Presiding Over Sacrament Meeting in Surreal Rommonum

12-29-09
Dear Mom and Dad,
It has not been very long since I got to talk to you last week for Christmas. That was awesome. I really enjoyed catching up on everything. New Year's is on its way. New Years is the big holiday around here. We are going to have a branch party that will be fun. The next day we will be going to Paata. We need to go to Paata because we have not been able to baptize Peterson because Sam, the branch president, is not really Peterson's father. He was actually adopted and his real parents live in Kansas. Sam adopted Peterson, but it was a Chuukese style adoption which means there are no legal papers and nothing was involved. It is totally legal in Chuuk and really common for women to just hand babies over to people to take care of. Sam has raised Peterson since he was very little with his wife but the church needs to have somthing official. So either we need to get permission from Peterson's parents or we need to get Sam and his wife made as official guardians. Hopefully soon Peterson will get baptized.
Things on Romonnum have been going well. We are still working to help Margery get the go-ahead for baptism from her mom. It has taken a lot longer than I thought it would take but it should be done soon.
Elder Cherrington and I are getting along well. He was on Guam before so the work is a lot different than what he has known. But it should be a good transfer. I say transfer because I think I have only one more transfer here. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I will get to go to Sapuk or somewhere cool. Mostly keep them crossed that I stay in Chuuk. I don't want to go to Guam yet. I don't want to ever go actually. Chuuk is too cool. I wnat to stay here for the full two years so I get super good at Chuukese. I want to try to get on the translation team later, but I need a lot more practice and work. Being with Elder Cherrington has been good because I have been getting good experience at being the language speaker. I do close to all the talking and conversing so I have been hearing a lot more ways of saying stuff and a lot more words. I have a whole transfer of it so I should learn a lot.
Today for P-day Elder Cherrington and I went up on the mountain and saw a large cross the Catholic church put up. It overlooks the lagoon and the view is amazing. We had a couple of people from the Aaronic priesthood with us and they got us coconuts and we just hung out.It was really peaceful and a little bit surreal. I love it. It makes me sad that my time here will be so limited and I will probably never see these things again. I will miss this stuff so badly.
You will never guess what I did the last two Sundays! I conducted church! The branch president skipped out on church! Both weeks we waited for a long time and then just got started. The meetings went well and by the end of the first sacrament meeting we had 67 people there! I was really happy with it! It was fun conducting. Especially in another language. I am not sure I would want to do it all the time though and I feel sorry for dad doing it all those years! I did feel a little awkward too as currently there are three whites on the island and so it adds to the attention of being white. Ha ha! Now I can say I was the presiding authority over a sacrament meeting! That is fun!
So tell me what is going on in the college sports world. Who won the championship this year? How did TCU do against Boise? Is the basketball team still doing well? How did BYU end up in the final football ranking?
I have been really enjoying all the nice stuff I got for Christmas. Thank you for that once again. I was thinking about it after mom asked on the phone if I needed anything and I mentioned in my email that some acne face wash would be nice. If you could just send one that would be good. That would hold me until I get to Guam. Thank you in advance.
Well that wraps up everything. I hope you are both doing great! Take care.
Love Always,
Elder Kevin South