Sorry All!

Can't email this week because everything is closed. It is New Year's Eve here! Transfers are this week. I will be leaving Uliga, but don't know where I will go or who I will be with. We will see.

Baptism. Elder Hanks baptizing his cousin.

The long word is seventy six

The Lagoon

The boys

Cash - money

Christmas

Started from the bottom, Now we are here

This week we went to two Marshallese birthday parties, with most things, they say it starts at 7 and then it starts at 8:30. You start out with food, fish, rice, the usual. Then you sing while you go put money in a bucket. Then the old ladies smear a lot of lotion on everyone, I don't know why, just heard it is an islander thing. Then the cake and ice cream and a dance party. The best way to get Marshallese people to like you is to embarrass yourself. All you have to do is dance crazy. I am pretty good at being crazy.

In my area we have mainly been working with less actives. We are trying to strengthen them before we bring in new coverts. A lot of fun fmaily home evenings and just talking to people more are improving my language. One of them taught us how to play kawujwuj, Marshallese solitaire. It is a lot of fun. We had almost 10 come this Sunday, it was a good day.

We went to a baptism for the other elders. One of my comps turns out to be cousins with him, and he baptized him. I got to witness.

It is one week until Christmas! Enjoy the snow while I am here!

Buddy the Elf, What's your favorite color?

There were so many fun things and so many less fun things about this week. First, on pday, we were taught how to filet fish. We had big tunas and learned how to properly do it.

We then had a really good long lesson with a good investigator. It was about 40 minutes long. Marshallese have the attention span of a 6 year old, so that was surprising. More recently we are trying to strengthen members and less actives. There are so many members that don't come. We had a dinner with a Kiribati family. Elder Hanks knows that language, so we go there sometimes. They are giving us free sleeping mats from Kiribati for Christmas. They are called Jakis. It might not sound too cool to you, but they are about $70 for an average made one, but could go up to $160.

At the dinner with a member, we ate turkey tail and turkey gizzard. They put a whole cake in front of us and said, "finish it." We took that as a challenge and did. We finally got our district leader from the outer island and he is great. He doesn't know English, so we have to speak in Marshallese.

Here comes the worst 2 days of my life. On Friday, Elder Strong finally told the mission nurse that he has had diarrhea for 5 days. She said to take the day off. On Saturday, as we were walking to service, Elder Strong hit his head on a protruding piece of metal. We went to the hospital. The gash wasn't bad, but he may have a concussion. So we stayed inside again. Those 2 days were so long. I was so bored and we couldn't go out and work and it was the worst.

A really crazy week here in Majel.

July??

Life is the best over here. There is no way it is December because it feels like July. Lots of tough things - lots of great things. Trying to improve the area that we have. Lots of less active work and lots of strengthening the ward to then bring new converts in. There is so much to do and not a lot of time.

My new companion is great. Elder Stong. We have a lot of fun in a trio. (with Elder Hanks) It is also December, so we get to do our 12 days of Christmas. This means candy! We got matching candy cane ties and a little Christmas tree so far.

I have learned a few Marshallese proverbs. "Drops together make the ocean and grains of sand together make an island." It is so fun learning about the culture and the language.

I can only send pictures once a month or so. Sorry to everyone. You can only see paradise one time a month.