there already. His mom was by the tree too so we got to talk with her
and get to know a little more about her son. That was nice.
I found out what all the bug bites were from.......bed
bugs, unfortunately. We washed everything and we haven't had problems
since:)
On Wednesday morning, I went to drop Sister M off at the
airport, then all I had to do was drive down one level and pick up
another sister to drive to transfer meeting, but airports are
confusing and somehow I ended up on the freeway and drove down to sand
island! I totally got lost in Hawaii for like 45 minutes without a
companion. crazy! but I found my way back with a map and a prayer and
we all made it to transfer meeting safely.
I was looking around at all of the sisters and I thought to
myself "I hope she's my companion" and now she is!!!! it was super
funny that I "picked" her and then she turned out to actually be my
companion! She is so great! Sister McKinney is from provo utah. she
was called to serve in the visitor's center and has been serving for
10 months. She is so nice to everyone and reminds me of a Disney
princess. I love her!
We are also companions with sister Meatonga right now ! All of my
companion's names start with an m!
Sister Meatonga is so much fun! ( we do not have a picture of her since sister hodgson could not send photos on her "labor day computer"...but this one is from a member who fed these two before they became a three!)
She is part Samoan. Her companion is in the hospital on maui. She
can't fly over here yet because she's still sick. So we're in a
tripanionship until then. Sister Meatonga is over the Samoan ward. It
has been fun but hard to cover two areas.
So, our first day together, the three of us were driving and we
saw a really old man leaning on a street sign and his head was
bleeding. Sister Meatonga pulled over and we ran over to help him.
We were like "Hello sir. are you okay?" he kinda mumbled a bit and we
asked him "do you know that your head is bleeding?". He said he did,
but he was trying to walk to get his hair cut. We took his arms and
started walking him towards the hair place. We asked more questions
and found
out that he lived in a care home. Sister McKinney asked "did you tell
someone that you were leaving?". He hadn't told any one so we turned
around to walk him back. By this point, we had notice that he was
missing a large piece of skin from his elbow. He was pretty bloody on
his elbow and head, and he couldn't remember where he lived so we
decided that we should maybe call for some assistance. So I pulled
out my phone and called 911 again! ( this is getting to be a habit in Honolulu)
Just as I stepped aside to make the phone call, the old man threw up
and it got on sister McKinney's feet! It was a super crazy first day
out of the visitor's center for her! Welcome to Hon-West! The police
and ambulance came and took the old man to the hospital. Then we went
to sister Meatonga's ward mission leader's house and washed up to our
shoulders with soap and hot water. So that was exciting.
Now, we're basically living out of two apartments. We sleep at
Sister meatonga's pad, but we go back to our pad to shower and eat.
Both sisters have been super sweet helping me deal with the issues
from Saturday. They wait to fall asleep until I'm all settled in bed
and they turn out the lights. They told me that I could wake them up
any time that I need. The mission president found out about what happened and called to talk to me. He wants me to talk to the mission
therapist, so I have an appointment on Wednesday. and He sent the zone
leaders to give me a blessing. It was a really neat blessing and I'm
already seeing some of the promises from the blessing coming about.
Two nights ago, I even got up by myself in the middle of the night to
use the restroom and I wasn't even too scared! haha it's a silly
milestone, but it's huge to me. Heavenly Father is really helping me
to not be afraid. He was one of my brothers , someone's son, a child of God, we pray for his peace.
I don't know if I ever told you much about R. She was the
investigator who called us and we started meeting, but she ended up
being in the zone leaders ward so we had to pass her off to them.
Well, she stopped meeting with them, and we got back in touch with
her. So she's meeting with us again! It's super funny how this has
all been turning out.
We had a lot of service opportunities this week. We cleaned a
sweet young family's house. That was fun! We cleaned our bishop's
kitchen, and we helped some kids with their math, english and science
homework. It's weird that school has started again.
Because we are covering 2 areas this week, we have been able to
see a whole different side of Honolulu. Military housing is a bit
different than KPT. Kpt is a set of 16 story buildings with a TON of
tiny apartments. A lot of Micronesians, Cheukeese, and Samoan people
live there. Sister Meatonga took sister McKinney and I around to
visit people. Within an hour we got asked if we were twins two times!
(We kind of look alike, but not too much.... but we realized that we
were the only 2 white people in the whole complex. That might have
had something to do with it. We stuck out like sore thumbs!) We got
to play "football" with some really little kids. They were so cute!
We also had a Samoan dinner this week. Kinda. We went to a
restaurant and the lady was going to buy us a plate lunch. I looked
over the menu, and all I really wanted was the eggrolls. So I ordered
a side of egg rolls and Sister McKinney ordered a plate lunch so we
could split it. When the Lady went to pay for the food, she picked up
the order and looked in the box. She became very puzzled and asked
which one of us didn't order food. I told her that I had just ordered
the egg rolls. She still looked confused. Sister McKinney tried to
help explain that we were going to split the plate lunch. The lady
looked half confused and half offended. She couldn't imagine why we
didn't get our own food and why we hadn't fully accepted her offer to
feed us all. Sister Meatonga chimed in and said "There not very big.
they don't eat very much." The lady kind of shrugged, and seemed half
satisfied with that answer. So she gave us the food, we thanked her
and left. Sister Meatonga has been filling us in on a lot of Samoan
cultural formalities since then.
We went to the Samoan ward Sacrament meeting. Their Language is
beautiful!!! but complex. I loved singing the hymns in Samoan, but I
had no idea what we were saying! It was great!
Until next week!
love, Sister Hodgson
