My first week has been very interesting.
So I got to transfers, got all that done blah blah blah. My zone is just west of Pearl Harbor and is called the Wuipahu Zone. My area is Ewa Beach 2nd (When a W is between two vowels it makes a V sound. So it is pronounced E-va Beach, with the first "a" being said like it is in the word "Ever"). We cover one half of a ward that has 375+ people in it! The city of Ewa Beach reminds me of St. George because it is on the dry side of the island. The part of the ward I cover is full of super nice houses on one half (New Ewa) and then dips down into an area of really old houses (Old Ewa). Something that I realized about Old Ewa is that they don't care what the outside of their house looks like, but the insides are nice. They have hardwood floors, granite counter tops, and big screens. New Ewa looks a ton like Draper but with smaller houses. There is one street that has like no palm trees at all and it looks like it belongs in Draper.
My comp's name is Elder P--. He is a super cool guy and he is the perfect balance of obedience and fun. He is from the wide open state of Wyoming. He is also a real cowboy. I don't know what else to say about him besides he is overall pretty quiet.
So for the first day we just went around introducing me to ward members and leaders, but later that night we went ministering with some ward members aaaannnndddd I went on a split with two brothers. During my split we didn't get anything done because no one was home at all the places we went.
The next day started out with me looking at my area book and getting down because we have no investigators, no progressing investigators, and no potential investigators. So we decided to go tracting and we found someone who was interested! His name is Keith...but he is a pastor for a church in town....and now he won't answer our calls. We are pretty sure he was just trying to convert us on his doorstep. It's whatever. Later that night though we visited a less active member who hasn't been to church in like 4 years. He said that any other night he wouldn't have opened the door but over the last month-ish he has been wrestling with himself over his faith and has read the first two books of Nephi like 3 or 4 times in the last few weeks! And he said that is was time for him to go back to church, so that was pretty dope!
So on Friday I get to met Sister Patton. She is the nicest older Filipino lady you'll ever meet! ...and she has two sons who love videos games so I connected with them almost instantly, they invited me to play with them while my comp and the rest of our district talked with her but I had to decline. I also tried sushi for the first time today and all I have to say is...meh. We did more tracting and found T--. He just moved to Ewa. (Like 50% of the people who live here work for the military.) He gave us his number but he won't answer our calls either. I've noticed that the military are very showy around here, like above average for a place near a military base. Heck, the first thing I saw when I landed were a dozen F-22 Raptors on the civilian runway! ... and I see them do simulated dogfights over the ocean all the time.
On Saturday I got to met D--. He is great. Oh D--...how to describe you...he is mentally challenged but not enough to cause him to not be able to be self sufficient. His whole world revolves around Jesus Christ, WWE, and Elvis. The first time that I saw him everyone in the car was like "Whoa, he is wearing normal clothes!" I guess normally he wears an Elvis jumpsuit. (He says he will only be taught if the whole district is there.) Oh, I haven't told you about my district. There are two companionships with five missionaries total. The fifth is Elder Humphreys, he is leaving mid transfer so we have a trio until next Wednesday. The other two are Elders Kachiro and Gleaves, they cover the other half of our ward. They are the Ewa Beach 1st.
Sunday during the day was kind of boring, because it was stake conference. But when night time came around things got interesting. So at like 8:30 pm we are standing on the balcony of the Ewa Beach 1st's pad (The zone leaders live there too and we were waiting for them to get there so we could do the weekly numbers report.) We see an iphone chilling on the base of a lamp post, so we go grab it and ask the neighbors underneath them if it was theirs but it wasn't. So we then called a number in the phone that was titled "Mom ah nuna". It turns out it was her daughter's phone and that it had been stolen like a week ago. So we agree to meet at a Food Land parking lot and give it back to her. So we get there and there is a cop and the lady waiting for us. While we are talking to the cop giving him a report and all, she is looking through her phone and checking if the pictures of her kids are still there (which they were), she finds multiple selfies of one of the Ewa Beach 1st's neighbors...I guess these guys are known to just work on their mopeds and do drugs all day. Something that I forgot to mention was that we found a painters pen next to the phone when we first found it (which for those who don't know is the best type of pen to get high off of by sniffing it, according to the cop). For the report the cop needed the missionaries address but they don't have it memorized so he offered to drive them home (because we are the companionship that has the car). I didn't know that he had offered them that, so I was really confused about what was happening. So they all got to ride in the back of a police car home.
So yesterday I got to go to the Polynesian Cultural Center. It was so sick! And while I was there I got myself an Ukulele!
So I'm just trucking on.
Love,
Elder Reinhold
P.S. Camera is having issues. Hopefully pictures next week.
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