Week Four in Tarawa

This week marks one full month that we have been on Tarawa.  Yesterday a whole new batch of young elders came in, and we felt like old timers.  I wondered what they thought of this dusty little patch of land that they will live on for the next two years.  The first thing that happens when they get here is that the leaders take all of their suit coats and hang them in our loft.  They won't need them again until they leave.  When a missionary comes to visit us asking for his suit coat, we know that he's on his way out.

We are getting to  know people's names, no small feat because they are so different from any we've heard before and the accent makes it even harder.  We are half way through the BYUH class that we are teaching and just beginning to understand how to teach them.  At first no one would say anything, but as they get to know us, they begin to open up.

A big truck took out the electricity for a time on Friday, so Elder Sumner and I decided to take advantage of the unexpected free time to go out on the reef for the first time.  We weren't sure how to get there because they keep the gate tightly wired up, but we figured out how to undo the wire and there were steps going down the sea wall.  It was low tide so we were able to walk a long way out on the reef.  It's an amazing spot.  There are tide pools with all kinds of small life, crabs, sea snakes and plant growth.  Next time we'll stay longer.

Later in the afternoon I talked with Lita (the principal) about the differences in culture when the electrical wire broke.  All of the students rushed out to see what was happening and kept getting closer and closer to the broken wire.  In America they would have gone immediately into lock down.  We talked about the innocence of the Islanders.  Nothing ever happens here so they expect everything to always be okay.  Lita told me about when she went to Samoa shortly after the tsunami.  They went to a village that had been destroyed and many people died.  Right next to the village was a high mountain.  They could have easily escaped if they had heeded the warnings.  Instead they kept doing what they had been doing and even watched and commented on how far out the wave went.  As I listened to conference and the many calls to listen to the prophet and the brethren,  I wondered how often we are like the Samoan villagers, content in our ways and far outside the Good Ship Zion that Brigham Young used to talk about.

Sorry about the lack of pictures. We turned off google + photo because it was killing our smartphone batteries and using up all our data, and we still haven't figured out how to get photos from our computer desktop to our blog.  We tried the upload button, but it never would upload anything.  Help, anyone?