not only contact, but teach, 4 families that we've been trying to get a hold of for forever! It was so amazing talking with them and sharing our testimonies with them. We even got to visit a member and she told us all about her plans to help reactivate the members by putting them all in charge of the trunk-or-treat! We're so excited for it and we really hope it will help the members move forward and forget the past and help fellowship all these families. The people here really ARE very giving and kind, we just need to focus all that charity on certain families ;) 

OH and guess what! I totally made friends with this guy, Mickey ("not the mouse") who is so awesome! We've been trying to get a hold of his family (some are non members) for forever! And we just caught him working outside one day, at first he was a little stand-offish but then after lots of talking and me and my big mouth being very bold and blunt with him, we got bananas!!!! Which is  a sign that he respects us! YAY!!!!!! haha He was just like, (in Tongan accent) "hey sistas...go get some bananas...get two...one o each kine" BAM! I love that guy! 

Anyhoo this week at the VC was awesome too! We got these 2 amazing self referrals! One was this awesome couple one their honeymoon from South Africa, and this other was a family from Venezuela! BOTH by the end were talking about how they want to tell their friends and other family about the church and the couple from South Africa wants to teach it to some of her friends at her church! They're all SO amazing and the spirit was soooo strong! I love being a missionary!!! I hope everyone's doing great in school!! Work hard! Pray always!!

love,

Sis. Bradley