Ula? Ul-no!‏

Hey, sorry for not emailing last week.  I kind of feel bad for that because I just promised that I should be emailing every week.  This time, I have a pretty strong excuse: my first cyclone came last Sunday, the day before my pday, and knocked over the internet tower.  It's fixed now, and I should be able to keep my promise now (excluding any more problems like a cyclone).  But.. other than the tower, the cyclone didn't do anything.  There was a lot of wind and rain, but that was about it.  It was really boring, actually. 

Work has been great.  My 'new' area had missionaries before Cyclone Pam, who got pulled out when the storm came.  But the investigators kept coming to church, and new investigators started going as well.  The members really do all the work for us.  All we have to do is let ourselves get dragged around from one lesson to the next, teaching investigators that also are almost dragged to the meeting, at least, the times they're not beating the members there!  We already have some baptismal dates set, I just need to figure out how to plan a service.

The mission house isn't ready yet, and we've been staying in a hut at a small resort owned by a member, although technically it's a bungalow, not a hut.  We didn't have to build it, and it's survived Cyclone Pam, so this last one wasn't a problem.

Elda Sevao can speak English, but his Bislama is coming much slower.  I honestly have already learned the language here very well.  I'll probably still be learning it for my entire mission, but it's fairly easy now.

The mat is a mat, used for sitting on...  It's great to see that it arrived!  It's annoying that it takes a month for me to send packages, but it should only take you two weeks to send packages to me.

The food has settled into Milo and breakfast crackers for breakfast, then canned tuna mixed into white rice topped with Vanuatu's equivalent of raman noodles for lunch and dinner.  I budget well enough to buy other things, but that is all Tanna has besides snack foods...  sometimes we get cumala, but that's even less appealing.  I haven't eaten anything really strange since the dog.

Elda Van