Aug. 24th Matt's letter

Transfers!‏
From: Matthew Prina
Sent: Mon 8/24/09 5:02 PM

Malo e lele everyone, fefe hake? Things are going well here in the Aloha Mission. I read Robs emails every week and it seems like he already says everything I was going to say. Again, thanks so much for the updates Lisa.
Andrea, did anything ever happen with Anna's friend?
Eric, could you write me a little email or letter or something about your mission, it will be more interesting to hear about now that I'm here and have a clue what your talking about.
Kristin, I sent you a letter, I hope you got it. Send my love to all the little babies, when ever I read Docterine and Covenants 31 I think of them as my "little ones".
John, is Eliah here yet? I want to see a girl Prina, send pictures. does she look like a cone headed, weird footed, Raptors like Kyler did?
Rob, are you still teaching Lance? What about Fiona did she get baptized? I got your letter from the guy going to BYU, that was pretty cool. What is the area you are in called again? I'm in Kahlua,(on the island of Oahu, the main island) Hawaii. Everyone here is so nice, I think God sent us to Boston last year to help us better appreciate our missions. Some times I'm just thinking-Why are you being so nice to us! I'm really beginning to love the Tongan food and even the Hawaiian food which I had no taste for before my mission. Mom and Dad, I'm glad to hear your having so much fun. I hope I get to hang out with Wendy and all my cool cousins while our kids are on their missions. A lady came to our ward yesterday named Sister Smith from Utah (tourists come to our ward all the time) She said she just recently enjoyed going to education week and I was like-cool my mom was probably there too. So she had us give her our home #'s so she could call you so you'll probably getting a call in the next couple of days. Then after church, we were just going out to the car to get some stuff for our next church (the Tongans) and she ran outside "Elders! Elders!" and gave each of us ten bucks "for lunch tomorrow".
Mom, I just wanted to thank you for the history you gave me of how your side of the family came into the church. I think you gave it to me the day I went into the MTC and I put it in some binder and didn't see it again until last week. I got it out and read it and loved it. Two missionaries just buying some bread... I was also amazed that an uncle of Pres. Hinckley was the one who baptized them. We had a lesson with non-member a girl who is somehow related to the Hinckley's so I was able to tell her that her ancestors Baptized my ancestors. Now hopefully It will go the other way around. We are teaching soooo many people right now and committed Micholo, one of our Tongan investigators to baptism yesterday. He has a date for September 12th. Hey, I just remembered Lincoln's B-day is in like 5 days, tell him happy birthday for me. He's not in the MTC yet is he? Speaking of which i'm pretty sure Dev Boshard is going to be here on Wednesday. I guess I'm not going to be training him because President would've let me know by now if I was going to be training. I do know that I'm going to be staying where I'm at in Kahlua but that my Comp. (elder Aldridge) is getting transferred, so I will find out who my new comp. is on wed. I really enjoyed being with elder Aldridge, he was super obedient and clean and loved to exercise and be healthy but he hardly learned any Tongan and I think it was hard on him because the Tongans couldn't pronounce his name (they called him "ostrich"). Anyway, I'm excited to know who my new companion is, I'm also bummed because my buddy Elder Simnitt and a bunch of the other really cool people in the zone are getting transferred out or going home. So I'll let you know what my new companion is like next week. I know that the reason we were so successful and got two baptisms this transfer is because we were super obedient and worked hard so I will try to keep that going despite who my new companion is. Mom, if you could get Elder Aldous' email address from Chantale and add it to the list as well as give it to me, I would really appreciate it. I miss that kid.
Like I said, we get a lot of tourists, just on vacation that come to our ward. Yesterday as we were greeting this kid walked in who looked really familiar. Turns out he was "Birdy" from our school play "Bye Bye Birdy"(and he was in like every other school play). Its cool to see people from Utah every once in a while, we talked about our mutual friends and stuff, he was good friends with Jensen Astle, one of the girls I worked with at Coldstone. Speaking of which does anyone know where Tanner Astle is going on his mission? Can you send me pictures of invitations (Josh, Emily, Ellie). We'll I could go on and on all day about the awesome stuff that happens out here but I'll just tell you one last story. We got to do some service last week at a pig farm. While all the other elders in the zone were mixing cement, dakine farmer guy pulled me and the district leader aside and said follow me. We walked into the pig area. He handed us this over sized orange crayon thing and told us that our job was to mark the males. He then proceeded to explain to us how you could tell they were male and then told us to hop in the pen. It was interesting and kind of intimidating at first but my the time we had finished 7 pens of babe the pig which consisted of me holding their back legs open while they squealed and flailed and almost broke my eardrums. I won't go into too much detail but it was quite the experience. My hands smelled like pig for the next 3 days (I washed my hands like a million times).
I feel like I needed to ask you guys to look for missionary experiences. We taught a lesson in our gospel principles class yesterday on missionary work and it was talking about all the tech. advancements that are making missionary work more and more wide spread. It made me think of facebook, take advantage of this amazing resource and use it to do the greatest work on the planet.
Mom and Dad, keep doing family history work and temple work as well, that is just as much missionary work as what I'm doing out here.
Mom, we do email at the family history center in the stake center every Monday and it always reminds me of you. Ok I gotta go. Love you guys so much. I will send you the pic of my shoes as soon as I can.
Ofa Atu,
Elder Prina