13 August 2012

Talofa! (thats "hello" in samoan)

elder weaver and i had a long long week of not teaching people. we moved in on tuesday. ALL day tuesday. but our apartment is sweet! and new. and clean. and the air conditioning works really really well! so its all good.
wednesday we met all the other missionaries in the zone and helped them with all sorts of different things that they needed. thursday we had a meeting with all the zone leaders. friday we finally got out to meet some of our ward! both of our wards are pretty small.

the samoan meetings are about half in english half in samoan. and there are another set of elders assigned to that ward, they are from the east side. yesterday we showed up to church and the other missionaries said "we are doing the program today! do you want to join us?" we said, "uhh sure." and so we went and sat in front of everyone. turns out, we volunteered to join a group of about 6 other people who we're singing in the meeting! woops. we sang one song in samoan (that was interesting. samoan is mostly vowels, so we just kinda faked it and did our best to follow the piano) and we sang a hymn in english. elder weaver was pretty nervous, that was the first time he'd ever done anything like that. i just felt uncomfortable because elder weaver and i were pretty much the smallest ones there and definitely the whitest! and they feed us soo much food! we dread going to dinners! there was one day this past week that combined elder weaver and i went to bed 13 pounds heavier than we woke up. luckily this week is white people dinners!

the family ward we are in is pretty small also and there is not very much missionary work going on in either one. but we'll change that. we're already seeing opportunities come our way.

im not sure i like this zone leader thing. its a lot of babysitting. baby sitting of 20 year old guys. lots of phone calls from people who need stuff. lots of being held accountable for things that other people do. but im sure we'll figure it out.

we're excited for Turkey Bowl already! we're trying to recruit all the good athletes to come to our zone (even though we have zero say who goes where lol) it should be fun! its very likely i'll be here until after christmas. so im kinda hunkering down and settling in. i sure hope it's not another short stay for me. it's a lot of work to learn a new area.

its still really hot here. and dry. and desert-y. my skin is having major problems with it. im running out of lotion lol.

and i hit my year mark this week! thats a little crazy!

oh yeah, and i'll tell you about my new comp:

elder weaver: tall kid from texas, youngest of 5 boys. likes football and basketball. is done with his mission in december. also just became a zone leader so we're figuring it out together. hes thinking about going to byu when he gets back. him an di a getting along great, he likes to goof around while getting work done. we'll be doing even better as soon as we learn these new wards.

thats all thats going on here. hopefully ohio is treating you all well. (or where ever y'all are). enjoy your last few days of summer!

-elder donovan