Dogs and Plates

The following pictures are from when Kevin was on Tonoas. The little boy is named Timson and he was very proud of the big fish he caught.


April 5, 2010
Dear Mom and Dad,
Ok so another week has gone by now. It is hard to believe that I have been in Pohnpei for almost 3 weeks now. Time has gone by pretty fast. Each day seems to take forever though. It has been hard just sitting in lessons and not having a part in them. As the language gets better I will be able to do more. It is my goal to start teaching sometime at the end of this week or next week. It won't be a lot but I just want to teach a little bit here and there. That will help me to learn the language faster. Speaking of language, Pohnpeian has a lot more resources for learning the language that are available. Could you please go on Amazon and try to buy a pohnpeian to english dictionary and also a Pohnpeian grammar book for me? They would be a big help to me out here.
So, there isn't a whole lot of news for this week. Life is just going on as normal and the missionary work is about the same. We are really busy meeting with a lot of people but not very many are making steps forward. It is the same old story that really stinks sometimes. We have a couple people that we think could make some progress here soon so keep your fingers crossed. I wish I could tell you more than that about the work but honestly I don't do much talking and I can't follow what the people are saying 100%.
We do have 1 kid with a baptismal date right now but he didn't come to church this week. We met him one night and had a short lesson with him and he felt the spirit pretty good. Elder Parker felt impressed to invite him to be baptized and he accepted. His scheduled date was on April 17th but we will probably have to push that back to early May.
On Saturday we had a branch picnic that was a lot of fun. I can't remember the name of the place it was at but it is a little park that is right on an artificial beach. They have traditional huts for rent that are really cool. It is called a "nahs" and is in a U shape and has a dried reed roof. To rent one is only like 20 dollars a day. The branch had a lot of fun. There was food that we BBQ'd and we just hung out and had fun. A lot of the people went swimming. There was some dancing and stuff too. We didn't stay the whole time because we had stuff going on that day as well but we stayed for a few hours and had fun with the members. I really like the members here. There are some strong ones in our branch and they are all really nice and a lot of fun to talk to. There is one lady named Alma who is from the outer islands of Chuuk. She has been here a really long time but still knows Chuukese pretty well. She actually knows a different dialect than me but we can understand each other. I also had a chance to talk to one of the branch presidents of another branch here who knows Chuukese. It is fun speaking it to people. I am worried that soon I will start to lose the comfortable feeling of speaking in it.
Today we had a chance to play football as a zone. That was a lot of fun. I really like the zone a lot now. We all get along pretty well. I went on an exchange this last week with Elder Linzey. He is a really good guy and we had fun together. It was weird being with him though because I don't know Kitti all that well and I can't talk to the people so it was awkward at moments. He took care of the situations really well though. This Thursday I will go on an exchange with Elder Clark in my district. I'll go to his area for that. I'll let you know how that goes next week.
Haha so about the dogs mom talked about... my bad on thinking you meant they get stuck on the license plates. The people do eat dog here. I know that probably sounds barbaric and I would have thought so before my mission but being in a different culture and seeing how people are about those kinds of things has shown me things from a different perspective. I have heard dog is good. It is funny the joke that mom heard about the dogs on a plate and me misunderstanding it though because families usually eat their dogs after they have been killed by a car. Elders say they don't feel too bad if they accidentally hit a dog because it will feed a family. (note from mom: Two weeks ago in a letter I told Kevin I had read that in Pohnpei there were lots of dogs running around, but to not get too attached to any of them as they all ended up on someone's plate.. Kevin had responded saying that he had not seen any dog remains on anyone's license plates.. maybe he is losing his English comprehension?)
I got a letter from Elder Kuss last week and I'm going to write to him today -as long as my Chuukese is ok at least. He is in Guam now.
How was Half Moon Bay? I hope it wasn't cold for you the whole time you were there. Half Moon Bay is such an awesome place. I hope I get the chance to go there again in the future. How is the rest of the family doing? How is Kristen doing with her husband now (that feels so weird to say)?
I hope that you have an awesome week. Thank you both so much for everything you do for me.