Elder Bucky's ALOHA Mission: 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: