Sept. 12, 2014 Another Week

Hey everybody!

Life is still great. My only complaint of the MTC is my brain (I learn too slow) but that doesn't count, so actually the food. It tastes pretty good, but it is basically the church's version of McDonalds. Which after living in a pretty healthy home doesn't agree with me very much. Since this is the MTC we have to share a scripture with everything, so our MTC Cafeteria scripture is Jeremiah 4:19. It's good enough to make anyone that's been here for more than a week laugh so hard that they cry, or just cry in general because our small intestines don't appreciate what we've been sending them. That is why we love the Temple Cafeteria. It is still a cafeteria, but the food there is more personally loved, plus it's pre-blessed so it is double healthy.

We are getting relatively good at speaking/understanding the lessons. They go pretty well for the most part, but are even more nerve racking because we aren't allowed to use notes anymore. Basically we have figured out the general sentence structure and know just enough vocab to get our point across. The cool thing is that we are all knowingly totally reliant on the Spirit to get us through. There is no way that at least I could hear what he says, then translate it into English, formulate what I want to say, translate it back into Kiribati, and say it in a reasonable amount of time with out some help from the other side. We pray so hard all of the time. 

An interesting cultural thing is that in Kiribati there is no word for brother or sister. There is a word for sibling of the same sex and different sex, so it would get kinda confusing if you addressed the room by saying hello to all of the congregation's siblings of the same or opposite gender. So instead it is just like amalga. You address everyone you meet by their first name. If you were to address a congregation (correct me if I'm wrong Brother Kunz) you would probably just say the word for people, "aomata". Also people for the most part don't have a family name, their last name is the name of their father. So I would be David Michael, and everyone would just call me David (but really Elder Morley, most people wont know my First name).

Every time we have a devotional (which is at least twice a week) we will sing the prelude. Everyone in the room will sing the hymns. It's a great way to invite the spirit into a meeting even before you start. On Sunday we sang the song Army of Helaman. But instead of singing "we will be the Lords Missionaries" It has been changed for the MTC to be "We are NOW the Lord's Missionaries." It is super cool.

We now teach 2 investigators every day or so, totally in Kiribati without notes. One is a less active, and one is a totally new convert. It is so crazy to be sitting in a room, cross legged on the floor, just chatting in a language that I didn't even know existed a few months ago, having a simple but real conversation. We have been told that the people there are very relaxed and aren't used to thinking deeply into subjects. So there is no way to teach too simply, they will almost never feel like you are speaking down to them, because that's just not their culture. They will love me just because I am trying to learn their language. Also their culture makes it so that lots of people will try to invite us in and have us eat a huge meal. But we don't need to be eating all the time, and will usually have appointments, so the best way to get out of it is to ask for a drink of water. They will give us a cup  of water with a bunch of baby little worms swimming around. So I've figured out how to get a parasite! So try hard to not drink the whole cup, and just hope that they swim downstream. Apparently the natives can drink the cup and just catch the worms on their lip then swat them away when they are finished, or just leave them on the rim of the cup.The MTC gave everyone going to Kiribati free filtering water bottles. But it may be an insult to their culture to just pull out a filtering straw and drink through that. So pretty much just a formality.

So we laugh about the fun bits of culture ( or not so fun, I haven't told you the worst yet) just knowing that in a month we will be crying about it.

Have a great week!