Tyler In Tahiti

Ka oha d'habitude from the Marquises - the land where it's rained literally every day for the last 2+ weeks, and this is supposed to be the dry season. Almost didn't have a p-day this week. Internet's been down for the ENTIRE ISLAND for a bit now. Luckily they fixed the problem a couple days ago. No lie, I think they were just missing some cable. This week was a pretty good week. Elder Davis is completely healed now. Mostly the only lasting damage has been the realization that that IV was the most expensive meal he'd ever eaten ($81.72) and it was from a tube. We met this one guy that I'm pretty sure is certifiably insane, and he was really nice and really old and we traded him a Tahitian Book of Mormon for a Sprite and he came to church and said some seriously funny and weird stuff in Sunday school when he came to church (yeah, he came to our church!). We didn't get to see Suzanne or Catherine this week (something came up with them ea...

Ka oha nui from the Marquises, where the whole week was rather calm right up until, you guessed it, p-day. Elder Davis has been sick with the dengue for this whole week, and it started out okay, but then went from bad to worse. He was feverish, had weird, sensitive skin, his hands and feet hurt, he had headaches and bodily aches, did not stop throwing up, and could not eat for five days, to name a few. As a result, this took up most of the week. We went to the doctor's and he said it was the dengue, and prescribed something we didn't recognize. Soeur Tama (the nurse that gave me breastmilk), said that what he prescribed was just a fancy version of Dolliprane (their equivalent of Ibuprofen). Thusly, she gave us something that was, again, Dolliprane, but this time with codeine. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the throwing up started after that. I don't think it was because of the pill, but still, I don't think it was very great for his body either...

Ka oha nui from the Marquesas - the land where you use stepping stones to cross a river, and you do it with all the casualty and forgetability of crossing the street. This week, we had a pretty good lesson with Suzanne and her family. Really led by the spirit. Unfortunately, we had quite a difficult time engaging them. They didn't come to church, but even a simple invitation to pray about what we said didn't quite work either. We'll just keep trying I suppose. We fixed the hot water heater! Finally! After like 4+ months. It just wouldn't light. We asked around, and we weren't quite sure what to do, we tried some stuff, but we forgot one very crucial thing - gotta change the batteries. Of course. $4. Also, recently when we've been trying to play basketball on the court down by the beach, people have been wanting it so they can play soccer, and our showing up has sort of miffed them a bit. They've gone from playing off to the side, to playing ...

Ka oha nui from the Marquesas - the land where the month of July is beginning, and thus begins the fall of missionary stats. This week was a decided improvement over last week, and certainly went by lots faster. On Tuesday we did a bit of home teaching, and saw the Gendrons again finally. Tehani (their daughter) was back in town for summer vacation and was able to dance with us that weekend (her parents had to head to Tahiti, so they couldn't be in our group). On Wednesday we had one lesson of the four we got this week (eesh). On Thusday is when the party really got started. For you see, a traditional Marquesian oven does not DIG itself. We spent like the entire day cutting the grass (we don't have lawnmowers here, so you cut the grass with oversized and rather dangerous weedwackers and then rake up the clippings), cleaning up the chapel, digging this crazy pit, grabbing our wood for the fire (miraculously dry even in all of the rain), and grabbing our volcanic...