Well another week has passed by. It was good. Sounds as if the trek thingy was entertaining. happy fathers day dad. Umm....where to begin. I mentioned last week that I thought I had pink eye or some similar eye infection. I had stopped wearing my contacts and was just wearing my glasses until it looked healed. Well on Thursday my eyes were looking healed and normal so I decided I was going to wear contacts again. I was a bit curious if my contacts that I had been wearing were infected, I thought they were, but I decided to experiment just for fun. I put in my contacts, and everything was fine. 6 hours later, in the middle of Pres. Hendricks instruction my eyes started watering like mad and stayed that way for the rest of the day. I looked in the mirrors and it looked quite vampiric, in only a few hours my eyes had turned very very blood shot, it was pretty cool looking. Well by dinner my contacts were killing me so I just removed them and threw them away and spent the rest of the day blind. now I am back to wearing my glasses until my eyes heal again, but at least I now know that my hypothesis was correct about the infection on my contacts. So that was a fun little experiment this week.
Pres. Hendricks came and visited, along with the assistants (Tanner and Sizemore) and his wife. It was a great visit. He is different than Pres. Graff, except for the fact that he is also from Texas, and he is different than Pres. Gingery. Pres. Hendricks worked as an FBI agent and has some cool stories. He knows a ridiculous amount of stuff about the scriptures, his instruction was very enlightening, he also appears to like poetry, he quoted a lot of poems that he had memorized. He is a very relaxed man who seems like he will be an excellent mission president. It seems like every mission president I have had so far I have had for a reason, and I figure it will be the same with pres. Hendricks. Well they came on thrusday afternoon. We ate lunch and then had a little conference like thingy, and then they went off with the Herberts and we went with the assistants. Eventually we ended with dinner at the Tiki Hut restaurant. I had this really good chicken thingy. It was Shrimp covered in coconut curry followed by a layer of chicken around the shrimp, followed by a really good creamy sauce. It was delicious. E. Tanner thought it sounded good and after I looked at it I thought it sounded good and then E. Sizemore figured that it sounded good so all 3 of us got it, thankfully it was good and we didn't all have lousy dinners. Overall a very good visit. Pres. Hendricks discussed with us all about the duty of the tribe of Ephraim and missionary work. It was excellent.
I have been working on understanding creole a lot this week. I am getting good at it. I am still a failure at speaking it but I can read it and understand 90-95% and when others speak I understand anywhere from 50%-70% depending on how well the pronounce the words and how fast they get speaking. It is a fairly easy language, possibly one of the easiest to learn. hopefully I will be able to at least understand the people even if I can't communicate back to them.
Yesterday night when we were getting ready to ride our bikes home my companions bike fell apart. The bearings in the rear wheel broke and so the wheel doesn't turn properly so we walked home. took us about an hour to get all the way home, not the greatest walk, but it was at least cool at night time. I am not really sure what we are going to do now though. With no spare bike parts, and no bike shop on the island, we are sort of in a sticky situation. perhaps duct tape can fix it.......
Volleyball friday night was fun, we get a huge turnout. well my eyes were ultra sensitive to light on friday after my experiment from thursday so I had a real hard time playing. after a short time I quit and went over to a park table where the Chalas family children were sitting. So I just hung out with the kids and did magic tricks for them and did boondogle. It was a lot of fun, the Chalas family is one of my favorite families that I have met on my mission. Volleyball is good. It brings out a lot of the members and a lot of nonmembers, we get anywhere from 30-40 people a week.
Well there is this lady named Nancy that we have been teaching. She is Haitian. We met with her once when she just walked in on a lesson we were having with some guy. We gave her a pamphlet and told her we would return the next day. Well the next day came and I asked her how her reading was and she started telling us and she just kept going on and on and on in creole, my companion looked a bit lost, but thankfully I was catching most of it. I was amazed at how much she knew and I started to wonder if she had met missionaries previously. I asked and it turns out she had met many missionaries in Haiti and knew a lot about the church. I am now wondering if she is a member of the church already that just didn't know the church was here on the island. She knows an unusual amount about the church for being just an investigator, I need to bring a good translator with us next time and figure that out. It would be sort of funny to find out that we have been teaching a member all of last week. If she is not a member well hopefully she will be baptized.
Yesterday we had a baptism, it went over very well. We just did it right after church. I will attach a photo here of it.
I am also attaching a photo of just the man being baptized, Alistide.
Also a picture of pres hendricks and sister Hendricks. Every single picture of Pres. Hendricks he is on his phone, I don't think it is intentional, his phone just seemed to be always ringing.
Well that was the week. I am short on time so I need to finish this thing up here. Things are going very good here. I am healthy and well, my eyes are looking a lot better since thursday. Life on the Islands is good, it is getting hotter and hotter. thanks for all the emails, sounds as if things are good back home. Good luck with the garden mom, hope that works out haha. I love you all and look forward to next week!
Love
Elder B. Kent Talbert
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