January 28, 2014, A Few Furry Friends

Greetings from Ebeye.

It is warm and sunny.  A lot of people say Ebeye is hotter than Majuro, which is possible, but I think it's just because there are few trees and thus little shade.  There are few trees because the land is full of houses and buildings. 

We've had a few furry friends in our apartment this week.  At first Sister Mahit said she "saw a rat" in the bathroom and I about had a heart attack.  She calls mice rats.  We think there are at least 3 mice because I've seen a fairly big brown one and a small grey one.  Sister Mahit's also seen a small black one.  We talked to the Beckers about it, and they couldn't find any mouse traps, but we got one of those mice "wedges"-- a box with green poison pellets.  We put it in the bathroom and hopefully the mouse in there is getting hungry.  Last night when we went to bed we heard a mouse under Sister Mahit's bed so we turned the light on in the hallway and lay there in the dark for a long time.  He peeked his nose out behind Sister Mahit's suitcase that was pushed against the wall. He sat there for a long time and we just lay there trying not to laugh.  At one point she grabbed a lint roller to drop on him, and we both just lost it.  So funny.  He kept playing hide and seek with us, so eventually sis Mahit went into the bathroom and grabbed a single pellet for our friend.  She placed it by the suitcase and then I dozed off for a few minutes.  When I woke up the pellet was gone and we heard him munching away.  1 down, 2 to go!

Sister Mahit leaves on Friday and then Sister Tafili comes to Saturday to work with me.  She's from Samoa.  I worked with her in Laura for a couple of weeks.  She just came in Nov, so I guess that means I'm senior companion?  haha whatever that means.  She's pretty young and...loud and outgoing.  But she likes to work, so that's good.  President and Sister Weir and also the APs come on Saturday for the weekend.  Along with two new elders straight from the MTC. 

The Beckers teach a temple prep class twice a week, and we got to translate for them on Wednesday evening.  It went well, but it was a little hard to choose the right words to say.  It's so hard to say certain things in Marshallese.  There are only so many words they use on a regular basis. 

We had a baptism on Saturday evening.  Two of our investigators, Peace and Risco, got baptized.  Peace is 9 and Risco is 15, I think.  Almost all of Risco's family are studying with elders or with us.  Her brother got baptized the week before.  We're having FHE with them tonight. 

The district had a iakwe iakwe for Sister Mahit and Elder Prisbrey (he's going back to Majuro) on Sunday evening.  They sat at the front and people spoke, and then we sang "god be with you til we meet again" and walked up to them and gave them a bunch of stuff.  Sister Mahit got a bunch of necklaces, earrings, flowers for her hair, etc. 

Rona and Kimlee both left yesterday for the MTC.  Rona will be serving in Vanuatu and Kimlee at temple square.  We walked down to the dock yesterday to see them off on the ferry to Kwaj.  The lagoon is so pretty here. 

I miss being able to eat coconuts, breadfruit, and bananas all of the time.  I did have some good sashimi the other night though.  It was a whole fish.  I do a lot better eating whole cooked fish because the meat comes off the bones easily.  When it's raw it really likes to stick to the bones, so you just have to pick up the fish and pull the meat off with your teeth.  But then you look a little bit like a dog eating a raw fish. 

There's a guy in one of the branches named "fred" but Marshallese can't say the letter "f,"  so it sounds more like "bred" or "bread."  I like to call him "pilawe" which is the word for bread (and also flour) in Marshallese.  Pilawe sounds kind of like flour. 

The people here are so nice.  We went to a family home evening last night at a member's house.  All of the members say we can come over whenever and that they will help us with anything we need.  One of the mamas, Sister Loeak (Rona's mom), works in Kwaj and whenever we need our laundry done we give it to her and she takes it to kwaj and does it in a Laundromat there.  We go over to her house later that evening and she has it all folded waiting for us.  She's so nice. 

We can see the Ebeye dock from our big apartment window.  It's so pretty seeing the ferry come throughout the day, and at night. 

There's also a branch on Lae, which is an atoll to the west of Kwajalein atoll.  It's a really small atoll and there are only about 400 people that live there, and supposedly 95 of them are members.  There are two elders working there.