April 15, 2014 It's Been Raining Buckets This Week

Greetings from Ebeye!

We got transfer calls this last week, and I am staying in Ebeye for at least one more transfer.  I bet I'll go back to Majuro in June because at that point I will have been in Ebeye for about 5 months.  We'll see.  Sadly two of our favorite elders on Ebeye are getting sent off to outer islands at the end of this week and we'd really prefer that they'd stay.

We went to Kwaj last P day with the Beckers.  We went on the noon ferry and came back around 3 pm.  We got lunch at the "American eatery" at the checkpoint (since we can't go onto the base unless someone sponsors us on...plus I can't go because Tafili isn't a US citizen).  We then pulled out Ticket to Ride and played until we had to get back on the ferry.  The ferry ride is so much fun.  The wind is so strong and the waves splash up sometimes onto the top part.  Most people stay down below, but that's boring.  Sister Tafili and Elder Becker saw a turtle on the way back!  I had moved out of the wind for just a minute so I missed it.  I did catch a glimpse of it, but I couldn't see it too clearly.

The Beckers are so funny. We meet with them a few days a week and teach them Marshallese, and then we also drop by most evenings to say hi and eat popcorn with them and tell them about our day.  They kind of remind me of the parentals, so we have a lot of fun together.  They make us laugh a lot.

It's been raining buckets this week.  If we're outside when it rains, we don't worry about it and just try to run from house to house.  If we're inside and it really starts pouring buckets and buckets, we really can't go out because we would be drenched in seconds and it's bad manners to show up at someone's house completely wet.  we have one umbrella, but with the wind and rain, an umbrella wouldn't really do much.  it rained a lot of Friday and it also rained yesterday evening.

A CES missionary couple from Majuro were here for the weekend and on Saturday we were at the church building all day for a big seminary "learn your scripture mastery" event.  We were there from 9 am to 4 pm.  All the missionaries were in different classrooms and the students rotated around in groups.  We had to teach them about two scriptures in 10 minutes.  It was really good to get them familiarized with the references and what the scriptures are talking about, but I think only a few of them have memorized any of the scriptures.  We then had lunch and played games for them to memorize the scriptures.  It was good but tiring and really loud.  I don't know how the CES couple has so much energy to do these things.  They visit Ebeye once every 3 months and basically get seminary back up and going since it usually stops happening after a couple of months.  They had a movie night on Friday for the seminary students, and so we got to go and bring our teenage investigators.  we watched Frozen, which I guess is some new disney movie.  It was kind of cute and mostly just really weird to watch a movie.

We had a lesson yesterday with a couple of older women we're studying with.  We took a member with us to help in the lesson...and she talked forever.  Holy cow.  We were in their house for 2 hours.  The woman's help was really great and she explained things really well, but she just kept talking and talking.  Of course they are all related since everyone in the marshall islands in related (when you introduce yourself you say who your parents' names are and then everyone says "ohhh, right..you're in that family...") and so they were talking about how great Likiep is (one of the outer islands they're all from) and how they all need to go spend the summer there.  The women definitely know how to talk here.

We were going to ride out to guegeegue today, but we haven't found bikes yet.  Maybe next week.  If so, I'll probably get on email late next week...but I'm really not sure if we'll go.

I don't have a whole lot to say about this week.  Things are going well.  I'm happy to be staying in Ebeye for now.  We are watching the Saturday sessions of General Conference tomorrow at the Becker's apartment, and then next wednesday we're watching the Sunday sessions.  I'm glad we're splitting it up over two weeks.  It's just way too much to watch in two days.

Love you all,

Sister Ellen Butler