Elder Carson Bowen Kiribati Islands in Marshall Majuro Mission

 Mauri! This week was pretty cool. Yesterday was super fun. We went fishing. We fish with a long stick and fishing line then stand in the ocean up to waist. My companion caught 1 and I caught 2. One fish was like a vibrant blue and looked legit. The other one looked awesome too. Here, when you catch the fish, you kill it right after so it doesn't jump out of the bucket. To kill it you bite it's head and crack its bones and stuff and then blood comes out and gets in your mouth, so awesome! I have a sweet video. Then after we went fishing for normal fish we went fishing for eels. When you do that you use an octopus for bait.  We could only do this stuff because it was low tide. Anyways, it was way fun.  Nothing else really happened this week. The work is super good on this island. Me and my companion are leading the stats for the southern islands. One of our investigators is super faithful and is always early to church. His baptism date was last week, but he couldn't g

The email this week will be short because of time. This week was crazy! They caught the TURTLE!! And it was huge! And pregnant again! Me and like 5 others killed it for food for the people.  That is what they do here for food which we need. It takes a few to kill.... so the people have to kill it slowly so the meat doesn't get tight and hard. You have to take the bottom of the shell off and open it up, and it's all alive and stuff. The organs could be seen and still moving. Then you cut it all up and take the meat out which took a long time because it was a huge freakin turtle. Then you stab it in one of its hearts, which is in plain sight. Turtles have 3 hearts. Anyways it was way awesome and I took some sick pictures and videos.  Also this week we got 2 more baptisms! It was so awesome because it was this older lady and her daughter. When I first got to this island, and when we were biking past her house, I had a feeling to visit that house. A couple days later we visi

Looking back at the time, it has gone by pretty fast. The weeks fly by but the days go by slow sometimes. We are baptizing all these dark skinned people on this island. Last week there was 83 people at church. Church is 2 hours and we help to organize a unit(not yet a branch or ward). We have a lot of investigators right now however I am not sure how many exactly because we just dropped some.  But if I guess, probably around 40. There is around 2000 people on this island. I can speak a little Kitibus the language, but understanding them is hard because they speak so fast. But it's coming along. This new companion I am with, I'm making him help me a lot because he is good at the language. I can teach lessons good, but just like normal conversations is hard. It's frustrating as can be.  Sometimes when I don't understand people, it's cool, cuz I'm working on it. I study every morning. Sometimes we don't have much time because we are so busy with everything.

Mauri!!! hey hey! My old companion left yesterday and my new companion came last week! Holy COW. He is way cool. He is from Kiribati and Marshall Islands. He's really good at English too. His last companion he was just working with was my friend, Elder Tingey in Marshalls.. crazy how close I am to seeing him.. anyways he is this huge brown dude that is so tight. He is ending his time out here with me so he is old in the mission! Meaning he is experienced and knows what he is doing. And way good at the language.  haha He's so funny too. He measures himself with the women here(because the women like to be bigger) haha. Also he gets thirsty sometimes and asks me to climb trees for him to get coconuts for us to drink, he says its an emergency. President said we can only climb if it's an emergency. hahaha But he is way cool and loves talking to the people. This week we had two more baptisms! Ten Ruben and Nei Karo. So happy to see Ruben get baptized. I taught him from the start.

Hey hey!!! Christmas looked like it was awesome!! It was pretty good over here too. Me and my companion planned a picnic to celebrate Christmas with the members. Way fun as we played volleyball and Sorry(the board game that's really popular here where they draw on like cardboard the game haha) Then they chopped down a bush from the jungle and called it the Christmas tree haha. Happy birthday Kaden!! eng, koaua koaua yes true true. Some of the rules that we have here are hard to follow. For example, I'm on a beautiful island that's very very hot and all I want to do sometimes is go swimming... I want to so bad.. but I can't because that's a big rule! My companion is getting transferred I think this next coming transfer and I'm looking forward to meeting another. I'm teaching kids how to juggle and backflips, it's way fun!  Now that my stomach is use to the foods I've been pretty healthy. Sometimes we eat like 4 to 5 times a day, because the cult