March 11, 2013

I know what the fruit of the tree of life isn't...

Coconuts. But more on that later.

Hello beautiful people.

This week has been all sorts of interesting. Probably the most unusual part was the fact that I took a bunch of pictures. Which I would love to share with you, except I forgot my camera cord (sorry mom!). But hey, you should definitely maybe get some next time. Until then, I'll try describing the pictures I wanted to send, and you can use the powers of your imagination to fill in the blanks.

But as for this week-Monday and Tuesday were filled with good-byes for Elder Larsen. For his last p-day, he wanted to go down to a beach on the south end of the island called Diament, where they have a little memorial of a bunch of statues [picture of a bunch of statues] and a big rock out in the middle of the ocean [picture of me with Elder Larsen both looking dashing, and a big rock behind us in the middle of the ocean]. That night for FHE we went to the house of the relief society president with his family, where I got to drink coconut water for the first time. If you don't mind your water looking like backwash, it's really not too bad! Then, Tuesday, for his last day in the field, we did a split with the trinité elders so that I could go see some people we had planned rendez-vous with, and he could go say good-bye to some other investigators. We ended the night by having a house meeting with the branch president's part-member family. I'll have to tell you about la famille Occolier at some point, because they are crazy. But yeah, Elder Larsen gave away some ties (he had 30 by the time he left) and took some pictures [picture of a bunch of black people and two white missionaries. Quoi de neuf. What else is new?] and then turned in for the last time in Martinique. Wednesday we took him to the Airport at 8am, met his family, checked him in, and then said goodbye [picture of me and two other missionaries huddled around elder Larsen, who is wearing a suit for the second time in his mission]. He should actually be in Guadeloupe right now with his family.

Then we started the part of the week where as a group of three, we got to cover all of Martinique. Oh, and just to make things more fun, the Bennions (our senior missionary couple) came into town for a few days this past week, during which they wanted to check the state of our appartments. So we spent a good chunk of time getting ready for that, because apparently last time was a scarring experience for all parties involved. Oh, and for informational purposes, there is exactly one island in my mission which does not have a senior couple living on it-you guessed it, it's Martinique! So we only have them on site when they fly in, which really isn't that often. In fact, if something goes wrong, our emergency contact in Martinique is the district leader. Which, for the past six weeks, wasn't going to be a whole lot of help for me...But in any case, we continued cleaning and driving and teaching until Friday, when several things happened. First, I got my transfer call, which I will discuss in a second. But after that the Bennions arrived and checked the apartment in Trinité, which passed with flying colors. Then Elder Hansen said good-bye to some more people in the area, because we knew that after that we would be spending a lot of time in FdeF. Saturday, it was my apartment's turn to get inspected, and...it also went off without a hitch! I also learned how to take care of the "petty cash", which is the name of the funds used to pay for apartment maintenance and other odd-job expenses. Then, this morning, I had my first full-ride experience with coconuts.

Why are coconuts not the fruit of the tree of life? Because Lehi never would have gotten to it. For one thing, it's fourty feet in the air, and your sole means of getting it a little closer is by taking a fourty foot pole and whacking them until they fall. Which is not as simple as cartoons would have you believe. Then, once Lehi's gotten one of these elusive fruits, he will realize that it's impossible to get inside one, because he left his machete at the other end of the iron rod. But just for argument's sake, let's say he manages to get inside the thing. He'll find a good amount of the backwash water, but very little actual fruit. What he does find will be defined by its exceeding blandness and rubberyness.

So yeah. We started the day by going to the home of the Laquembé family-they are 73 and 70 years old, and have each been members for at least fourty years. For those of you who aren't fresh on history, that means that they were each baptized years before Spencer W. Kimball's 1978 declaration. But yeah, they've got a whole tropical garden growing in their back yard. One experience from this morning was especially touching-we had been out there with the big Coco tree, and the fourty-foot stick wasn't working too very well. So Soeur Laquembé whips out a machete and starts going at her coconut tree! We told her to stop, that we would get the coconuts down eventually without her having to kill her very old tree. Her response? "It's okay, the missionaries need coconuts!" A couple thoughts on that, which I will mostly save for later. But oh, I wish I had gotten a picture of this seventy-year old woman swinging a machete. I mean, that is just awsome.

But as for my transfer call...I am indeed going to be staying here in Fort-de-France. Back to being on foot and taking busses after this upcoming Wednesday. My next companion will be Elder Shepherd, from somewhere in Washington, though I forget where. He is coming straight from finishing training Elder Russell, who I knew in the MTC. And he will be the new District Leader, which means that I again will be with my emergency contact 24/7. But I got to meet him for a little bit during zone conference, and I'm excited to work with him now.

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT: This one is a little less scripture-based than usual. But I just want to share with you my testimony of the importance of gratitude. For the record, as a missionary, I have a lot of things to be grateful for, and I probably don't even realize what some of those are, let alone the ones that I know but am not as grateful for as I should be. Yes, there are people that will either mock me or hate me because of the tag that I wear, but on the other hand, there are people here who won't bat an eye at cutting down the coconut tree that they planted however many years ago and have watched grow for so long, just so three goofball kids can have some coconuts. I mean, one of them isn't even going to like coconuts! But he should probably learn to be more grateful in general. I have to say that the members here really are a special group. I think often of the story of Abish, the lamanite woman who held firm to her testimony through years of being in a place where no one lived the gospel. I hope we can all have that sort of faith-the type of faith that can survive and thrive on its own, when everything else around it is trying to tear it down.

THE LITTLE THINGS: This week, I am grateful for french bread. Or, as people here call it, bread. Well, technically they use the french word for bread. Which reminds me...

QUOTE OF THE (sort of) WEEK: "What is pain?" "French bread!" -apparently from "remember the titans", although I didn't know it until Elder Larsen told me about it. Also, if you don't know any french, just take my word for it that that's really funny stuff. (French word for bread= pain, pronounced "pa", a as in apple, but a nasal sound.

And that's all the time I got. One request for the week-if you feel inclined to mail me something, would you include a picture? I realized when I got down here that I don't really have any. I love you all very much! And congratulations to Nicole and Travis on the birth of the newest member of my family, Mason! Uncle Malu loves you!

-Elder Santos