New Year 2016

Happy New Year. 

   Crazy to think that this is my last year on the mission, that I'll be home by the end of 2016. Nothing much happened this week and people have been still in the holiday phase so not too much work. It has been really nice and rainy and cold this week. 

   According to my parents I don't talk enough about the weird and interesting things in my mission. So here we go; I am on a tiny island that may be 3 miles long probably more like 2 and just a few hundred yards wide. The area that I'm working now takes 5 minutes to walk to the other end. Ebeye is packed with people they say that more than 1/3 of the people here are children. Woman here have 5+ children here and they're just running around everywhere. The schools here all have weird times some students will go from 8am-12pm and others 12pm-5pm and other times in between. The island is completely flat and could probably sink into the ocean in 20 years. Ebeye is called the slums of the pacific and is one of the densely populated islands in the world. people living in 0.2 sq mile. It's packed but very fun and all the people are great. 

   New Years we just stayed inside and just slept. A lot of people asked what we did and we just told them that we slept. New Years Eve and the following day was really slow so we just napped to catch upon sleep. With this New Year I decided I want to start and finish the bible again as well as the Book of Mormon in Marshallese and English. 

Wednesday we had a district meeting with just elder Soromon and myself and the two other elders, our senior couple were off island and one of the sisters had chicken pox. District Meeting just went down in the house and it was really good meeting. Basically we just sat down and read a little bit from Preach my Gospel and discussed it. Much better than me standing up there and giving a training. Talked a lot about just how we are going into the New Year and what goals and resolutions we want to set to be better missionaries. 

  Yesterday and this morning started waking up to help our youth get to seminary. Sometimes I'm really tired but we have a lot of youth that we're able to get that usually wouldn't. Soromon and I are working more with the young men in our ward because we have very few active priests in the ward. Continually striving to work hard and we have picked up a few more investigators and work all over Ebeye is great. All of the missionaries here get 30-40+ lessons a week so it's just amazing how good the work is. 

   Alma 5:49 And now I say unto you that this is the order after which I am called, yea, to preach unto my beloved brethren, yea, and every one that dwelleth in the land; yea, to preach unto all, both old and young, both bond and free; yea, I say unto you the aged, and also the middle aged, and the rising generation; yea, to cry unto them that they must repent and be born again.

P.S. I'm currently on roof of the building because the wifi is the best here. 

Love
S. Weenig