January 6, 2014/January 13, 2014

finally got my marshallese nametag!

the Elmores always make us this really delicious really unhealthy dessert...ice cream covered in hot chocolate pudding. YES.

Hey everyone! Sorry I didn't get an email out last week. Because of the crazy weather, we had to rely on other people for rides and so we ended up not getting very much time to email. I'll try to make up for it this week.

So, I've come to the conclusion that the weather in Arkansas is just absolutely crazy. On Monday, we had a wind chill of about -15 degrees, and yesterday it was a solid 65 and beautiful. At least we never get bored.

I'm starting to get the hang of being in a Marshallese area. To serve the Marshallese people, there are a few facts you have to come to accept.

1. Marshallese people can have like...5 different names. We were teaching this less active girl named Wisa, but then found out that she wasn't actually baptized. There was just no record of it. But after talking to her mother, we found out that it might not be under the name Wisa, but could also be under Lisa, Risa, Alicia, or Lija. No idea where all those names came from, but apparently this isn't a rare occurrence here.

2. Everybody is related to each other. Guaranteed, if you ask a Marshallese person if they know another Marshallese person, they will say, "oh yeah! That's my uncle's cousin!" or "She's one of my 13 sisters!" This is actually pretty nice, because if one person shows up to church to have their baby blessed, there will be at least 35 Marshallese relatives there too.

3. Marshallese children, though completely adorable, have basically no parental supervision and are CRAZY. I'm not sure where their parents are, but they run around in this big field beating each other, and sometimes our car, with huge pipes. Kind of reminds me of Lord of the Flies sometimes. But they're cute so it's okay.

Well, I don't think I talked much about our Christmas conference on New Year's Eve. I guess it's the yearly treat we get for Christmas, so half of the conference was just fun and games. We came in our "civilian clothes" and got to play dodgeball and watch movies. President Shumway and his sons apparently used to be part of this fairly popular country band before he became a mission president, so his sons flew out from Utah and they put on a show for us. President Shumway is hilarious because even though he's intense and very professional 9 times out of 10, he has this really funny immature side to him that comes out every once in a while. One time, Elder Gulbranson completely ripped his brand new suit pants and President Shumway just stood there and laughed at him and said, "that is rich." He is great.

That evening I stayed in Bentonville with our Sister Training Leader, Sister Cook, while Sister Hatch and Sister Lavea went back to Huntsville. We didn't get to do a lot of teaching since it was New Year's Eve, but we went and talked to some people in a gas station. The first was a group of high school girls who told us that their friend was going into the MTC the next day. The second was a lady who used to live in Salt Lake City. I asked Sister Cook if it was typical to meet this many people who knew about the church already, and she said yes. They call it "Little Provo" for a reason. I hope one day I'll get to serve there.

Which reminds me, did you know that the descendants of the Meadow Mountain Massacre basically all live in Huntsville? Mormons used to have an awful reputation here, but our ward has a great public affairs representative that has done a ton of "damage control" and made a nicer name for us here. Another Huntsville claim to fame: our branch has 13 temple workers. That's more than any other unit in the temple district, and even more than a few of the STAKES.

We've been trying to get a hold of Porter, who keeps having his baptismal date pushed back simply because we can't catch him for an interview. That's another thing about the Marshallese, they are very flexible which means we can stop by whenever we want, but we also can't guarantee they'll be home at any given time. I really hope to see Porter get baptized before I leave this area, he is awesome. Like, future Marshallese branch president awesome.

We have also started teaching a woman who recently joined the church named Rhonda. She lives alone with her two children, Tanner and Ali. Tanner is 11 and baptized, and he is SO smart and so sweet. I just love their family so much. Our goal is to get both of them to the temple to do baptisms in the near future, as soon as Tanner turns 12. Rhonda's situation is hard because her husband is a member but resents the church quite a bit, so she faces opposition from him every day. He has told her a lot of lies about the church that need to be cleared up. But she has such a strong testimony and I'm excited to teach her.

Oh, and I had to give a talk yesterday! They called on Saturday so we had about 24 hours to prepare. Yeah, talk about stepping out of my comfort zone. But it wasn't that bad, I talked about "enduring to the end" and used two talks that daddy sent me from last October's conference. Oh, and Brother Kent, I slowed down my speaking about 5 times...maybe people actually understood what I was saying this time! It was all four of us missionaries speaking so I think the members got a pretty big kick in the pants about member missionary work. It was good though.

I love you all! Thanks for all the encouragement and happy emails.