September 22, 2014, We Made Them Pizza--They Gave Us Lobster

Greetings,

I had a good week in Ajeltake.  We moved back into the sisters' old house, the one that Sandy and Banny rent to the church.  Sandy and all their kids got baptized in January (a week after I left for Ebeye) and then Banny (pronounced like "bonny") got baptized in March. Sandy is now the RS pres and Banny is in the branch presidency.  We're happy to be back in the house. It's so nice and big. I think it's about 6 times bigger than the tiny chapel house we were living in before.  We have a real kitchen now.  The only hard thing about living there is that we have to keep the mission rules (they can't come into our house) but we also have to respect manit (or culture) which is that what's theirs is ours, and vice versa.  We're pretty clear with them that they can't come into our house, but to make that okay we make them food, and then they give us food, and then we give them more food, etc. We made them a pizza and then they gave us a lobster, and then we gave them some cake and they gave us fish...

The wedding that was supposed to happen on Saturday got moved to this Wednesday.  We're excited for that.  We're also studying with their two kids, but I don't think they'll be ready to get baptized when the parents get baptized.

We'll see. Shimiko's been teaching us some Marshallese songs this week. I feel like I don't know any other than hymns (and I swear we sing the same 10 hymns over and over again).  The Marshallese hymn book only has about 40 hymns in it.  It can get really boring. We learned a goodbye song and a song about moms.

Seminary is going well but it's annoying because it takes up good proselyting time.  So many people want to study in the early evening and then we can't study when it gets too late because only some people have electricity so it's dark at night. I don't know if anything else is new.

Sister Notise is good. She's pretty quiet. I always want to discuss things and make plans together for the day but I think her favorite phrase is "am bebe" which means "your choice" which gets really annoying. Some days she talks more though.

I filled out my travel departure form today since I go home in about 90 days.  I also had a dream this last week that Pres. Weir sent me to Mili (one of the outer islands) to work with Shimiko for the last few months of my mission. Shimiko's from Mili and she said it's beautiful. There are orange and mango trees there.  Why don't we have those on Majuro?

 Okay, I love you all.  Tootles.