December 22, 2014: Getting Ready for Christmas

Yesterday I was supposed to give a talk in sacrament meeting but we ran out of time so I ended bearing my testimony.  I don’t know if I told you but I also bore my testimony a couple weeks back, the previous time I was getting a little tongue tied so it made me seem like I was really bad at Marshallese.  So this time when I bore my testimony everyone just told me after “Makre Kajin Majol” or “Pro at Marshallese.”  The people love that you can speak Marshallese and will try to help you with it as well.  Also at church we didn’t have many investigators due to a big rain storm the night before.  However we had one of our investigators Jasper, an 11 year old boy, who came all by himself which was a really cool experience for him and us.  It’s pretty cool how we are able to teach the youth here in the Marshall Islands.  Basically kids have all the freedom they want and can walk around anywhere anytime this usually starts after their first step.  Yeah the Marshallese youth are great especially in the ward I am working in, we have a lot of the priests who want to come and work with us.  Right now I am working with Elder Lesser who came at the same time I did.  It can be difficult sometimes because although I understand Marshallese I cannot always clearly speak exactly what I want to say.  However our investigators do help us out with the language, Tina the I wrote about last week will just finish my sentences for me.  She knows the church is true we are just working on her to continue going to church and getting her friends to come as well.  This week I finished the Book of Mormon.  It was my first time reading it cover to cover and I took time to read instead just skimming over it.  I am able to still feel the Christmas Holiday in the Marshall Islands.  It’s really great we have been getting fed all this week and we will all next week.  The members tell us how they know how hard it is to be away from family for Christmas and then give us an insane amount of food.  Most of it is rice but this one member sent us home with about 5 pounds of leftovers.  Love you all I hope you have a good Christmas.f