Denton's Marshall Islands Mission

THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS                       MARSHALL ISLANDS/KIRIBATI MISSION                                                                                                      P.O. Box 400                                                                               Bikenibeu, Tarawa                                                                              Republic of Kiribati 24 September 2018 Dear Sister Wright, I am pleased to inform you that your son, Elder Wright, has been assigned to serve as a District Leader and a Trainer in the Marshall Islands/Kiribati Mission. His obedience, commitment, service and ability to teach and lead by the Spirit have been key factors in making this assignment. As a District Leader and Trainer, your son will be responsible for providing leadership support, encouragement, teaching and importantly, leading by example.  We are grateful for your son's wonderful service and

Sept 23, 2018 This transfer was way cool. I am training!! I have a new companion named Elder Geertsen. He is a way cool guy. He did show singing back home in Logan Utah! Right now we have about 15 people in our district and they have chosen me to be district leader. It's a great responsibility because it is the biggest district that has ever been there. Now I'm training an elder . I remember when i used to be in his shoes. I used to try so hard and I'm going to do my best to help him. I can't send any pictures because these computers don't take them. I'm so excited for this opportunity to be able to serve the other elders and sisters in my district. We are gonna have so much fun. It's going to be crazy to keep track of them.  I'm working in Betio right now. This area is so coo. The members are so cool. They just had a karaurae for elder guy. A party to depart. It was super fun and the food was so good. The kiribati people make some m

Sept 16, 2018 Mauri Ngkami!!! Sorry it has been a while! But there's not much to say! We had a bootaki for the ward. They did the cultural dancing called the kaimatoa. They all crowded around that board and smacked it and the kids of one group and the adults of another group danced for us. They all sang and it was hype! It was a super fun bootaki. These past weeks have been fun. My companion is super fun and we have so much fun doing the work. After this bootaki we had we were walking home and there was a drunk lady who was about my age and she came up to me and grabbed me by the chest and said" Tell me" in English and I replied"tell you what?!" (in Kiribati) and she was so surprised I thought she was going to kiss me. My comp Elder guy said he thought she was going to too. But a homie came running full speed towards us and pulled her off of me and said have a good night. It was so funny. Right now we have a few people ready for baptism but w

Aug 19, 2018 Mauri!! This week was super fun. I'm working with my new companion Elder Guy and people keep telling us we're twins. We have so much fun working together and the area is super fun and interesting. So everyone here just laughs when they see us. They think we're like angels or something. Like some diamonds walking down the street. So when drunk people see us they just laugh and joke and say hi. They try to talk to us in their drunk kiribati and we just tell them we're heading home. They shake our hands and are falling over in the street. It's so fun everyone when you walk past just starts laughing and you know they're talking about you. So you just say "Why are you laughing?!" They say something about you or something and it's super fun.  There are people here who are so prepared for the gospel. We found the most golden investigator yesterday on Sunday. He said to us that he wanted to have lessons with us. At first w

Aug 12, 2018 I'm now working in Betio with Elder Guy. It is going to be super fun. I already have some stories to tell. The other day we were going to a lesson with an old lady. She told us that we should help the people who don't have jesus. So she gave us a referral for An old man who was drunk and she told us to go over to him. We went over and he wanted to have like a sermon like his catholic father does. He started talking about how he used to live in Brazil and he used to do things. He was hammered and i think he had like one tooth. It was super fun to get to know him but it was the weirdest lesson i've ever had in my mission. I've only been here 2 days!! We'll see what stories i have next week.  These are some pictures of the members out in Tabiteuea. They are super nice and they love missionaries. They were super great and love the Lord. They are so humble. They live on that buia I'm sitting on with them. I'm giong to miss them so

Aug 7, 2018 Mauri!! Hi everyone i just got the news that i'm being moved from Tabiteuea to Betio(bayso) I'm really excited and my time with elder brinkworth is up. I'm so happy to havebeen able to work with him out htere. I had so much fun and worked hard. I'm really excited to be able to work with elder guy. Betio is the place where everyone lives on tarawa. It is so jam packed. So there are people who have never met elders before or talked to them. Also it is right where every ship comes and unloads it's cargo. I will be in Betio 1. I am really happy to be able to serve here. I just want to say how much i love being a missionary. I love serving the people here and I love meeting new people. I can't wait to see what the future holds for me in my new area and I hope to be able to find some really cool new people. I love you all. Funny story, We got fishing hats made from the pandanus tree as gifts and me and elder breckenridge went aroun

June 17, 2018 It is so much fun serving a mission here in kiribati. I am learning so much about the culture. It is so fun sleeping on a buia everyday. I get to ride around on the whole island and visit all of the old people. I saw one who was so old he couldn't come to church so we did church for him. He is now my favorite old man here on tab north. haha he is super nice and just gets the biggest smile. We have had some good memories here. There are members here that we just ask for moimoto's from because he has so much land. He got mad at us for not making him give us moimotos. We helped him with his garden. He has such a nice garden. He grows onions and peppers and stuff. We have found 5 new investigators in the past 2 weeks and 2 of them are on date for july 7th!! We are excited for them. We went to play soccer in the furthest south town and it was super fun. But it was really hard to play on the dirt. We are going to go with an old man to look for conch shell

Mauri Mauri au utu. Kam uara?! I'm doing super good. This week was way fun. Elder brinkworth came in from aranuka this week. Elder Lomaloma left this week as well. This week The assistants to the president are flying out to do splits with us to see how the work is going. This week we didn't really do anything too interesting. This week we did some great work. We found a lot of potential families to visit and we got one new investigator. The work is starting to pick up. I'm super excited for this week. Also that picture of me and elder hoggan i sent last week is not the house we built. The house we built is a lot bigger.  We had a fun little walk through the woods talking about our missions so far. it was really fun. We jumped over some rocks and got some ben. coconut haha we found some american beef stewand that was way good. we found some tomato soup as well. We got our money and it was like a lot of money. We have been playing kiribati sorry. It is di

This week was great. We had a picnic with the members and everybody and went down and played volleyball and soccer and ate fish and stuff. Elder Breckenridge came and Elder brinkworth is coming on the 31st of may we think. Things are going great. We found an investigator named tekaura. She seems interested in lessons and wants to learn more about the lds church.  Me and Elder Lomaloma went karaun fishing with a member. It's where you have a net and you reel it out into a n shape and you splash the other side to make an o and you close it off and look for the fishes that are asleep. It is really fun. You have to look hard because they are covered in sand to hide from sharks and stuff.  I'm doing good. Our kiribati house is almost finished. Just one more wall and it will be done. I sleep in it everynight.  Love you all and tia manga boo n te wiki ae boo!! Mauri O utu!!! Kam uara? It has been a while since i sent pictures to you all but here are some of us

This week was super fun! We have been going down into our area and tracting and tryng to get referals and we found one person who we are going to lesson with. her name is Ioana. The members here are camping out in the mwaneaba(stick building with no walls and pandanus leaves for the roofing) next to our house until they finish building our buia(raised platform with no walls and pandanus roofing. They have been working for about a month now and it's almost finished. we have been doing a lot of help with them. We have been going to the ocean side (not lagoon side) and shoveling rocks for the floor and it looks really good.   Elder tiakia just left today back to tarawa and leaves for home on june 1st. So that's really soon. My companion elder lomaloma is getting transfered on the 31st of may so i will be comping with another elder from my intake!! Elder Brinkworth. He is the tall one in the pics from the mtc. So elder hoggan is getting another white guy for h

I hit another week out here in the island of Tabiteuea and it was another fun one!! Last tuesday they got a turtle that was literally bigger and weighed more than i do. It had a $50 sign on it's belly. haha they bought it and the guy put his child on the belly and he cried. He was so cute and funny. We talked with a lot of unimwane's and unaine's old men and old women. High school just got out for the teenagers here. Me and lomaloma are having so much fun. We went and cut wood for this guy's garden. We made him a sunroof out of like some sticks we tied together with coconut tree leaves and put coconut leaves on it and now it is a shady thing for his cabbages. haha Gardening!!!! hehe Today is elder hoggan's birthday! which makes me the only teenager left in the house. Only until November though. I don't think that I will be leaving here anytime soon. Should be a few more transfers. Transfers are this week so we should be hearing who is coming out

Mauri OOOO!! This week has been an eventful one! This week me and my companion elder Lomaloma went to the southern part of our island. By plane. We flew out there and the runway was literally like a football field length. no kidding. We literally started shedding tears as we were coming in and saying prayers. haha We landed and proceeded to purchase our tickets. Then the truck driver left while we were buying our tickets so we had to walk the 2 hour walk to our house from the airport. We found some members who gave us some drinks. We thought we didn't have the key to get into our house but we did. luckily. The house is made of sticks and the ground is made of woven mats. Tab south is one of the most extremely ibuki islands. They get the least cargo out of anywhere because they have to bring it from the north side to the south side. We just had crackers and canned ham everyday. I had eel for the first time. It was crazy. But it was delicious. The lady just laughed at

Denton James Wright < denton.wright@myldsmail.net > Sun, Apr 15, 5:07 PM I finally made it out to the place where i'm supposed to be. Only took 8 weeks! It was a fun flight but it was super stressful trying to get on. We had to push through other people trying to cut us in line. and turns out there were only 14 spots on the plane!! crazy. The flight was very cool. We saw all the outer islands that were on the way to tabiteuea. aranuka abemama maiana super cool islands. We got in on thursday. It is so cool here. The island is so beautiful. it is just breath-taking. The water is so clear and there is no trash on the beach like there was on the main island. The houses are so spread out and really cool. Everyone here is super nice. Even the people who hate us!! Our island is the longest one in the mission. Me and my companion also have the biggest area in the mission. We have the north side and the south which co

Mauri Mauri ngkami!!! sorry i didn't email last week! I went to the hospital instead and helped out a family. Me and elder Jubeck went to the hopspital to visit a family. The wife was getting surgery on tuesday and the husband couldn't leave her and they were very poor. Me and elder jubeck went and bought them wonton soup from a chinese restaurant and brought it to them. They loved it so much. I was so glad that we had an opportunity to help out a family who was in dire need of our help. I know that it wasn't a lot but they were able to feel of the Lord's love. So, Me and elder hoggan got moved! not to an outter island but to the other side of the main island. We are working in 2 elders ward where we will be staying until we go out to tabiteuea north. We are staying in a small house which is way nice. It uses rain water instead of well water! There is only 2 beds that the other elders use so me and elder hoggan sleep on the ground which I would

3/11/18 This week is definitely one of the funnest weeks I've had here. Working with elder Hoggan from my intake and working here in bikenibeu is so fun. We were going around a corner and hoggan didn't brake in time and hit a guy on a moped. That was honestly the funniest thing that has happened since i have been here. The work is going great. We are learning patience by waiting for our flight. Or a message. Or anything. So we are doing great. Our investigators are doing amazing as well. We may not be leaving this transfer because 3 of the 4 planes are broken. Ti ngaia! I tangiringkami! Elder Wright ​