Letter From a 19 Year Old

11-3-09
Dear Mom and Dad,
Another quiet but good week has gone by on Romonnum. This will be the last letter you will get from me while I am in my teens..... that's weird. I'm going to be 20 soon? hahaha, it won't feel like I'm out of my teenage years for awhile probably. I think I am going to open the presents today. I know it's early, but I have a reason. We go into Weno on Thursday the 5th and we have a district conference on the 7th and so I will be with all the missionaries and it is going to be hectic like all the Weno trips always are. It will be easier to open them here rather than carry them with me as well. I will get some pictures for you. I will make a video too. (as Kevin makes no reference to the special homemade cookies that we slaved over for hours, we can only assume he did not save those and they were long gone by time the birthday arrived)
The two kids that we were going to baptize this week didn't get baptized. Some things happened that prevented us from finishing the needed lessons on time, Because of district conference, we will have to wait two weeks until November 14. Hopefully stuff works out for that. On the 21st we have two more baptismal dates. One is for the stepfather of the two kids and the other is for a young boy named Peterson on Paata. That is the other island we go to occassionally.
We have now gotten to go to Paata twice this week which was way good. The first day was Thursday. The big missionary boat drove us out. The village with the church is called Pokochov and it is a good 15 minute walk from the dock that the big boat can go. There is a path through the mangrove trees to the church village, but the big boat can't go through it. On the walk there we went through another village and saw parts of the island. Paata is nice. The villages are big there and the people are a lot more kept to themselves. It was kind of creepy at times. Pokochou is very nice though. There is a little cement sidewalk that goes through the whole village. I was shocked. I couldn't believe it when I saw it. Missionaries used to live on Paata and so there is a missionary house there. The house was way empty and run down. It has been almost a full year since missionaries have lived there on a full time basis. I can't complain about the house though. We were only there one night. While we were there we saw Peterson and a few of the members. It was fun. We left early the next morning and jumped on a guy's boat who was heading to Weno. Romonnum is on the way so he just dropped us off. We went back again on Sunday morning for church. We left at about 8AM and rode on a small boat. We joined the Sacrament meeting which was good. There were 12 people total. It is a very small branch. After Sacrament meeting we joined the Romunnum meeting block. The Romonnum branch is so different. There are usually close to 70 people who attend and is it crazy! Kids are always way out of control. There is no word for reverent or any super closely related word except for quiet in Chuukese so it may give you an idea of their view of the importance of being reverent.
Other than that we are still working with Tison. He is the stepfather of the two kids we are working with.
This next week will be a fun one as we are going to Weno for a zone and district conference. Hope you are doing great still. Thanks for all you do for me. Stay safe and take care.
Your still 19 year old son, Elder Kevin South