Letter from Elder Meyer: Language, Culture, Great Success

Hello everyone,

Canoe Festival

Canoe Festival

Dad

Question #1: Can you share more details about how the language is coming along?  What have you found as the best way to learn it?

Answer: It is coming slowly. Most of the time, when I speak Yapese, people just laugh because I say things funny. Sometimes it is a bigger distraction. But I am going to keep trying to learn. The best thing that is helped so far is reading from the Book of Mormon. A lady in the local branch –small congregation-- used to teach Yapese to the missionaries. She is now teaching us.

We learned the Yapese alphabet. 47 letters in it and 16 of them are vowels.

Question #2: Now that you are in Colonia, are you still walking thru mostly jungle area? Do people live a bit closer together, or still in remote villages?

Answer: It is some of both. There are a lot more people that are closer together, but the whole south of the island is very remote villages.

Fishing Booth Game

Seminary Event



Question #3: Do you get to run into island visitors now that you’re in Colonia?  Do you get to speak with them?

Answer:  I have ran into one tourist couple. They didn't want to talk at all about religion. He knew a lot about Mormons though. We just talked for a little while. He told us to go scuba diving. We told him we can't. That was about it.

Question #4: Do you ever get to hear what is going on in the world?

Answer: The most I hear is a little bit from Elder Garrett on politics, and the five top stories on yahoo’s main page when I email on Mondays.

Question #5: So far, what do you most appreciate about the Yapese culture?

Answer: Just how nice most everyone is. It is really great to just be around such nice people. There are occasionally some mean people who hate us, but most of the time it is fine. It is nothing like the States in that regard.

Question #6: Has it proven helpful to be an Eagle Scout in any way?

Answer: Yeah, I guess. I mean it is just who I am, so I don't know what it would be like to not be an Eagle Scout. Basic heath and safety stuff that I learned has probably helped me.

Setting up Football Tos game

Question #7: How are you feeling, health wise and spiritually?

Answer: Health, pretty good. My stomach hurt a little bit this morning, but I am doing better. Spiritually - I think I might be on a spiritual high. Things are going so great here on Yap. Things are finally starting to move.

Mom

Question #8:  Do you celebrate Thanksgiving on Yap?

Answer: Nope, not really. If something happens, it is because of the missionaries.

Question #9:  What would like us to send?

Answer: You know the scripture strings. Elder Ramiterre would like one. He has the quad and the size like mine.

Question #10: Do you have a stock pile of stuff we have sent?

Answer: Yeah. I have a lot of the gold candy and jolly ranchers.

Question #11: What was the strangest thing that happened this week?

Answer: When our investigator, who is deaf, showed up at our apartment. We did our best to set up a time to go see him and then sent him off. It is very hard to teach him.

Question #12: Tell about a time when you felt the Spirit teaching.

Answer: When we are teaching C*rm*n. We just pretty much just share new information about the gospel and share a brief testimony about it. Then A*g*stine (husband) jumps in and starts testifying of it. It is so nice to hear his testimony about the gospel.

Question #13: Do you know about calling home at Christmas yet?

Answer: I know nothing about that. As far as I know, I will call you some day and give you a number to call me back and a time to call. That is about all I know.

Staheli

So how is my car? ha ha. Just joking. How are you doing? Did you think of a color of lava lava you wanted?

Reed

Why did you go and hit your head again. Come on man, you got to stop doing that. I am glad that it is not as bad as last time, but you need to get better.

Everyone

Well this week has been pretty good. I think that we are going to have 5 people baptized in our area and one in the other. It should be awesome.

This week we found an awesome investigator. His wife is a member and is not very involved in church right now. They randomly showed up to church when we were watching conference last week. It took a while to find them –no addresses in the jungle--, but we did. He is great. His name is D**fan. He has been taught before. We asked him to stop chewing beatle-nut, the first visit we had. He said that he would only chew five the next day… Which is a big cut for him.

Elder Nelson went to Guam for a Zone leader meeting so I have been up in the other area from Sunday to Wednesday.

Let’s see. S*nty is a little 10 year old girl who is being baptized on Saturday. She is so cool. She is smart and she is just amazing. Little kids are my favorite to teach. The just accept what we say and pray about it. There are hardly ever any complications.

This week a bunch of people went to the temple for the first time. So the branches were small. There were, I think, about 17 or 18 people that went. Most of them were all in leadership positions. I am very excited for them.

Love you all so so much

Elder Meyer

Bug in apartment