Pokémon Yellow Version

Aloha!
So first things first, you're all probably all on the edge of your seats about transfer news. Well let me put any fears you have to rest, along with my own, because I'm staying with Elder Brooksby for another transfer! This marks the end of what we call a 5 Week Transfer. We call it this because it is, in fact, 5 weeks long. Ludicrous, I know. Missionaries have the weirdest terminology for things. But anyway! A 5 week transfer is a rare thing, and in order to correct the flow of time and prevent the 5 week transfer from throwing off all future transfers by one week, this transfer is going to be 7 weeks long to make up for it. I have no idea why that is. But that's the lowdown on transfer news. From now on, Elder Brooksby and I have been marked yet again on the board in the mission office in Honolulu. Each missionary has 17 transfers of time as a missionary. When you have been through 14 transfers your picture in the Hawaii Honolulu Mission HQ is marked with a small green dot sticker. This indicates that you have only 2 transfers remaining at the end of the green dot transfer. Green then changes to yellow. That means that the following transfer, AKA the red dot transfer, is the final transfer. Essentially what I'm telling you is that I come home in 13 weeks. Not months, weeks. That's pretty crazy to think about for me, and for Elder Brooksby. But despite the imminent end of our time in Hawaii looming above us, we are determined to do our best to bring people unto Christ. Our progress on that project will be revealed each week. Things get exciting here, because we're on the home stretch. I for one, expect to see miracles as I continue to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and do my best to serve the great people of Hilo, Hawaii. These people mean the world to me and I am honored to get to serve them. As Ammon, I too would like to dwell among this people, perhaps until the day I die. (That's another missionary terminology thing. Going home is referred to as "dying". Because I'm pretty sure I'm finishing my mission in this place, I shall dwell here until I die.) So that's the dot system for you. I am now a yellow dot.

That leads us to the events of this week. The big adventure was Zone Conference, which was held in Kona. Elders Godly and Andres volunteered to drive us there so we could carpool, and we gladly took them up on the offer. The conference was being held in Waimea, which, to give you an idea, is shown on the map I've included with this week's pictures. One of the ways to get there is the Honomu method. This is a cliffside drive that takes about an hour and a half at 65mph. It runs past an excellent view of Maui. I know, because this is the road we took to the emergency room. Next, there's the method of going right through the middle of the island, which is how we did it this time. The four of us passed through about 3 hours of lava land, which was really cool. You could totally tell that it used to be full of lava and stuff. When molten hot magma reaches the surface it becomes lava, and when lava cools it becomes cold lava. It's the same stuff, just now it looks like obsidian and is equally sharp. It looked like someone got a massive blanket of black and just cloaked the whole entire countryside with it. Cooled lava looks deceptively smooth, but do not for any reason walk on it barefoot. Your feet will thank you for heeding my advice. It is not smooth. We will leave it at that. As we passed Mauna Kea, which is the active volcano and also the tallest mountain in the Hawaiian Islands, I was granted a rare sight: snow. Yes boys and girls, we get snow on this island, at the peak of Mauna Kea. It was a lot of snow too. I could only see it from a distance of multiple hundreds of feet away, but it was the most nostalgic experience to see snow in person again. I haven't seen anything like it in 21 months. But anyway, the lava is mostly overgrown by sagebrush, cactus, and that tall yellow grass stuff that looks like waves when wind blows through it. In addition, there are massive mounds of dirt that looked like mini mountains or something. According to Elder Brooksby, these are vents for the volcano. Occasionally we'd see a little smoke or steam come out of them, it was pretty cool. The road is paved right on top of old lava, and it's like a roller coaster or something. It would go up and down with the hills, it's a lot of fun honestly. I saw some falcons on the way there too. Finally, after a very very very long drive, we arrived in Waimea for Zone Conference. There are two zones on the Big Island, and these two zones meet together at Zone Conference. (Hilo and Kona). The best part about zone conference wasn't even the conference itself. It was the creature I found outside in a tree. Just a regular tree, but one of the leaves had a tongue. I've looked my entire mission for a Jackson Chameleon, and finally the search is over. I got one. And I got pictures. The chameleon moves very slowly, and is naturally very docile and calm. Once you have it on your hand, it will stay there and occasionally crawl around a little. Chameleons have the ability to change color of course, but it's not actually so they can camouflage themselves. It's actually to display the chameleon's mood and to control their temperature. Mine was comfortable with me, but he was a bit cold. Finally, I've found Rango! I was so happy to see one in person that I showed my mission president and his wife. Sister Bekker was only a little creeped out by my incredible discovery.

After Zone Conference, we decided to take the long way home. Again, I'll show you on the map. But essentially at this point, I've seen the entire Big Island and driven around the whole thing. It was awesome. Kona is pretty cool for the dry side. The drive ended up taking something like 5 hours. If you were wondering how big the island really was, now you know. Driving around the entire island of Oahu, for example, takes about an hour and a half to two hours. And that's going around the entire island. Kauai is about the same size and takes about the same amount of time. Maybe a little less time actually. Driving around Big Island is an all-day experience. 8-10 hours if you're going all the way around. Now that's big. Also, I caught a coqui frog. I have a picture of that as well.

That's about all the news for this week, stay tuned for more coming soon. We're nearing the end of this story, and that simply means the beginning of another one. I'm excited to see what comes next. Until next week everyone!

Aloha!
-Elder Rogers

Pictures: 

My chameleon friend made me so happy!!!!

This is the Hilo Zone at Zone Conference. What a bunch of clowns eh?

This is my chef look. I used my George Foreman grill to feed the district because a member gave some of the elders a massive amount of steak. I joked that I looked like a General Authority at a service project, because they always just wear a t shirt over their church clothes.

 

Purple: This is the way we went to the ER. This is probably the fastest way to get to Waimea.
Green: The route we took to zone conference. This was a longer drive, but it was worth it.
Yellow: This is the route we took home from Zone Conference. The island tour was finally complete.

Finally here is a picture without any added colors. This is to show you the roads of the Big Island without having to be limited by my ability to trace over them with my finger.


Also, these came in on Friday. Thank you so much. As you can see, I needed them. Oddly enough the sole on my old ones broke out just one day before they showed up.