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 ...

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 f...

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 beca...

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 fro...

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...

Email #1:  I won't be able to Skype because we can't Skype here on Nikunau, so when I leave this island which will probably be in like 2 months I will Skype when I go back to Tarawa. I'm hanging in there with my comp.. takes lots of patience but it's cool because patience is my middle name. We are not allowed to climb coconut trees. But for one of my Christmas presents I climbed one. We were studying in the jungle and then he took a nap which he does a lot and I climbed way high in one tree and took a picture. Then he woke up and looked around and then I go "cooocaaaaa" like a bird sound and he looks in the tree and was like get down! hahaha it was so fun holy cow.  Email #2 Merry late Christmas!! Hope is was awesome. Last week I sent an email to Linzi and then typed up a beautiful long email to you and everyone and then I tried to send it and the internet stopped and deleted my email, I was so mad..  Anyways, it's awesome out here. We eat rice,...

Sounds like everyone is doing good.  I miss America and the luxuries.  It's fun out here but it can be a lot to take in sometimes...and yea almost 6 months.  I look at the calendar some times to see how much I have left on my mission, I will keep being a baller.  Everyone keep being ballers, just know that I'm sweating luxuries.  Just know that I'm sweating up a river and everyday working hard. ..seriously man it's hot out here.  The sun is very hot and I'm black now which is cool.  Anyways love and miss ya'll!  I am not dead or anything as Jaxson said one time, so there is no reason to be sad.  It's happy here.  I'll always be the same person, this mission is just changing my perspective a little.  Be grateful for everything that  you have, you lucky Bums"  Love, Carson