November 25, 2013, I Thought I Was Safe Because I Buy Wheat Bread

Hello, 

Sorry I wasn't able to write a real letter last week.  We didn't have time to go on Tuesday and we all decided to just wait until this next week.  

I told you a little bit about our new companion, Sister Tafili.  She's really nice and she's learning Marshallese quickly.  She eats a lot.  She goes through about one package of hotdogs in a day.  And lots of white bread.  I thought I was safe because I buy wheat bread, but once the white was gone she went for that too.  She doesn't really know how to cook, so Sister Samuel and I have been cooking most days.  She does wash dishes though, so that's a help.  She does make an awesome Samoan drink though.  It's called "cocoa samoa" and it's basically real hot chocolate.  She has a huge block of real cocoa (and it's hard as a rock) and she gets a knife and shaves off chunks of it and boils it with a little sugar.  It's so good.  The first time I thought it was too sweet and so I asked her to put less sugar in the second time (and she could add more to hers if she wanted) and it was delicious.  It was a little richer the second time too, so it was like drinking pure dark chocolate.  

I met a boy named Cedar this week.  He knew that it was the name of a tree.  Poor kid.

I made lentils in a green sauce this week.  There's no cilantro or mint to speak of on this island, so I added a little dried basil to make it look a little green.  It was pretty good, but I didn't have hot dried peppers so I just used cayenne.  

Mercyla's baptism finally happened last Saturday.  We got to the church building and it started pouring and pouring.  The wind was so strong and everything just got dark.  The bishop asked Mercyla if she wanted to wait until next week, but she said it was fine.  It was getting dark quickly, so we just had an opening hymn and prayer and then those that wanted to walked down to the lagoon.  I think only the elders, sisters, mercyla, and a couple of members walked down.  Most stayed in the building.  The rain mostly stopped but the wind was crazy strong. The waves were pretty big and it was so loud that we couldn't hear the prayer.  It was pretty cool.  The elders that are witnesses usually just roll up their pants and walk into the water about up to their knees, but they got pretty wet from the waves.  It was pretty crazy having a baptism in the middle of a storm.  

Roscoe died Saturday night.  Bubu Jolet told me in church on Sunday.  He must have eaten something that was bad, because he threw up a whole lot and then kicked the bucket.  We went over to their place last night to have a kajemilok barbeque for Roscoe. Jemilok means to end or close, and kajemilok means to cause something to end or close.  We had a yummy mixture of rice and pumpkin and then really good bbq chicken.  They just marinate it in shoyu (marshallese spelling: joiu) and garlic, but it's really good.  Bubu Jolet's prayer to start the bbq was so sad.  She started talking about their "menninmour" that they loved so much.  Mennimour literally translates to "thing of life" or "thing that lives."  We sang hymns and stuffed ourselves with food.  Poor puppy roscoe.

I heard about the Philippines.  I heard they think 10,000 have died?  Is there an updated number now?  I've seen some little pamphlets/books passed around from some Australia Aid society about preparing for typhoons.  I guess they can happen in micronesia, but they haven't for a long time.  That's what people in Laura have told me.

We got pulled over by the police the other night while we were on our bikes because we didn't all have flashlights.  I had forgotten mine.  It was pretty funny because the police men didn't say anything at first.  We learned from the other missionaries that if you just talk in english they'll go away.  I think they were bored and didn't have anything to do.  The funny thing is that this island is so blasted tiny so information travels so quickly. Tomiko (a member we know pretty well) told us the next day that she heard the police had stopped us.  

Two weeks ago three elders left to go home, and one of them was serving in Arrak near Laura.  We were invited to a kajemilok party for him, and we ate some awesome food.  There was some really good sashimi.  I don't know what type of fish, but it was dang good.  My favorite dish was a papaya salad.  It only had the green part of the papaya, and it was cut into long threads.  It was mixed with lime juice and maybe a tiny bit of vinegar and then something spicy.  It was amazing.  They also had a big platter of red papaya chunks too, bbq ribs that were amazing, a chinese noodle dish, taro, banana balls rolled in coconut, etc.  And there was a big cooler full of ice cold green coconuts. It was good food.  

I love you.  Thanks for your letters.  

Sister Ellen Butler

November 17, 2013, Cooking for Three is Better than Cooking for Two

Hello,

Today's a holiday (president's day?) so CMI was closed.  Well actually we got someone to unlock the office for us, but the internet was turned off for the day. So, I'm emailing from a computer in the mission office right now.  Since there aren't many computers we each only get a little bit of time to email, but I believe our district is going to CMI tomorrow morning to email for reals.  This is just an email to say that I'm alive and well, and yes, I am still in Laura.  The sister that got hurt is walking (slowly) so it seems like she might be okay.  It looks like I'll be staying in Laura for at least this transfer.  I'm definitely leaving after Christmas though, since I'll have been there for 4.5 months at that point.

Things are going well.  Our new companion is pretty cool.  She's half Samoan, half Chinese.  Both of her parents are half Samoan, half Chinese.  She's not afraid to try and speak the language, so that's good.  And cooking for three is better than cooking for two, so we'll have more money for food. 

P day was pretty nice today with our new district leader.  We were actually able to go to other stores in town!  I got a dress at a secondhand store for $5 and we drove to Rita, which I had actually never been to before.  The new district is pretty sweet.

I'll write more tomorrow.  Love you,

Sister Butler

November 11, 2013 Life is Better with Spices

Greetings from Lomar, Laura, Majuro, RMI, 

I'm not going to have much time to write today because we had combined P day in Laura and we decided to email after playing sports...and we're supposed to be out working at 6 pm.  I'll try to write a little about this week though.

We had a really good week.  Mercyla finally had her baptismal interview (after she missed her last few ones because she's been in Rita for the weekends) and so she'll get baptized this Saturday.  We're really excited for that. She's 14 and her aunt is a member.  

This week we got really smart and made a cardboard seat for the back of my bicycle.  My bike has one of those metal frames on the back and so we got a cardboard box and some rope to make it a little more comfortable. Sister Samuel and I ride to a member's house and then the member uses Sis. Samuel's bike, while she sits on the back of my bike as we go to a lesson.  We've been trying to work on getting more members to come to lessons. They help with the language and the lesson.  We've done a lot better with that now that we have the seat. It's pretty funny riding around all over Laura with Sis. Samuel on the bike. Everyone laughs at us when we ride past. Sammy gets a break and I get to pedal around another 120 lbs, so it's fun.

Kia and Kid Kattil.

(His real name is Sylvester.  I don't know why he doesn't go by it.  It's a pretty cool name)

We had a FHE with them last Monday.  This is their entire house. 

I love it though, because there's a place for everything.

There are nails in the walls for spatulas and the kids' backpacks and everything else.

I was telling Sara Jane about the "red tag" expired food area in the grocery store, and then I realized that the whole store is basically an expired food section but with higher prices.  Most of the stuff is really fine, but I always hate buying cheese that's just about to go moldy.  

On Thursday we did an exchange and Sister Huni (from Tonga) came to Laura for the day and Sister Samuel worked in Long Island with Sister Crane. It was a good day for the most part, but I also just felt like it was a test to see how good my Marshallese and teaching skills are...so of course I was more nervous and didn't speak as much. Different missionaries teach things in different ways too, and lots of the time I wasn't sure where she was going with the lesson, so I think she thinks I don't know how to teach. Kind of a frustrating day.

Something happened with the electricity on the island this week...something broke, so the last 3 or 4 days we've only have power half the day.  They let town have power half the day, and then we'd get it for half the day. Everyone else knew what time it was going off and back on again because they announced it over the radio, but we didn't know.  Luckily our neighbors told us the second day.  One early morning our neighbor came over and said "Elon ke jerum?" which means "Is there electricity?" but Sis. Samuel thought she said "Elon ke jeram?" which means "Do you have a good friend?" so she said, "Aaet, e kiki kiio" meaning "Yes, she's sleeping right now."  It was pretty funny.  Once we knew when it would be off we hurried and filled up containers with water for the day and showered and turned the AC as low as possible to cool the house off.  We have a lot of food we need to throw out, which is sad.  We also stocked up on candles this week.  One of our really good flashlights died so we need to get another one for riding bikes.  I want to see if the office will get us one of those little propane stoves since Laura seems to lose electricity fairly often.  We'll see.  

We had stake conference in Long Island on Sunday.  The talks were all really good and I understood a lot of them.  I can't usually understand church, so this was exciting.  A lot of women spoke, and I think that's maybe why I was able to understand them better. I have such a hard time understanding Marshallese men speaking. I was also surprised how relatively quiet it was. Usually the kids go crazy in church.  I think it helps to have a chapel.

Ellen with some girls after stake conference. Mercyla is to her left.

We have zone conference tomorrow, meaning everyone on island gets together in long island and the weirs talk to us and probably the APs too.  That should be good.  It's kind of weird we have one right before the new kids come.  We should get our new sister on Friday, but now I'm not so sure if I'll be in Laura.  One of the sisters got hurt during rugby today during combined P day and they're worried it's something with her knee or acl...so if she has to fly to Hawaii or Fiji I'll probably go to Ajeltake and work with Sis. Moeai. We'll see what happens.  

Can I get the oatmeal raisin cookie and green lentils recipe?  Thanks.

One thing I haven't mentioned about Marshallese before.  There's no verb conjugation, but you conjugate some nouns. One example is if you're talking about food, you have to specify who's food it is.  "Kijuu" means "it's my food" and "Ej jab kijum" means "it's not your food," which is often what moms will say to little kids after they've given us a meal and the little kids try to eat it.  It's hard to eat a huge plate of food when the little kids just want some, but if you try to give it the parents say "no, they're already eaten" but they're still clearly hungry.  I have no idea how to spell these words in marshallese, but it really doesn't matter since there's no actual correct spelling!  

Time has been going really quickly, which means my companion and I get along well.  We try to have a lot of fun and work hard too.  I force her to drink lots of water because she always gets headaches.  She doesn't really like the food I make, and I'm getting sick of chicken and rice everyday, so I guess it goes both ways.  I made a really good dish last night.  I fried oil, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, thinly sliced onions, carrots, and cabbage, and some ground cardamom and garam masala together.  It was pretty tasty.  We ate it with baked french fries with italian spices, since that's the only other edible food we had in the house.  Life is better with spices.  

The condo looks really nice, mom and dad.  I like the big open space.  It sounds like you all have been working hard.

I love and miss you all.  Stay warm!

Sister Ellen Butler

November 4, 2013, Waini, Namu Namu, and Unicorn Fish Sashimi

Hello!

Thanks for all of the emails this week! I asked Sister Crane to email Annie this morning (well, morning for me) to let her know I wouldn't be online at the usual time. We were supposed to have combined P day in Laura (meaning the west and east zones would meet there for basketball, football, volleyball, etc) but it was raining so they canceled it. We decided to get our shopping out of the way before doing email, and then we heard combined P day was canceled once we were already on our way to town. But it was kind of nice to go into town earlier in the day because we ran into people at the grocery store and hung out for a while.

Transfer calls! I am staying in Laura with Sister Samuel AND we're getting one of the new sisters! I think it's going to be a lot of fun to be in a trio.  She's from Samoa, but that's all I know about her.  They arrive on the 14th, so we still have a week and half.  Sister Seegmiller is training the other new sister (a ripelle from Australia) in Delap. So that means we're going to be getting another bike soon. I think it's going to be good.  It'll be nice to have more people to clean and cook and help out, because sometimes we get really tired. Transfer calls were also pretty fantastic because I found out that a certain elder that I don't get along with is getting shipped off to an outer island soon.  Best news ever.  

I'm also excited for other changes in our district...I think the van ride to town is going to be a lot better (a change of music is going to help a lot there) and getting some elders that know how to communicate is also going to help.  

We got some waini (brown coconuts) from members this week.  I learned how to scrape out coconuts, which is actually really easy.  I'll send a picture of me using the "raanke" which is the scraper.  We made a german chocolate cake, but then ants ate the coconut pecan stuff before we put it on the cake, which was sad.

Scraping out waini using the raanke.

Yes, I got your package, mom and dad. Thank you so much! The spices are wonderful. I've also really been enjoying the dried cherries and prunes. I really like the skirt too.  I've worn it a few times now.  It smelled like spices the first time I wore it...and now...yeah, I think I need to wash it. Thank you! The calendar is also very helpful.  

We had a district Halloween potluck dinner in Arrak at the elder's place on Thursday evening for Halloween. I made a big pot of chili beans with my new chili powder!  It was really tasty. We also took the chocolate cake and a bowl of fruit. It was nice to hang out with everyone from the district. Sister Crane was on an exchange that day in Ajeltake, so she was also there, which was great to see her.

  District photo in the Ajeltake Sisters' house.  Their house is so nice.

I learned to make namu namu this week, which are basically crepes/pancakes that have very little egg and lots of water in them. They're good with nutella, but I don't really like them since crepes are so good because of all the eggs in them. But finally I know how to make a Marshallese food other than rice and chicken and fish.  

We ate some unicorn fish sashimi this week.  Or was that last week?  It had a really pretty blue and silver skin that was kind of like shark skin (you know, you pet a shark one way and it's smooth, and the other way feels like sandpaper).  

It's rained every single day this week.  Holy cow.  And it just comes down in buckets and buckets.  I learned from an elder today that when it rains like that in the outer islands, the elders don't go out because it's bad manners to go visit people when it's raining.  

Our jilubukwi of bananas is already gone. Actually we have a few left that we put in the freezer because we couldn't eat them fast enough.  So tasty.  

The most disgusting thing I saw this week was a cat eating a dead rat inside of a house. Another cat came up on the first cat, and the cat snarled and got pretty angry. There was rat blood all over the cat's face.

Saturday morning Sister Samuel and I went to an investigator's house to help do service. We weeded a big portion of her garden (or jikin kallib) with machetes. It's pretty fun weeding with machetes. She gave us a pumpkin for helping her (same woman that gave us the pumpkin before). This one is pretty small, but I'm excited to eat pumpkin again.  I learned that pumpkin is "paanke" in marshallese and it sounds kind of like "pancake," and they don't have a different word for pancakes in marshallese, so sometimes I don't know if they're talking about the vegetable or hotcakes.  But both are good, so I always say I like them.

I've been missing the world series, but I did get to play in a baseball game on Tuesday.  We went to the Jolet's house to visit for a few, and all of the kids and Carolynn (she's 35...daughter of Bubu Jolet) were in their "backyard" playing baseball.  So, we played baseball for a while and it was so picturesque.  Home base was about 10 feet from the lagoon and the breeze was coming off the lagoon and it was so nice and cool.  We played baseball in the sand and the bat was a tree branch, and there was a chunk of plywood for the smaller kids to use as a bat (more surface area always helps them out).  

Working has been going well.  Investigators still won't come to church.  We're really only able to get the teenagers to come.  We've been teaching Elijah (12 yrs) and John (14 yrs) and they both came to church yesterday.  Their mom, Tomiko, is a member and she's a big help in the lessons.  She told us a couple of days ago that the three of them are moving to Arkansas in February to go live with her mom.  The boys are going to miss majuro so much, since it's paradise for little, crazy kids, but school in the US will be so much better.  Elijah isn't going to school right now, and we heard him say to someone that he doesn't have a uniform...so we're going to talk to Tomiko this week and see what's up.  He has a really hard time paying attention, so maybe there are more problems.  But John's really quiet and calm and Tomiko told us he got honors on his last report card.  We had a baptismal interview fall through for one of our other teenage investigators, but aindean (that's life).

The grocery stores have not had Milo for about 3 weeks now.  What is going on?  So sad. I got some Nesquik today though, so that should be good. I also got some wasabi peas. I got real food too, don't worry.

Sis. Samuel and I got matching guams (the house dresses) from a member yesterday. They're both tiger and cheetah print, and I kind of love it.    

I think that's all for this week.  Things just get better and better.  Some days are rough, but I'm really glad I'm going to be with Sister Samuel for a while longer.  

Combined P day has been rescheduled for next week, so I again won't be on email at the usual time.  Actually, maybe I will because we'll have a new district leader and he might let us go email early...we'll see.  

Love and miss you all, 

Sister Ellen Butler

October 27, 2013, The Week Goes Much Faster When I'm Not Sick

Hello!

It's been a pretty good week.  The week goes much faster and better when I'm not sick.  

On Tuesday and Wednesday we went to the mission home to watch conference. They have a bunch of couches in the home and they also set up a lot of chairs since there are about 45 missionaries that came. They had a computer set up to a projector, so the picture was nice and big. We used some really crappy speakers at first, and since I was still really congested at this point I couldn't hear very much. A few elders went off to get their speakers...you can count on missionaries to have good speakers since they all listen to music all of the time.  I enjoyed Elder Holland's and President Uchtdorf's talks the most, but that's not really surprising. It was nice to have a break, but there were so many people in the house and I couldn't hear very well, so it was a bit uncomfortable at times.

 Ice cream sundaes at conference

Sister Seegmiller swears that garlic cures all sicknesses, so I tried making some garlic sandwiches this week. I just put butter and a chopped up clove of garlic on a piece of bread. They're actually pretty good, except that you then smell really strongly of garlic. My congestion is mostly gone now and my chest hurts just a little when I cough, so maybe the garlic helped.

I got some really cheap picture frames at a store in town last week so I could display some of my pictures in the house. I now have pictures of Linus and Eliot, the family, and friends in frames so I don't just have them in a stack on my desk.  

I made another big pot of lentil soup this week. We usually make a good lunch everyday and then I heat up a bowl of lentil soup and eat it with a grilled cheese for dinner. I'm excited to get some spices so the soup isn't so bland. 

I got a halloween/autumn themed package from LATE last week! I especially appreciate the jar of nutella, the fall stickers, and the ensign from last conference. We have yet to make the green jello or the jiffy mix, but I will think of Michigan when I make the jiffy mix muffins.  

On Saturday the Johnny family gave us a huge bunch of bananas! The type of bananas is called "jilubukwi" which means "three hundred." I thought maybe because there are supposed to be three hundred bananas on one bunch, but my dictionary says they're called that because of how plentiful they are on the island. Only the top bunch was yellow when we got it, and now that it's been hanging in my closet for a couple of days, most all of the bananas are yellow. They tied it to the rack on the back of my bicycle and on our way home whenever anyone would see us on the street they'd say "wow...pinana!"

Ellen and the bananas

We went home to drop of the bananas and to use the bathroom before we went out again. When we got on our bikes to leave the house the power went out in Laura and it was completely dark. I have a flashlight I hold while riding the bike, so we got that out and then we went to a shop to get some candles. We then visited a part member family and they were sitting eating in the dark, so we gave them a candle and sat and talked with them for a while. They gave us a fish for dinner.  We went home and lit a candle and planned for the next day. We were sad we didn't have any rice to eat with our fish, but then the power came back on and we were able to make rice!  Sister Samuel then skinned and cleaned the fish (she gets really mad that the marshallese people don't clean their fish). They usually just cook the fish whole and the eat the good stuff and leave the gut, but it's kind of gross. So she cleaned it up and fried it a little more. I looked it up in my dictionary, and it was a surgeonfish. It doesn't have any scales and it's a pretty ugly fish. But it was really tasty.

Jilubukwi! 

We're going to get some more candles since the power goes off so often. The power went off again last night when we were going to bed, and it was still off when we left the house today. We had water for some reason though. I guess because it's Monday and the water is turned on from the town on Mondays, but I didn't think that was attached to our house. Usually we don't have water when there's no electricity since the pump from the pontoon runs on electricity. I was grateful for a shower this morning.  

Roscoe was such a naughty puppy in church yesterday. I guess one of the Jolet kids brought him to church, and he started barking at another dog during Sunday school. I held him on my lap for most of Relief Society (they really need to let us take dogs to church in the US.  It makes church twelve times better) since Roscoe really loves me.  He's scared of most people and growls and snaps at them (does this sound like a Roscoe that you know?), but he always is happy to see me and licks me all over.  Well, I thought it would be good to hold him and keep him calm since he likes me. It worked really well for about 2/3 of Relief Society, but then little kids would come up to pet him or tease him, and he got scared and started growling and barking.  I tried telling them to go away and just let him be, but the kids are kind of crazy here and do exactly the opposite of what you tell them.  I eventually just put him on the floor since I think people thought he was making noise because of me. He then went up to the front and the Relief Society teacher almost stepped on him and let out a big yelp. Both of them yelped. It was a little crazy. I have a feeling he's not going to be allowed to come to church again.

Ellen and Sister Samuel in a new church building

We got some papaya from Tomiko last night. Fresh papaya is so good. I don't know what they do to that nasty dried stuff in the US, but this stuff is so good. I'm excited for more of them to ripen in Laura so we can buy some or get some from people.  

Things are going well. I hope I stay in Laura for at least another transfer. I feel like people are actually starting to progress and open up to us more now. Sister Samuel and I get along really well, and I like that she's relaxed about things. We know about the same amount of Marshallese, but we know different things, so we help each other. 

I'll probably get your package today, mom and dad.  I'm excited for chili powder and other spices! 

I love you all.  Tootles.

Sister Ellen Butler

October 21, 2013, At Home Sick this Week

Greetings from Laura!

There's sadly not very much to report this week because I was home sick most of the week.  I got a nasty cold in my chest and I also have a fever off and on for three days.  I forced myself to go out and work Tuesday, which was a bad idea because then I felt worse.  We didn't go out Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday so the week felt really long.  I got a chance to write some letters, sleep, and do laundry, so that was nice.

I still have a bit of a cough and crap in my lungs, but I'm doing so much better than before. I hope that will fully go away in a couple of days.  

One day this week Sister Samuel made boiled bananas to go along with some meat and vegetables she made for lunch.  Oh man, they were so gross.  I guess they eat these a lot in Vanuatu.  The bananas get really hard, flavorless, and starchy.  They kind of tasted like a mix between potatoes and taro.  I actually ended up eating them with ketchup (I know, it sounds disgusting) and I liked them better that way, but now when I think of them I just want to throw up.  It really was the waste of some good bananas!  

Weeding

You can see a grave behind them

The wards here all had conference this weekend.  They get DVDs sent from Salt lake that have it translated into Marshallese.  I don't know how the actual translation is, but the pronunciation is awful!  They've got to all be returned missionaries that are now working for the church.  I don't know why they don't get some Marshallese people that live in Salt Lake to come work for them...I'm sure they'd do a much better job.  At least the pronunciation would be better.  I think about 3 members came on Saturday to the Laura ward, but a lot more came on Sunday.  The building was so hot though.  I'm surprised as many people stayed as long as they did.  It didn't feel terribly hot, since I'm now more used to the heat, but I was dripping the whole entire time.  My shirt was completely soaked with sweat and sweat dripping down my legs kept tickling me.  We took a break between sessions to sit out by the lagoon and eat, yep, you guessed it, marshallese donuts and orange koolaid.  Not very many stayed for the second session, which I don't blame them.  I don't know why we had to be there, since I didn't even try to listen (I wouldn't have gotten anything from it, even if I did understand).  But we had some investigators come, so that was good.  

We have conference tomorrow and Wednesday at the Weirs' house in Long Island!  I'm excited to watch it, spend time with everyone, eat good food, and enjoy AC all day. It will be a really nice break.  

We've gotten a few more senior couples in the last month.  One couple is doing something with helping people find jobs and another couple are CES missionaries.  One couple just came this last week and they'll be the senior couple for Ebeye.  They all seem very nice.  I think there are 6 elders and 2 sisters on Ebeye right now.

I think Annie asked how many sister missionaries there are in the Marshall Islands, so I thought I'd respond here so everyone can read.  Right now there are 2 in Laura, 2 in Ajeltake, 2 in Long Island, 3 in Delap, and 2 in Ebeye.  There used to be sisters in Rita, but we've had a few go home recently, so they closed Rita.  They should reopen it when a new batch of missionaries comes in the first week of November.  I think we're only getting 2 more sisters then, so there still will be a trio.  The Ebeye sisters will both probably stay, and the Long Island sisters will stay, so I'll most likely go to Delap or Rita if I get transferred out of Laura.  I like how pretty Laura is and I like all the good food out here, but I think I'm ready for a change and a new ward.  If Sister Samuel trains, then I'll be transferring.

I made a tasty dinner one night.  It was just pork chops fried in onions and garlic, and then I added a can of black beans, half a can of diced tomatoes, and a few handfuls of chopped up cabbage (similar to bok choy, but more wrinkly and yellow...it's probably just yellow because it's old.  Sad.).  It was really pretty good.  I've been using the steak rub the siblings sent me on everything!  I usually add too much though, so everything is a bit peppery (which I never have a problem with).

I really don't think there's anything else to tell from this week, which I feel bad about.  I wish I had better stories! 

Oh, one day we were at a less active's house and she asked us to wait while she walked to a mon wia (a little shop) to get something.  We ended up walking around her farm.  It was huge!  I had only seen part of it before, but her piece of land just kept going and went all the way to the ocean. We walked down a dirt road to the ocean, and there wasn't really a beach there, so the land just kind of ended.  The waves were really strong and it looked deep.  It was pretty cool.  There were papayas, a few different types of bananas, cucumber, tomatoes, eggplant, and some other plants.  I'll try to upload some photos from Sister Samuel's card.  My camera died a couple of weeks ago.

Ellen and cucumber plants

Hopefully I'll have some better stories this next week.  I miss you all and hope you're all doing well.  Love you, 

Sister Ellen Butler

October 13, 2013, How to Maintain a Water Tank

Greetings family and friends,

We had a crazy week in Laura.  We went to two funerals, had some adventures with our water tank, and took a lot of ice cream breaks.

Some crazy marshallese kids.

One day they had four of them on the bike.

The one at the back in Elijah and he's 12.

We've been teaching him and his older brother.

Their mom is a member.

We have a water tank (I think they call them pontoons?) that catches rain water from the roof.  I thought that was our only water source, so I didn't really worry about it very much. Well, one the of the senior missionaries asked me if we've been filling up our tank once a week, and I thought he was joking at first.  Most of our water is rainwater, but we're also supposed to top it off with other water every week.  Sister Ieie failed to tell me that, and we never filled it up while she was here. There's basically a pipe that sticks out of the ground and the water is only turned on from town for a few hours on Monday.  We have a key for the spigot and a hose (I was wondering what the house in our house was for) to fill up the tank.  Well, last Monday we hooked up the hose and turned on the water to fill up the tank and we heard the pump turn on, meaning we were taking water from our tank and then putting it back in again (basically wasting electricity). A neighbor came over and told us we needed to unplug our water pump, so we unlocked a box on the outside of the house where the electricity is to unplug the pump.  We weren't sure what we were doing, and we didn't feel comfortable unlocking it because these are the neighbors that used to use our electricity, so now we have a lock on the box.  We turned off the electricity, but the water from Laura wasn't turned on and she said we needed to call the Laura water people to get it turned on.  Anyway, we ended up giving the key for the water her because we had to go into town.  Later that night when we got back we walked over to our neighbor's house, to find that the woman we gave the key to doesn't live there.  So then we had to go find her in Laura so we could turn our water pump back on so we could have water again in our house.  She said the water had eventually turned on and that she filled up our tank for us.  The Marshallese people are so friendly.  We also met a less active man in the process, so that was good.  He said he just got back from Hawaii a few months ago and that he got baptized while he was at BYU-H. We forgot to check how much water is in the tank today, but it rained a lot this weekend so I think we'll be fine.

The ceiling in the bathroom and laundry room is dripping when it rains...another thing we need to get fixed.  We got our AC fixed this week!  It's been dripping about 2 buckets of water everyday, so it's nice to not have to dump out the bucket everyday.

We have zone meeting once a month.  We normally have it in Ajeltake, but we had it in Long Island this week.  My zone consists of the Laura/Arrak/Ajeltake district and the Long Island district. We had a potluck lunch afterward, which was really fun. We either have district or zone meeting every Wednesday, and we always end up hanging out for a while and so we get out to work late those days. It's a nice break though. And we always stop for ice cream on Wednesdays.

We went to two funerals this week.  Well, more like parts of two funerals.  Funerals here last about a week and a half.  The first part involves making the concrete box.  They spread white rocks all around where they're going to make the box and then a couple of guys mix up concrete and make a concrete box with cinderblocks and cement.  It usually takes them 3 days or so to make it.  They then paint it white.  Then for about a week or so different churches schedule time to come and have their own services.  The family's house is open and the casket is just inside in the main room, and people go inside, have their service, and then sit outside on the grass eating gross soup and koolaid.  Once all of the churches have come through, they have the kallib.  I was confused because "jikin kallib" means garden, and "jikin" means place, so I thought that "kallib" meant growth or plants or something like that.  I learned that kallib means "to bury", and so cemeteries and gardens are both jikin kallib because you bury seeds, people, etc.  After the kallib there's a "kajemlokin" which means to close, and it's a big party where everyone sits around and eats food provided by the family.  The family also gives out bags of laundry soap.  I'm not sure why, but they do that at every funeral.  I don't know how they have the money to make all the food and to give out that much laundry soap

Nanny and her two children at the funeral

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On Tuesday we went to a kajemlokin for a woman in Laura and on Saturday we went to a kallib for a woman in Arrak.  The kajemlokin was weird because we didn't really know anyone and people were looking at us like we didn't belong there.  Nanny (member) and Baren (soon to be investigator) invited us, and it was Baren's mom that passed away.  When we got there, we asked people where Nanny was and they asked us "Who is Nanny?"  Clearly they were there just to get food, since Nanny's family were the ones that were hosting the whole thing.  Eventually we found Nanny and she was really nice and made us get in line to get food.  We then took pictures of Nanny and her sons by the grave and we're going to print them out in town today for her.  When we were about to leave everyone got really quiet and then a man started yelling and walked up to the party.  A woman ran up to him and started sobbing and hanging on him, and everyone just stood there watching.  We thought maybe someone had died.  And then a car about 10 ft from us backed up and hit a little kid (the kid was fine, don't worry) and then dad of the little kid picked up the kid and started hitting the car and yelling all the driver.  It was a really intense 2 minutes.  At this point sister Samuel leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Um, let's just sneak out now."  It was pretty funny and crazy.

The kallib in Arrak was for Bubu Kaminaga, a really strong member that had joined the church in 1982.  All six of the Laura and Arrak missionaries were invited (the ones that attend the Laura ward) and we got there before most of the ward members so we sat around outside for a while.  We then went into the house with the members, and we were the last ones to get inside, so all the missionaries were sitting by the open casket (which was pretty uncomfortable).  All the ward members were crying.  Once ward was the last church to come by, so after we were done the bishopric and elders picked up the coffin and walked outside to the grave site.  We stood there for a long time holding all of the elders' bags.  At this point it was dark and family members of the woman were lying, sobbing on the coffin.  The little kids were crazy!  Some of them crawled inside the concrete box!  Finally they closed up the coffin, knocked off the handles and other decorations from the outside of the coffin (maybe they reuse them?  Or maybe it didn't fit in the concrete box??) and they shoved it in.  Concrete was mixed up, and someone grabbed some cinderblocks and they sealed up the box. We were there for about 3 and a half hours total.  We only had about an hour and a half left before we needed to be home, so we all decided to drive to Ajeltake to get ice cream and play cards. When we were there the zone leaders drove past (we were way out of our area) but they're really chill so they stopped and hung out with us for a while, which was fun.  I'll try to send some photos from the funeral.

Other news: I made a big pot of lentil soup this week!  It was nice to eat something other than rice.  Sister Crane is one of the new Sister Training Leaders ("Sister APs" as we call them) and so we'll be able to go on exchanges together sometime!  We're excited for that.  Sister Crane is good friends with one of my friends from Philly, so we're pretty close.  The roosters on this island are so blasted loud.  They always wake me up in the morning.

The electricity situation is always a little sketchy here.  All the time I'll see a meter box (or whatever it's called) and power cords going into a house, but then there's an extension cord going off to another house.  In some places the extension cords go from one house to another one across the street, so the cord is just always there in the street.  A lot of times there are interior electrical boxes on the outsides of houses. There are single light bulbs hanging from wires stretched from a tree to a house. Basically if they're able to get the electricity to work and produce light, it works for them. Some of it is just a little scary.  Every month one of the senior missionaries calls and gives us a number to punch into our electricity box in our house.  It adds on a few hundred kilowatt hours and so we can track how much electricity we're using throughout the month.  One of our neighbors wanted to use our electricity one day, so they gave us a power card with 10 dollars worth of electricity on it.  When we punched it in I think it gave us about 25-30 kilo watt hours.  I'm not sure how much that is.

Hopefully all of my stories made sense.  I feel like I had a hard time explaining them.  That's a pretty crazy story about your foot, Kate.  I hope it gets better soon. And thanks for sending me packages! Hopefully next week I'll get them.  I'm doing well, other than a nasty cold that I got a few weeks ago. I thought it went away but now it's in my chest so I'm going to talk to Sister Bulkley about it today. Sister Samuel was sick this week, so we didn't get quite as much work done as we wanted to. It was a good week though.  We got a less active member and her three kids to come to church with us on Sunday.

I've been in Laura for 2 months now!  Holy cow. I'll most likely be transferred somewhere in November when the new batch of missionaries come. Sister Samuel will probably be training again in Laura.

 A view of the iar from near Arrak

I love and miss you all.  Thanks for your emails and letters,

Sister Ellen Butler