No Light Bulbs Sold on Romonnum

September 15, 2009
I have pretty humbled this week. Our work has been amazing, but living condtions are.. wow! Fou about a week we haven't had a normal light source in our house. The light bulb burned out and we had to resort to using the small flashlight I brought. After a couple days all the batteries died and we had to resort to using a candle. It was already small from previous missionaries using it so we had to be smart with it. We managed to make it last three nights. All of our language study, planning and cooking had to be done by candlelight. Until last night when the candle died. It left our house completely dark. I never thought I would have to experience that. Things get better though....... our water pump died too. We have to take showers from buckets directly from the big tanks. We wear basketball shorts and I climb on top of the tanks and lower the bucket in and pour in down onto Elder Ako. I just pour it over myself for my shower. It doesn't get us nearly as clean as we want but that is our only option besides the ocean. That would be worse though because when you dry off your body is covered with salt. Then came the physical beating. We were walking through a dense part of the forest the other day and I tripped really hard. My knee landed on a sharp rock and walking has been a task since then. Especially climbing up the mountain. Then the drunks come in. We were walking on our regular path and a guy was coming towards us. We did not know he was drunk. He took us by surprise when he started yelling profanity in English. We stopped in shock and then he threw quite a large rock at me. It didn't hit me on the fly luckily, but it bounced once and then hit my leg. We ran way to avoid any further problems. That has made for an exciting week here! Enough of the negative though.
30! That's the new goal for baptisms on Romonnum by the end of the year. We are at 20 now and have 8 scheduled. More will follow too. The month of October will be a big one. A lot of people are trying to quit smoking now and I have never seen such a strong desire of heart to quit as I see in a couple of the people in particular. I'll go more into detail on each of the people as the time gets closer. That will be soon though.
Elder Ako and I have taken over as seminary teachers. The normal teacher's husband is really struggling with some things so we were asked to do it. We are teaching the book of Mormon which is interesting to do because it is not all translated. Less than half of it is. The kids have liked it thus far.
Speaking of the translated Book of Mormon, I have big news. The first Presidency approved a full translation. I most likely won't get the chance to see it on my mission ever, but I am excited about it anyway. There is a lot more for the Chuukese to learn in the untranslated sections.
Other exciting news: Zone conference is in two days. I can't wait. I want to be bale to hang out with some of the other msssionaries too. When I was on Tonoas there was a district meeting once a week and we would see other missionaries. On Romonnum our district is a whole two mssionaries! Us! Nobody joins us so our meeting is usually just an extra 30 minutes of companionship study. More good news though! The zone leaders come tomorrow for exchanges. I will stay on Romonnum for it and Elder Ako will go to Paata. I am a little jealous as I have not gotten to see Paata yet but I have a lesson tomorrow that will complete my language mastery. Once I am done with that, it will be a huge burden lifted. Oh, and guess what? By completing the language mastery I will get 15 credits of college credit! I don't know if Chuukese will serve many purposes, but I love it! I will be able to make fun of people back home and NOBODY will have a clue what I'm saying. Haha! Just kidding!
Well I have no mail to respond to this week as no one has brought mail or anything, but I hope you are doing great! Sorry about all the black blotches all over the place. Believe it or not, I am forgetting how to communicate and write in English!
Can't wait to hear from you!