Let the Wookie Win

Family,

Well yet again, another week has flown by. Thanks for all the emails, it was great to hear from you all again. Things have gone well this week. still hurricane less, but maybe that is a good thing. Last  Monday we had a massive rainstorm. Well we had to go pay our rent and so we drove out to the place and unfortunately the roads were very flooded . I did not want to get out of the car. finally we just decided who cares and began to trudge through the flooded streets. the water was about 25-30 inches deep and came up nearly to my belt line. when we finally got inside the place to pay our rent the employees were surprised they had customers, they didn't think anyone would come with that rain. It made for a very wet day, but it was entertaining.

I am glad you enjoyed the diving sheep, I don't think I have anything that amusing this week to tell. The soccer World Cup started this week, that has turned out to be very detrimental to the teaching. seems like every haitian uses it as an excuse to do nothing. We walk into a yard and there is no one in sight, entire neighborhoods are gathered around TV's watching the games. Yesterday at church I was worried that no one was going to come. thankfully for us we had over 20 tourists show up and so that kept the attendance up. It was sort of like superbowl sunday, somehow 60% of the members caught the same disease that somehow effects the ball of their foot. Thankfully the disease is cured after a few hours of sitting around. The world cup lasts a month or something like that, so it will be interesting to see what happens this next month, hopefully everyone gets bored of it or something.

Well Saturday night we met some tourists (some of the ones that came to church) and they took us out to eat ice cream. It was really good! I like Ice Cream, and I like tourists, and I like Tourists giving me ice cream. So all around a good deal, three things I like all at once. They were very nice people. The father of the family went to Provo High School a long time ago, so that was nifty. 

Josh got married? wow, that is a surprise and a half, did not expect that one. It will be interesting to see what comes from that. Perhaps it will be good and he will rise to the challenge of added responsibility and will learn a lot. I have seen that a lot on my mission. for example in the branch here when we had 14 of our members deported all of a sudden we were lacking in a lot of our leadership. Well a handful of the members who had been only slightly active and hadn't been so useful all of a sudden really rose to the challenge and accepted all the extra responsibility and I think they are a lot better people because of it. Occasionally people learn best when they are just thrown into a situation where their is a lot expected of them. Hopefully Everything works out for Josh and Whitney.

We have some good investigators that will hopefully be baptized this next week. teaching has been interesting. Elder Packard still hasn't quite got the hang of using a translator to teach and uses vocabulary or sentence structures that they don't understand. It is funny to see the translators ask him over and over what he is trying to say. He will get it down eventually, just needs some practice. We have been teaching this really nice man named Atistded. He can't read, so that makes it tricky, but he is a very kind person and he wants to do good. It is always hard to teach people who can't read, they can' really do anything outside of our lessons. mostly we just have him pray and maybe assign a member to help him read. The Haitians are very humble and don't get offended when you do things like assign someone to help them read, they think it is great.

Hmm...what else happened this week. It seems now that so many of the things that happen each week have already happened so many previous times that they almost aren't even worth mentioning. This week pres. Hendricks is coming to visit with us. I will finally get to meet him! I am still yet to hear from him or anything, it is as if he doesn't exist yet haha. But that should be good, Elder Tanner and Elder Sizemore are coming with him and that will make it very excellent. 

Well overall things are going well. I am healthy and everything is good. I think I got pink eye last week, or something, but it is pretty much gone now, except for when I put in my contacts, then it comes back. Mission life is great, things are good. Happy Fathers day dad. good luck this week everyone with what ever it is you all are doing, I haven't quite figured out who is going where but either way have fun. I look forward to next week. If anyone does find a sheep that can dive please let me know and send a photo. I love you all!

-Elder B. Kent Talbert

Oh My!

Well another week gone by. Things went well, it was a good week. So it is great to hear from you all as always. I got the ensign you sent this week so that was great! it was also good to read the TT and see all of laura's senior picture thingys. 

To start off, earlier I saw an add for diving, which is a very popular sport here. Well it would have been not worth mentioning except for that on the add it had a warning saying that pregnant women should not go diving, alright that is good and all but then underneath it it said that they had not tested this with pregnant women because of the danger with it but instead they had tested it on pregnant sheep and had found problems with the new born sheep after there mother had gone diving. Ok so my big question, that I haven't found the answer to, is how did they get the sheep to go diving? That would have been an interesting study to have been a part of, I can't imagine a sheep managing to figure out how to use those regulators that allow you to breathe under water. They must have done something to simulate the effects of diving...maybe...I don't know. either way, diving sheep could be an effective way to take over the world, just haven't figured out how yet.

My new companion is Elder Packard. He is from Colorado. He seems like he will be a good missionary. I think he is excited to be serving here in the Turks and Caicos islands. He reminds me a lot of Josh Talbert, very similar personality. yup...ugh.... not really sure what else to say about my companion. He is here, he seems good.

This weekend the Ockeys came and as usual took us out to dinner. Well lately I have become a big experimenter in the food department, I will eat just about anything these days...except pickles, still don't like pickles. Anyways, this time I had for and appetizer calamari, conch and shrimp with a good tempura batter. It was quite good. I was surprised, I was expecting something a bit more fish like. Pres. Ockey has also managed to get me to order raw tuna, which also turned out to be quite good. It was good to have the ockeys around, as normal. they take us out to eat for a few days in a row and so I get a good chance every time they come to experiment with various foods that I normally wouldn't spend my own money on.

Yesterday was branch conference. It went over well. They had a ton of business to go over. My favorite part was the standard sustaining of church officers. The man doing it, brother fen, kept saying things wrong. after he would ask for the sustaining he would then say "any exposed, please make it manifest by the raising of the left hand" I had a good chuckle every time he said exposed. 

We had 2 more baptisms this week, Fritz and Jean. They are these 2 referrals from a few members, excellent people. Fritz is a weird man, he is quiet but occasionally he will just start doing the craziest things. anyways they are doing great now and are excited to be members of the church.

On Saturdays we clean the church as a service project and a lot of members come and help. Well this week one of the members was cleaning the windows and we found that he had gotten confused and was using bug spray as his windex. haha it was funny, he then proceeded to put windex into a standard soap bottle that doesn't spray at all. It is funny to watch all the haitians, many of them are not used to many of the things that we do, they have grown up in such poverty that even things like the difference between bug spray and windex is unknown, they have never seen either. 

Okay, I am attaching a handful of pictures, the first two are just pictures with me and elder brough and me and elder packard.

 Then I have included two random pictures. One is of Pres. Otin, our branch president, he is from Argentina and is a funny man.

 the second is of Aprieve holding clyde-li. Aprieve is just this big guy who is a lot of fun to talk to and clyde-li is our branch clerks new baby who came to volleyball. Aprieve hurt his foot and so he sat out and just watch the baby, it made for a good laugh.

Hmmm...What else happened this week. Still raining a ton. Everyone seems to expect at least one hurricane this year. They said 2 years ago it rained like this endlessly and they got 2 hurricanes. That would be cool to get a hurricane, won't ever see one in utah. 

This week should be good, not much is going on, we are working on building up our investigator pool once more so that is good. ugh...well I am short on time, I just realized that! never seem to have enough time, oh well.

Enjoy summer vacation, things are going well here. I am doing great! enjoy your new laptop laura! Keep reading your scriptures every morning! I love you all and look forward to next weeks emails!

Love

Elder B. Kent Talbert