A photo of Jared

I received an e-mail from a sister in Hawaii.  She sent this picture and said:  "Here is ur missionary at his best. Doing well and has a great spirit.  Aloha, Sister C."  I'm always so grateful to the members and others who send me pictures of Jared.  It's great to hear that he's doing well.

Oh, how quickly June is passing

Well hello hello everybody:)
It sounds like a very exciting week for you guys, and another very exciting week coming up too!  I wish I could be there for all of the excitement.

This week we (again) we're on splits and I went with the same member as last week to go teach the Catholic woman and her family.  The member I went with is Brother G. and he himself is a convert to the church.  In fact he was studying to be a Catholic priest until he married a less active member, studied the church for SEVEN years, then he was baptized.  So he offered to go teach the woman.  Her daughter is a member who got baptized when she went to school in Utah... (go figure huh?) with us which worked out well because we had more lessons than we could handle.  So Brother G. and I taught she and her children about the restoration and Bro. G. explained why the great apostasy made sense in his eyes.  I shared Amos 8:11 and then shared the Joseph Smith story with them.  Bro. G. gave his testimony about the restored gospel and as we were leaving she was beaming and saying "Now I understand!"  So things are going great here, as far as that is concerned.

Anywho...I hope all is well at home, please keep praying for me.  I love you all and miss you all soooo much:)

Ofa Lahi Atu:)  Elder Brooksby

Here are some pictures from Kona.

 P.S. the picture of me and the girls is a family that we helped get to the temple.  OK follow this chain:  All in the same day those girls I am with were sealed to their parents, who were sealed together after the wife was sealed to her parents who just barely had been sealed that day as well.  So grandparents sealed together, then sealed to their daughter, who was then sealed to her husband, who were then sealed to their kids.  One big chain woot woot!!!

Happy Belated Father's Day

Thing one:
Well well, it sounds like it's been a pretty BIG week out in the East haha. 
I'm sad I've missed yet another big thing for our family but I'm glad everything went well.  Your were certainly in my prayers Erin:)

My sister with her new baby girl!

Good luck with all of your Regents, Lauren!  It's not going to be fun, but if you're half as smart as it sounds like you are then these will be a breeze.

This week I successfully taught a Catholic woman that we're not a cult  and that she and her kids should be baptized by the proper priesthood authority and she liked it, so we'll see how that goes.  Other than that nothing big happened.

Oh on last Monday we found some caves and went exploring and then the member we were with went swimming in the fresh water cave RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR EYES.  It was torture. 

Thing two:
HAPPY *belated* FATHERS DAY DAD!!!!!!!!!!! 

Well I love you all, but I have to go now:(  I love you and just keep praying for me please!  I feel it each and every day:)
Love Elder Brooksby

P.S.  The reason why I'm emailing today is cause we went to the temple today so our P-day was today.  I'll tell you more about it next week cause I'm out of time!
Love you byeeeee!

One Year!!!

This week has been good for the most part and I'm trying really hard to develop some new habits here on the mission for my last half (gasp!).

 

I've been writing in my journal every night (nothing substantial just a page or so... some days it's about all I can manage) and then read a little of the Book of Mormon.  Alma 5 is a pretty amazing chapter, it's what I've been studying for the past few nights here.

 

Well over the past few weeks some pretty interesting things have happened here.  So this girl just got back to Hawaii from college in Utah.  While she was in Utah she took the discussions and was baptized.  She came home and talked to her brother about the whole experience and he decided that he wanted to take the discussions.  So we set up and appointment with him and when we came to teach him we had been invited to have the lesson at their auntie's house. So we went and started to teach him and his older sister also starts listening in.  Just before then end of the lesson their auntie bears her testimony about how she is a convert and how throughout all these years of inactivity she has never attended another church because she prayed about the Book of Mormon and she KNEW that the church was true.  Then we committed all of them to attend church over the next few weeks and they all committed and all came.  Even the auntie came with some of her children.  The young man was in Japan for a week and the sisters didn't want to have another lesson without him so we decided to wait a week for another lesson but still everyone came to church that week.  Then the following week at church everyone was there so we set up another lesson, but this time they want to have it at their mom's place.  Their mom is a VERY strong Catholic, but she got curious I guess and wants to hear how we are different and what we are teaching her kids.  The young woman who went to school in Utah is getting very excited, she wants to convert her whole family!  

 

That's what happened with my roommate at college, so I'm hoping and praying that the same thing will happen here.  We have the appointment set up for this Wednesday so we'll see how it goes!

 

Well I love you all, thanks for all of your support!

Muchos Mahalos and Aloha!

Love,

Elder Brooksby

Happy Hump Day!!!!

Man this weeks one was LONG and unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to write today, we've been playing taxi for the Zone Leaders all day today so that's kept us busy:)

Well this week has been eventful.

1. We have two investigators, a father and daughter, who are out of town.  They went to Oregon for the father to get married to his girlfriend.  So that's a good thing, we're happy for them.

2. We got 4 new investigators this week.  Woot!  I'll write more next week, hopefully I'll have more time then, but we're so pumped about that.  It's the first investigators we've found in 7 weeks haha.

3. I got asked to perform a musical number this week because the choir director likes my voice haha. So I'll be singing Michael R. Hick's arrangement of I Stand All Amazed this week:)

4. Last P-day we went to a place called "The end of the world" because it's where the Hawaiians thought the world ended.  We hit golf balls off the cliff.  It was pretty fun:)

Sorry it's so short, but I have to go run a few errands now.

I love you all and thank you sooo much for your prayers and for your fast, it means the world to me and I can feel the effects of it!

Mahalo Nui loa and choke aloha!

Elder Brooksby

Pictures:

1. The scripture case that was given to me by a recent convert

2. Sea Cliff Golfing.  A Must-Do in Hawaii if I do say so myself haha.

3. The End of the world!  Didn't you know the world is flat?

4. Tagalog Nametage (a philipino dialect)

Happy Memorial Day

Aloha nui loa ohana!  Malama Pono:)

So it sounds like you guys have had yet another eventful week on the home front, we had a Memorial Day BBQ yesterday with a really nice family yesterday and they pulled out all the stops.  HUGE burgers, sliced up prepared baked potatoes, fruit out the wazoo, and (this made my day) root beer floats!!!  YES.  So we basically ate ourselves sick yesterday haha.

I'm not going to lie I'm pretty jealous of the seasons right about now, perpetual summer is not all it's choked up to be... it's getting VERY hot and humid now, and our apartment (more like a teeny studio...) doesn't have AC.  I guess I might've been spoiled up to this point, but the past few nights of sleep have been MISERABLE.  You know me, I like to sleep cold, I'll keep my fan in till November if I can...  so this kind of heat that just stays and never goes has been pretty hard to endure, but I'm sure I'm getting no sympathy from Mom on this one since her mission was probably hotter than mine haha.

We had some interesting tracting experiences this week.  We ran into some very angry Born Again Christians who really didn't like us and said some pretty mean things about us.  I always laugh when that happens because I'm like "wow congratulations sir you just spent a couple moments of your life cussing out some twenty year old kids... do you feel good about yourself?"  Whatever makes him sleep at night I guess.

THEN as we were walking back to our car an interesting thing happened.  So a little background - on the way up the hill we stopped by a house and the man was on the phone.  So we asked if we could stop back on the way back down the hill and he said sure. 

I have with me a knife that some members gave me on Molokai... just a substantial pocket knife (maybe 3.5 inches) but I just keep it in my pocket.  

So we're walking back down the hill and we're talking about some funny Polynesian missionary stories and we talked about some Tongans that we knew that got dogs sent after them by some disgruntled locals.  So we're talking about these stories and discussing what we would do in that situation.

Then we start to approach the same house as earlier and then we noticed something that wasn't there the first time around... the man had sent out his big blue nosed pit bull to keep us away. And it wasn't tied up.  So it growls really throaty like, it's hackles go up and it's tail is not wagging, and it slowly walks up to us.  We stop moving and the first thing I do is flick my knife open thinking oh my gosh is this really about to happen???  

Then I get this feeling and a scripture pops into my head and one phrase stuck out to me... Alma 31:5 And now, as the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just—yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them—therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God. 

So I put my knife away, folded my arms, closed my eyes and said a prayer.  Then when I finished I looked down and the pit bull was just sniffing, sniffing, sniffing away at me, then we went and did the same to my companion, then came back to sniffing me then peed right by my foot, went back, peed right by my companion's foot, then trotted away.  

We slowly walk to the car and the whole way the dogs is just string at us growling then we get in and drive away.  But not before we shouted an aloha out the window to the uncle who sent out his dog.

So yeah.  That pretty much sums up this week. Well I gotta go mis amigos.

I love you all so much, thanks for all your support!

Ofa lahi atu:), Elder Brooksby

Mission Tour

Howzit ohana?  Sounds like you guys have been having fun!

There's been pretty little happening here in Kealakekua... like at all.  I guess the only big thing that happened was mission tour which happened last Tuesday and so we got to hear from Elder Larry Wilson of the Second Quorum of the Seventy for the better part of 6 hours.  It was pretty intense, but he was the nicest guy, and he really knew his stuff about the gospel.  

And his wife spoke for a little while and she was talking about the meaning of "Christ" or anointed one and his authority.  And I felt awesome because since I've been studying the Old Testament I knew a lot of what she was talking about!  And since she was talking a lot about examples of the Lord's anointed falling into temptation, or abusing their authority I knew all the examples she was talking about from the old testament like Saul, David, Samson, Gehazi, Balaam etc etc. 

So that was great.  I recorded the whole conference on my recorder so somehow I'll have to get it to you guys so you can listen as well.  

The ward is good here haha.  The people are great.  

I think I told you all that in my last area an Investigator that I'd been working with got baptized a couple weeks ago... actually the week that I left she got baptized, so I'm way excited for her:)

But I hope all is well with you guys at home, I miss you all so much and I actually had a really trunky dream last night about it haha, I dreamt I was home and I was on the phone with one of my friends asking me when I was going to come over and hang out and then I went downstairs into my box in the basement and got my iPod out, got into the car and started listening to music, headed towards her house, and then I woke up haha.  Funny how mission dreams are sometimes, no matter how hard you focus on the work, somehow or another those thoughts of home never ever leave.

 

Well I love you guys all more than I can express properly in email haha, but be sure to Take it Easy!

Love, Eleta Puipui:)

 

 My comp got DESTROYED by a wave.

 Cool Wave pictures

 This is my companion.

 Geico could save you 15% or more on car insurance.

 HUGE SHAKA!!!!!!

(Wikipedia says:   The shaka sign is a common greeting gesture. It is often associated with Hawaii and Southend. It consists of extending the thumb and smallest finger while keeping the three middle fingers curled, and raising the hand as in salutation with the back of the hand facing the person that is being greeted; sometimes the hand is rotated back and forth to emphasize the sign.
The "shaka sign" has its roots in the Hawaiian custom of holding a lei (a necklace made of flowers) for the purpose of placement over the head on the shoulders of another in an Aloha greeting. The three middle fingers grasp the lei from over the top while the thumb and small finger rest under the lei thus spreading the 'necklace' open.)

Sometimes members feed us a LOT.  That was our dessert... after a huge meal.