Greetings!
I'm emailing a bit later today because we've been packing today! We leave early on Tuesday morning. We got our travel plans on Friday and then we got revised plans on Monday because we're now taking the front runner up to SLC instead! We're all excited about that. Except for the fact that we have to report to the travel office at 6:15 AMinstead of 7:30 AM. We leave SLC at 11:57 AM and arrive in Honolulu at 2:38 PM. I'm glad we don't have to fly to LA first. When we get to Hawaii we supposedly go on splits with the missionaries. We stay in a hotel that night, and then we leave HNL at 7:25 AM on Aug 14 and arrive in MAJ at 10:34 AM on Aug 15th. I think it's only a 5 hour flight, but it's funny that it looks like we lose the 14th. I'm the travel leader for the group (!) so I have to make sure everyone gets through security and no one does anything dumb and everyone gets on the flight. It should be fun.
Ellen and the Marshall Islands Flag
So, parentals, please be by your phones on Tuesday morning between 9 and noon. I got a phone card in the bookstore today that has 500 mins on it, but it automatically uses 130 mins every call so try to pick up when I call.
We only have 4 more days! We're done with teaching our teachers/investigators, so I'm not sure what we're doing for the next few days. We have "In Field Training" tomorrow, which supposedly is a painful, 8-hour long event. I'm not excited for that.
Jenny Oaks Baker was the speaker/performer for our Sunday night devotional this past week. She spoke for a few minutes and then played a piece and then went back to speaking, etc. It was pretty cool.
I saw Morgen Khotz this week. She was a beehive in YW when we lived in Virginia. I think she said she just finished her freshman year at BYU. I also saw Eric Smith, who just started teaching Portuguese at the MTC. I also saw my friend Liz Harwood. She lives in NYC and I think her family lives in Georgia, but I guess she was visiting family in Utah. I was a new missionary host on Wednesday afternoon and I saw her drive through (obviously they were dropping someone off) and so she jumped out of the car to come say hi, but we didn't really have any time to talk.
New favorite word: etetalmomanana (with a bunch of accents in various place, but I can't type them). It means to walk around to visit people and get free food. I think it's a pretty great word.
My companion told me that I spoke in Marshallese in my sleep one night this week. I'm not sure what I said though. Something like "I understand.."
Mom, thanks so much for the package! I've shared a lot of the food. I'm going to take some of it for the flights. The belgium chocolates are delicious!
We learned a lot about intransitive and transitive verbs this week. Almost every verb can be both transitive and intransitive (which doesn't really make sense in english) but there are different forms for each. Sometimes you add more letters onto the end of the verb to make it transitive. Some verbs you take the first three letters of the transitive form and repeat them to make the intransitive form. For example, "Ij dente Sister Whitney" is "I hit Sister Whitney" and "Ij denden" is "I've been doing some hitting"...which doesn't really make sense in english. Some transitive and intransitive forms are completely different. "Mona" is "to eat" (intransitive), and "kan" is "to eat fish (or rice, or coconut, etc)." It seems like it's something one just has to memorize.
I feel like I don't have very much to tell from this week. It was kind of a slow week because our classes are starting to wind down. One of our teachers was sick for a couple of days and we've all been restless (plus our classroom doesn't have any windows) so we go on a lot of jambo ko (walks).
Ellen with Sister Pugh from Swarthmore
I got a package from Benton's family in Mapleton. They sent me some peppermint chocolate covered pretzels. Sara Jane, will you email me Benton's email address?
Every Sunday evening we get to watch a church movie or talk given at the MTC. The talks aren't released outside of the MTC, which is a shame because there's a great one by Elder Bednar called "Character of Christ." He gave it on Christmas day at the MTC a number of years ago (I'm not sure when). The room that shows it always fills up quickly. A lot of the talks given at the MTC are very direct and sometimes harsh, which is pretty cool. There are things Elder Bednar says that just wouldn't fly in GC.
Thanks for your letter, Dad. I just got it today. It sounds like you all had fun swimming. I don't think my dorm is one of the old ones. My building has all of the 2 and 6 week sisters, so it's pretty big.
Okay, well I think that's it for this week. Sorry I don't have very many funny stories today. I didn't write down as many funny things that happened this week. I'm sure I'll have plenty to say in my email next week though! I'm excited! I'm not sure when my P day will be, so don't worry if you don't get an email for a while. I also don't know how long it takes for mail to get there.
I love you all,
Sister Butler
No comments:
Post a Comment