Aloha everyone,

      This has been an ok week....... We had a baptism scheduled for Sunday Dec. 22 for Kekoa and everything was looking great untill the night before and then he all of a sudden told us that he didn't want to be baptized...... We were so disappointed! He was so excited and we dont know what changed. He told us that he wants to keep coming to church and meeting with us but wants to keep looking for other churches too..... We are hoping for the best! We really think he just needs some friends at church to encourage him.

        We had a surprise mission tour with Elder Richards of the quorum of the 70 this Friday and it was way good.... Our mission president and Elder Richards really stressed obedience in the mission and want to have a really obedient mission. We were each interviewed by President and Elder Richards which was kind of intimidating but went really well! Elder Richards is a very nice guy and wants to help our mission out in any way he can.  

        Other than that our week has been pretty normal! We are still working with lots of investigators and a couple of them are so close to baptism. The area is doing really good and I love working with the people here!

I hope everyone has a great Christmas Holiday! This is one of the best times of the year to remember our savior and what he has done for us. I hope we can all remember the true meaning of Christmas. I love all of you and cant wait to hear from you! Merry Christmas and Aloha!

Elder Gale

Best Christmas present ever.....

Aloha everyone!!!!

      This has been a great week! We had zone conference on Tuesday and it was very long, but it was a great conference.   We met with Destiny and Caleb this week to get their baptism all lined out and everything looked good, but then at the last minute their mom changed her mind and said they can't get baptized...... they are so disappointed! We are trying to teach the mom to see if that will change her mind, but she works like 3 jobs and is always gone. The kids still want to be baptized we just need the mom to say ok.... We are hoping that things will go good for them!

   

     Kekoa is doing great and his baptism is scheduled for this week Sunday(Dec. 22). He is way excited to be baptized and he is ready. He loves to have us over and you can tell that he feels the spirit!.Nicole is another one of our investigators and she is doing great! Her husband is a member and she wants him to baptize her. He is working toward that goal and he just quite smoking and things are looking great for them!

     We are teaching lots of people and so many of them are so close to baptism! These people are so great and so willing to listen to us! We have an awesome ward that wants to help us with the work. 

Yesterday we had the opportunity to help a member in our ward set up her Christmas tree and it was so much fun because she just let us go for it..... We thought we were going to miss out on decorating but I guess not! She had an extra tree that she let us borrow and now it is in our pad!

Things are going great here the weather is still hot and it has been raining a lot! I am so grateful for the opportunity to be here in Hawaii and to serve a mission! I love all of you and hope you have a great holiday season and hope to hear from you soon!

Love

Elder Gale 

Our "little" Christmas tree

Lunch at the beach park

Our members tree ( I think we did OK)

Christmas in Hawaii

Hawaii is beautiful

We have a great view

Sleeping by the tree for a few nights

Aloha everyone!

It has been a great week! We have had lots happening and we are working really hard! We have had some great lessons with our investigators this week. Caleb and Destiny are doing great and they have been coming to church every week and are all set to be baptized. We just need to find a time when their parents can make it. They know what we are teaching them is true and they are so excited. Destiny is so so smart. She is 11 and we can ask her any question and she knows it. We have run out of things to teach them and they know when we teach them the same lesson over again. They are so ready for their baptism!

We had a lesson with Nephi Tuia and he is doing great and wants to be baptized but he hasn't made it to church yet. He is ready as soon as he comes!  Kekoa is doing great and he is wanting to be baptized and he came to church again and he loved it. We are hoping to have his baptism on Dec. 22.

It has been a crazy week. We had a goal to teach 28 lessons this week and we were able to teach 22 which is still great. Our bikes broke and we had to spend lots of time fixing them so that slowed us down! We ended up having to walk for one full day and it was super hard to make all of our appointments but we still had a great week. Earlier in the week we were biking and Elder Rigby crashed hard, but was just fine and he had some pretty gnarly road rash..... And then later on in the week he crashed again..... we had a rough week with the bikes..... We ended up having to re-build an axel, flat tires, broken chains and all that kind stuff......

Things are great and I really love it here! The members are taking great care of us and the work is great.  We have so many investigators who are close to baptism and we know that they are ready and that they will be baptized.  I hope you all have a great week and I would love to hear from you all! Thank you so much for everything!!

Elder Gale

The members are so good to us!

On foot.....broken bikes!

Aloha everyone,

This has been a great week! I am loving the new area and things are going great here! We have so many investigators that are progressing and want to be baptized. We are teaching 3 kids in the same family (Destiny, Kaleb and Krishana). Destiny and Kaleb have come to church and have a baptismal date for Dec. 22.  They are supper excited and wanted to be baptized earlier but they needed to come to church first. When we told them that they had to wait till the 22nd they were kind of mad but, I guess that shows that they are really committed.  Krishana is real close too, but she just hasn't made it to church.....

One of our other investigators named Nicole just got married so she can be baptized. Our Bishop challenged her to be baptized in Dec. at her wedding.... And she accepted!  She has been taught all the lessons, the only thing holding her back was that she wasn't married but now she is clear.

We are also working with some other investigators (Nephi, Kekoa, Milli, Sarah and Kelly) they are all doing great and are working for baptism.  We have so much work to do in this area and so many people that are willing to listen to us!  The people here are so nice and love to talk with us.  Our ward mission leader is Tavo Tupola and he played football for the University of Utah and in the NFL for the Houston Texans.  He and I hit it off great. (Go Utes)  

On Thanksgiving we had 2 dinners. We ate with The Gilbert family and also the Kaloha family. Both of these families are awesome! We had plenty of food that's for sure and we loved being with the members. Thanksgiving was like another p-day for us and it was good to just hang out and have nothing to worry about!

Our zone went to Pearl Harbor this week as well and it was the same service over again, but it was still way fun! We also got to see the U.S.S Utah Memorial this time and it was cool to see the ship and to learn what happened to it and the history behind it.

This week it rained so much and this side of the island hardly ever gets rain! But for the past 3 days it has poured and we have been biking in it and we get drenched.  It was kind of fun at first but then when we were soaked and the wind was blowing it made it kind of cold, but nothing like you guys have in Utah but cold for here!  This area has lots of dirt so when it rains it all turns to mud and the back of our shirts get all muddy and wet! 

Everything is going great here! I love to hear how you guys are doing and to hear what is going on. I hope to hear from you all real soon and have a great week! I love all of you!! 

Love Elder Gale

Elder Gale and Elder Rigby

Service at Pearl Harbor

Sunset in Hawaii

I love it here

Do I have something on my back???

New friend 

Transfer.......

My new address:
Elder Tanner Gale
87-346 B Hakimo Rd
Waianae, HI 96792

Aloha Everyone

      This has been a great week!  I got transferred to Waianae and I am serving in the Nanakuli ward.  Our ward is so awesome!  The members here are so awesome!  95% of the ward here are local I think there are only 5 families that aren't.... The local people are the best!! We are working with so many people and we have 4 or 5 investigators that are progressing towards baptism and 4 or 5 others that are really close. We are teaching three kids, Kaleb(13), Destiny(11), and Krisanna(10). They are all working to be baptized on the 7th of December and are progressing so much!

     So my new companion is Elder Rigby from Idaho......  He is awesome and a great missionary! We are in a biking area and we are working so hard and teaching lots of people! We average 6 to 7 lessons taught each day and we get around 20 to 25 lessons a week! That is a lot more than what I am used to but it is awesome and keeps us busy! Elder Rigby and I get along great, he has been out for 8 months and he is such a hard working missionary. He is our district leader and I am learning so much from him.

       Things are going great and I love it here! This side of the island is much hotter than other parts and we hardly get rain..... But we live right next to the beach and we bike right by the it everyday.  It is awesome to see the beach everyday.

      I cant wait to hear from you all real soon,  Thank you so much for everything!  Have a great week and I love you all!

Elder Gale

My new apartment!

I am loving Hawaii

It is beautiful here......

Aloha Everyone,

     It has been a great week! We have been working with Kawai and she is doing great! We had an awesome lesson with her and she is excited to be baptized.

    She had her 3 daughters with her and after our lesson our ward was playing volleyball in the gym. Her oldest daughter was able to play and it was a great time to introduce Kawai to our members.....

    This week was our stake conference and it was awesome! The speakers were great!  It was way cool because it was directed to Hawaii and the members here. All the speakers wore Hawaiian leis which was really cool. 

    This Sunday was transfer calls, when we know if we are staying or leaving..... Well we got the call and I will be leaving! I am not sure where I will be, but I am staying on Oahu.... It will be good to have some change and get to a new area! I will miss the members here for sure!! They are always so good to us and willing to help us out! 

We had one of our less active families call us this morning and wanted to take us to eat. They took us to Cosco and they bought us a whole bunch of food! It was so nice of them.

    It has been a great week! It will be interesting to see where I end up next. But I am excited! Thank you for all that you have done for me! I hope to hear from you all real soon... I love all of you have a great week!

Elder Gale

I will miss the members in Mililiani

Elder Gale & Bobby( a member that looks like Samuel L. Jackson)

Elder Gale's 19th birthday party

"Happy birthday to you" 

Aloha Everyone:

This week has been a great week! We went to the Temple today as a zone and so our p-day is today and not yesterday! The Temple was awesome! After the Temple we ate at North Shore Tacos and it was so good! We were in line to order and two girls that are attending BYU Hawaii paid for our food! They were so nice we got to talk with them for quite a while.....

We had a really great lesson with Kawai this week. We taught her the Plan of Salvation and it went great! She wasn't able to attend church though but she is trying! She really wants to be baptized so that is great! Tomorrow her 13 year old daughter is going to come to a Young Women's activity with our Ward so that will be really awesome!

This past Friday and Saturday was really really slow! Elder Orton was sick and we were unable to leave our pad! I thought I was going to go crazy! We were lucky enought to get to go to church on Sunday and he is feeling lots better now!

On Sunday night we had a dinner appointment and we were just leaving our pad to go and one of the guys that lives in the same complex as us stopped us and said he had some questions about the church! So we set up an appointment for later that night. After our dinner we went over to his house and we had a great lesson with him! He had lots of questions that we were able to answer for him and he told us that he can see something that he wants from us but he doesn't know what it is! We are so excited that he talked to us and we look forward to working with him!

This week has been a challenging and very good week! I hope you all have had a great week! Thank you so much for everything! I love all of you! I cant wait to hear from you all real soon!

Love

Elder Gale

Its the rainy season in Hawaii

Temple trip

Elder Orton & Elder Gale

Thanks for lunch :)

Beautiful Hawaii

 This week has been a great week!! We had exchanges this week and it was awesome! I left my area and went to Wahiaw with Elder Sellers. Elder Sellers is so cool! He is from Wayne Utah and we have a lot in common! We had a great exchange! In his area we received so many referrals and we had an awesome day!! 

      Our ward had a trunk or treat and it turned out really nice! Our investigator Kawai came and brought her family with her they had a great time. We had a good time seeing the members form our ward and eating tons of candy...... For Halloween we had a half day and we were done at 5:00 pm and then our zone all got together at a members house. At the house they had a fire pit, we ordered pizza and just got to hang out together. It was way cool and the members were supper nice!! 

     We had a lesson with Kawai and it went great! She now has a baptism date for Nov 30! She is so ready to be baptized! All we need to do is teach the rest of the lessons to her!! We are so excited for her to be baptized!

      Well I hope that you all have had a great week! I hope to hear from you all real soon! Thank you so much for everything that you all have done for me! 

Elder Gale

Halloween in Hawaii

Pizza and bonfire.....

Our zone 

Aloha,

    This week has been another great week. Kind of a slow week but still great. We had a lesson with our investigator that fell through. She was unable to meet with us and she wasn't able to come to church........ We have a lesson set with her for this Tuesday so it should be great. She is still looking forward to being baptized! She told us that she wants to get the lessons done and be baptized as soon as possible!

     We had a less active lady that came to church for the first time in a while and it was awesome! She brought her daughter and grandchildren and they loved it! She has an 8 year old granddaughter who will be baptized this November..... It is so awesome to watch our ward show how much they loved having her back and how much they missed her!

    As for the rest of the week we had a couple other lessons with less active members and they went awesome! Our Elders Quorum President gave us some people he wanted us to visit, we contacted one of the families and we were able to share a message with them and they were so nice! They said that we can have home teachers sent to their home!

     My new companion and I have been working great together and we have been seeing so many miracles! The members in our ward are so good to help us and point us to the people who are open to hear the gospel! Recently our Bishop has challenged a lot of the members in our ward to do more missionary work as families and invite less active or non member families or friends to dinner. We have had so many members that have told us that they have started their own missionary work and want us to come to their homes the next time they have them over! It is such a big help to have members that will work with us!

       I can't believe that October is almost over already! The time is flying by so fast! And I am loving it here! The weather hasn't changed much. It is so weird not being cold in the middle of October!!

     Well I can't wait to hear from you all really soon!! Thank you so much for all the love and support you have all given me!! Have a great week!!

Love Elder Gale

Loving life in Hawaii...

We now have 2 working bikes!

Aloha, 

     This week has been a very slow week for work. We had lots of appointments cancel but it was still a pretty good week. We had a chance to visit one of our potential investigators and share a scripture with him and he loved it. We are still working with Kawai a new investigator and she is way awesome!! This Sunday was so awesome!! One of our recent converts gave a talk in sacrament meeting and he did awesome!! You would never know that he was baptized just over 3 months ago!! His testimony is so strong and his talk was great!! He was the last speaker and normally it is hard for the whole audience to sit and pay attention to the last speaker, but the spirit was so strong during his talk that it was so quiet and everyone was listening and he spoke for 15 minutes! It was so cool for us to see him share his thoughts and testimony! We had mission tour this week and 230 missionaries out of 250 all got together and listend to Elder Switzer of the 70 speak to us. It was so cool to see most of the mission together at once and to listen to the talk.

      Today for p-day we went on a hike and it was way cool!! We could see Waimea bay and there was a big surf compitition going on. There was lots of people at the beach watching and surfing. The hike was really short but the scenery was lots better than the last hike we went on.

 

     Well I hope that you all have had a great week and I cant wait to hear from you all. Thank you so much for everything that you have done for me!! 

Love, 

Elder Gale

Hiking with our zone

The view was awesome!

Beautiful Hawaii

   Hey everyone it has been a great week!! Transfers was this Wednesday and it went great.My new companion is Elder Orton. He is from South Jordan Utah and he is super cool!! We get along great and work great together!! 

   

    We have seen so many miracles this week!! The first happened Tuesday night, we were at our second dinner of the night with our recent convert Jamie and there was a guy and his wife sitting across from us and asked what religion we belong to. Jamie took over and invited him to church and all kinds of stuff!! It was so cool to see one of our converts sharing what we taught her and having that love for the gospel!  We got the address and info for the family and it turned out that they don't live in our area. They live in the sister missionaries area and are now being taught by them!

    The second miracle happened the day of transfers. Our zone leaders ran into a lady that has read the book of Mormon and is wanting to join a new religion! So we are going to start meeting with her as well! 

    The third miracle happened this past Friday. We had a combined zone lunch and we decided to go to MacDonalds. We went to a McDonalds that we normally wouldn't go to and as we were just about to leave a lady came over to us and asked if we were the missionaries for Mililani. We told her yes and she proceeded to tell us that her husband is a member and she has been taking her kids to church for the past 4 years and she just hasn't been baptized! She wants us to start meeting with her! It was so crazy how it happened!

   The fourth miracle of the week happened yesterday. The elders quorum president went over to a less active lady's house and she wants a book of Mormon and wants us to come over to answer some of her questions! The crazy thing is we have met with this same lady 2 months ago and she did not want to talk to us at all! It is amazing to see that people will be prepared and ready on their own time. We love having weeks like this one!!  

    I hope everyone is having a great week and I cant wait to hear from all of you real soon!! I love all of you guys and I appreciate all that you have done for me! Have a great rest of the week! 

Love Elder Gale

New companion.........Elder Orton & Elder Gale

Elder Bolkcom getting ready to fly home!

Our Zone activity.....

---

It’s been a great week! We have had a pretty busy week trying to find people to teach. We had some awesome dinners this week! We ate with a less active member at his house who is trying to come back and his girlfriend is a non-member. She was super nice and seems pretty interested! For dinner we had all kinds of stuff and it was way good!!(he is a way good cook)

        Transfers are this week and I will be staying in my area...... I found out that my new companion is Elder Orton. I haven't met him yet so it will be interesting come Wednesday when I get to meet him. Our whole zone is going to be so much different this next transfer! There are lots of Sisters and Elders coming into our zone.   There are only 9 new missionaries coming in this transfer and so no one in our zone is training, that will be different!! 

       This past weekend has been great! We were able to watch conference and it was awesome!! We had to get up super early to watch it live. All of the missionaries in our zone watched it at the stake center. We were able to watch all of the sessions and it was great! I really liked both of President Uchtdorf's talks! He is a great speaker and what he talked about in his first talk about the less active members was awesome! We had a bunch of less active members from our ward that were watching it and it was almost like he was speaking right to them! I love how the members are here!! After each session of conference they had food in the gym for everyone that came to watch, it was crazy to see how much food they brought!!! They sure do love their food here!! 

        Everything is going awesome here! It is crazy to think that I have been out for 3 months already! The time is flying by so fast! I am loving it here!! We were able to attend cottage meeting this past week. Cottage meeting is where recent converts come with their missionaries and they tell their conversion stories. It was so cool to hear the testimonies of the converts! They are so strong and some had just been baptized 1 week earlier! It was an awesome experience.

        Well I hope you all have a great week!! And I can’t wait to hear from you all! Thanks so much for all that you have done for me! I love all of you so much! 

Elder Gale

District meeting skit " The High Priest Experience"

General Conference Hawaiian style (we ate after each session)
Hawaiians know how to eat!

P-day with the Zone

This week has been another great week. The work is slow right now and we are low on people to teach but we are starting to work with a couple of new people and they seem way interested. 

   We had a lesson with a girl named Erin. She has 2 friends that are leaving on missions soon and she is way open and we had a great lesson with her. She works every Sunday so she was unable to come to church but we will keep working with her and see where it goes! Other than Erin we haven't had any other lessons with investigators....... 

    Today we went on a hike for P-day today and we were all excited to go until we got about half way up the trail.... the scenery was OK but nothing special so it was more of a work out than anything. We still had a good time all together as a zone! 

     This upcoming week is transfers and my companion will be going home.... I will most likely be staying here for at least 6 more weeks but I could end up staying for another 3 months! We will find out this Sunday night. It will be interesting to see how many elders and sisters from our zone get transferred. We have a lot that could be leaving. 

   

     Well there isn't much else to say other than I love all of you and hope to hear from you all this week! Thanks so much for everything that you all have done for me! 

Elder Gale

Eating with the Clark family!
Their son will be serving in the Utah north mission, leaving this week!

The view from our hike!

P-Day fun!

Well this week has been a crazy week!  We ate dinner with our investigator family on Tuesday and it went great, we got to share a message with them and thought it was going great! We got a call from the wife who is a member and she told us that the husband is feeling over whelmed with all the attention that the ward has been giving him and she doesn't want us to come over till next month..... So that wasn't good! He was our only investigator that was really making progress!

     Our other investigator named Robin asked us not to come back till November because she is really busy so there went another. Then our other investigator that was supposed to be baptized this past Saturday fell off the face of the earth! We haven’t seen or heard from him in almost a month so all three of our main investigators dropped. We have had a great week for finding though! We have found 4 new potential investigators just this week so hopefully we can get some appointments set up with them! 

      We went to Honolulu this past Saturday to hear from Elder Holland and it was awesome! We all got to talk with him for a while and shake his hand! He was so nice and it was awesome to hear him speak! He is a great speaker and we all learned so much from him! He speaks with so much power and authority that you can’t help but listen! 

     This Sunday was crazy as well! We go to sacrament meeting and none of our investigators show up. As we were walking out of the meeting there was a non-member boy, that is 18 who just came to sacrament meeting, we taught him for an hour and twenty minutes and he seemed way interested. It was a miracle that he just decided to come to church all by himself! 

      We have had very interesting and crazy week as you can see but we have seen lots of miracles as well!! We went on exchanges twice this week and for the first I stayed in my area with Elder Kniff, everyone that we planned to go see was home! It was so awesome and the first time that has happened! We were able to talk with a guy named Gordon he is so nice and very open! He has met with missionaries in the past and he told us that he really missed having the missionaries over! Then the second exchange for the week I went to Waialua with a new Elder and that was very hard but I learned a lot! I learned that it is a lot easier to work when you get in and know the area! This new elder just doesn’t know his area that great and he has been here almost 1 transfer. He will be a great missionary he just had no idea what to do...... We were able to do service and see some of their investigators and it turned out to be a great learning experience!

    Hawaii is awesome and I love it here! It is starting to rain a lot more! This means that the rainy season is getting here!!?? But on the good side the weather is still about 75 degrees. Well I love all of you guys and hope to hear from you soon!

Love Elder Gale

Meeting Elder Holland was awesome! 

Learning to blow fire like a native :)

Moco Loco one of my favorite meals!