Baptisms from my first area!

What's up everybody!! 

I had the amazing opportunity to go back to Kapolei to see 2 people I taught over there get baptized & confirmed!! My former companion, Elder Orme baptized Randon and then I actually got to confirm him and it was super amazing!!  Then a member in the ward baptized Roderick and Elder Orme confirmed him. 

Randon is a gamer with dope long hair! We would give him Book of Mormon reading assignments and then we'd come back and ask him about it and he would give literally spot on summaries of the whole chapter. It was insane! 

Then Roderick is from a isle of the sea in the middle of the ocean! The language he speaks is only spoken on his island, nowhere else in the world. He is soooo sickkk. Also has some sick long hair and wears this sick necklace with some teeth on it. He told us he's the "designated diver" for his island and has to dive for fish for everybody to eat. I'm so happy I was able to witness both of these dudes' baptisms. 

Yesterday Elder Gordon and I found out we're both staying here in Wahiawa. We then proceeded to have a 2 hour mental breakdown / brainstorming session in an effort to cope with this heart wrenching news. We both agreed that we just don't really know what we're doing and how to best use our time. We just wanna bring others to the fold but aren't quite sure how to do that. 

Ah, almost forgot about Thanksgiving. So Thanksgiving was awesome. We had lunch with our ward's Elder's quorum president and his wife. They had little portable camping grills and a bunch of different meat and they had us cook our own food. So that was fun! Elder Gordon even brought his apron - haha! 

Then for dinner we ate a member's house living on the army base in our area. Anyone who really knows me, knows I like ham more than turkey...to my surprise this family had ham!! I was so happy and absolutely feasted! That was pretty much our day on Thanksgiving. It was a great time. Our fridge is absolutely stacked with left overs.

I could write more about my week, but its all good. Just grateful for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. What so many people don't understand is that our church is the same church Jesus Christ established while he was on the earth. When he was killed, the church and the truth was lost from the earth. but then in the 1800's, my guy Joseph Smith helped God & Jesus Christ bring the Church of Jesus Christ back to the earth. The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is so much more than a religion or denomination. It's quite literally the designated way to return to live with God, Jesus Christ, and our families together forever in a state of never ending happiness. You tell me what other church/religion can do that...

God loves you. Jesus Christ loves you. I love you. God Bless America. God Bless Hawaii & 

God Bless Mozambique (my companion's original assignment)

pics below!!

email me back to chat (nicolas.buckwalter@missionary.org)

aloooooooha

elder buckwalter

🤙🏽

Zoom in on what word my finger is pointing to...

Unable to write this week...

good evening. Its 5pm right now & we're hiking. we started the hike at 10am...

to make matters worse, we still have 3 miles left. to make matters EVEN worse I'm doing this in sandals. That's all for today folks. I'm in immense pain right now & have gained an extreme appreciation for the Pioneers. please wish me a swift recovery from this excruciating 8 HOUR hike. 

god bless you all

elder buckwalter

Robyn is inserting this for his poor exhausted self ;)

John is dead*

Hello my people! 

Correct me if I'm wrong but, its been a while! Time just flies and I get so caught up in things that I often forget or minify the tradition of sending a weekly email. but I assure you that I am doing just mighty fine. 

One of the many highlights of this week was an actual sports highlight coincidentally. We stopped by a couple's house, who told us they were interested about a month ago but have been stand off-ish every since. Yesterday, they were watching the final seconds of the Arizona Cardinals and Buffalo Bills football game & we got to see DeAndre Hopkins game winning TD catch. It was so sick. In the mission we call those little glimpses of the real world "tender mercies" - haha. And they said they were interested in us coming back to talk more about the gospel!

For "Trunk or Treat" - we dressed up...these cool shirts were popular 

that night, lots of compliments.

(throw back to Halloween, by Nick's mom)

*Alright, but let me explain the subject line of this email. We stopped by this family's house looking for John because we had record that he was actually on baptismal date!! We get to the house and they're a Chuukese speaking family. There was a little girl there that spoke English, luckily. so we asked if John was home; her immediate 3 word response was, "John is dead."  Now don't get me wrong, this is super sad and unfortunate, but the overall bluntness of the reply was just slightly comical for Elder Gordon and I.  

So many great missionaries here with NICK!

We still do lots of service, food banks/drives at other churches and in the community

So half of my area is a military base and we haven't been able to go on it because of COVID-19 and just a bunch of other mumbo jumbo. BUTTT it recently opened up and we went on for the first time on Saturday night for a member dinner with the Honea family! The Honea family has a hilarious 8 year old son named Evan we got to know really well! We bonded over our mutual love for Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Marvel! His parents asked us to talk a little bit about baptism. After giving him an amazing speech, he simply said, "I think I already knew all that since I was about 2 years old." Hahaha. Such a funny kid!

These sweet girls love us and wanted to wear our name tags. Life is good!

Those are just few highlights of my splendid week this week. It's such a blessing to serve in the Hawaii Honolulu Mission. My simple invitation for all of you is to tune into God's prophet on the earth today share a brief message with the world on November 20th. You DO NOT have to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to watch this. If you're looking for more happiness & peace in your life (which you all are, don't try to deny that) then TUNE IN!

pictures below!! here's a few notable ones!

-some seals we saw today on our hike

-me with Sister Brower (our moms were college roommates, in the same mission and MTC teachers together)

and these from my mom, with her notes:

Sister Gutierrez (later Brower; she married one of our fellow Spanish MTC teachers)

Robyn and Carla (Hermana Machan and Hermana Gutierrez) roomed together at BYU in 1991-1992 and got hired to teach at the MTC the same day--and were assigned to the same district, twice. 

COOL signs:

Nick sends us these random pics each month; no caption. 

Love the BRIGHT colors and his reading hangouts...

-somebody selling some LeBron James🤧(iykyk)

aloooooha!

elder buckwalter

🤙🏽

P-day (day off) Hike 

Meeting up with former companion, Elder Orme

who hiked from his area half way to meet us in our area, half way

1/3 of the way down!

aloha! 

whatta time to be alive ladies and gentlemen. Been a great couple of weeks here in Wahiawa. Although Wahiawa is pretty much a Hawaiian Compton, it's got pretty much everything I could ask for. a goodwill and L&L Hawaiian food. that's all I need. And yes on Wednesday I will hit 8 months meaning I'm 1/3 of the way done w my mission!! Exciting stuff. Let me give u the recap. 

Soooo the dole pineapple plantation is in my area if you didn't know. So Tuesday night we visited a member who had extra pineapples and insisted that we take 5 of them. We then delivered some to other missionaries in the zone b/c 5 pineapples is quite unnecessary. 

Wednesday mornin we helped an aunty pack her stuff in a moving pod & then she fed us after. bless her heart. 

Thursday we taught seminary!! bright and early at 6:30am but we wake up at 6:30am everyday anyways so it was fine. 

Friday we helped some members build an enclosure for their pet ducks! we were kinda nervous beforehand b/c we thought it was gonna be like hammer and nail but we just used bamboo and some netting. they fed us after as well & that was a major blessing. Friday I also did my FIRST baptismal interview. it was outside actually and it was raining. given the circumstances, I think I did pretty alright. and the dude was baptized yesterday so we can't complain. 

Saturday we stopped by the Souza's. we had never met them before but I felt right at home. It was a foster mom and she usually cares for no less than 10 kids. We listened to Frank Sinatra and ate a great meal. I got so comfortable there that I forgot they weren't members of our church and we didn't even talk about the gospel!! Let's just say we'll be back!! Saturday we also ran into the main man of a local church named Dru. He gave us his contact card and invited us to meet w him and learn. Honestly was a super pleasant conversation. I was expecting to get bashed. I then invited him to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. We ended the conversation and turned the corner and then promptly threw his card into the trash

So since Saturday was Halloween, we were given a 6pm curfew, but President and Sister Walker had activities on zoom from 7-9 and they were super fun!! (Got to wear our p-day/day off clothes that day).

Yesterday we bore our testimonies at church. We had a great dinner with the Akhay family who has the cutest dog named Country. I believe it was a boxer. all week long I was looking forward to going over to their house and playing with their dog!! 

andddd today we just found out that an Elder we live with is actually gonna join our companionship. TRIO TIME! His name is Elder Arobati and he's from Kiribati. It will be a good time. 

Well this is where our time ends, friends and family. Kinda feel like this was a boring email, but hopefully you don't feel the same way. I hope you thoroughly enjoy this epistle & if you're ever feeling like a narrow-minded sea lion or a rambunctious tarantula this week, please know that God loves you. Jesus Christ loves you. They want you to be happy and successful here on earth and the way to do that is to keep their commandments. If you would like to live with God, Jesus Christ, and your family together forever, even after death, then the gospel and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the place for you. 

shootz & go cougs baby

elder buckwalter

🤙🏽