Partying and Homesickness May 14, 2017

What up Fam! And friends! 

First off Happy Mother's Day to my beautiful, loving momma!! Hope you have an awesome day. I really realize how much you do for me when I am out here on my mission. I wish I could FT you today but the outer island isnt nice enough to have that luxary. We will have to wait until I come off this island. So probably sometime in August. Sorry. But that just makes the call that much more valuable. I wish I could give you a big hug right now. I've been pretty homesick lately. The other night I was singing the nursery rhymes that you would sing to me. Also I miss your cooking a lot, like a ton. I have been thinking of home way too much lately, but I think its because I am so frustrated with learning Kiribati. 

So these past 2 weeks have been a lot. Sorry I didn’t email last week, I couldn’t because of a party, I’ll explain later.

So, last week was basically me just being homesick and remembering how much I hate learning a new language hahaha. I always wanted to learn Kiribati but I forget how hard it is to learn a language hahah. Sometimes in my prayera I’m just like come on Lord, why you gotta humble me so much hahaha, the Lord knows I have been too prideful my whole life haha. I decided to fast one day for peace comfort and the gift of tongues and that very night I taught my first lesson in Kiribati and.just felt the Savior's love for me. 

This week we had a week long party for our village, Toora. It started on Friday the 5th and ended on Thursday the 11th haha. The party was for the anniversary of the village. Everyday there is a breakfast lunch and djnner at the Manieba which is the town gathering building (by building I mean a roof that is really tall and hangs down and has no walls) everyone in the village has to bring food or else they get fined by the village committee. And the only people that get to eat are the old men of the village and special guests (so us missionaries) 

Usually during the lunch or dinner part, someone will give a speech and then there is music and people ask us to dance, or there is singing, or games. It was soooooo fun! I loved dancing, especially when the old ladies would ask me because then we would get some crazy dance moves in.  The actual big day was on the 9th and it was so fun! Also a lot of cultural dancing, like classic girls in grass skirts moving their hips like a missionary should never see hahahahhah. It was soooo cool. Ya, so basically no work happened because if we weren’t at the party all week we got fined money and it would be very disrespectful. Also, it’s very respectful to gjve a speech if you are a guest so you bet your bottom dollar (I think that’s the saying) that I got up and gave a speech in Kiribati in front of the whole village at the biggest party of the year for the village. Dang the Gift of Tongues is real. Also, they always asked us to bless the food, so I also said a lot of prayers in front of them too. Also at church I have given a talk every week which sometimes is frustratimg but helps my language a lot. 

So now I’ll tell about Kiribati a little and its culture. 

They love to make jokes, like all the time. Also everyone goes shoeless and wear what we call Bae's or in Samoa, lava lava's the like skirt thing. Most guys wear those and no underwear and no shirt. Also, everyone here has motorcycles (we borrowed one for fast Sunday and I drove with my comp on the back, so muxh fun). There is only about 5 trucks here, like trucks to carry cargo stuff. 

Majority of houses are built up about 3 feet off the ground, have no walls and are made of the wood you can get from the trees here and this rope they roll themselves from coconut husks.

Food: rice, fish, a lot of octopus and other random canned foods like spam. Drinks boiled water with sugar, actually really good but they put a ton of sugar. They never drink just water.

Work: they sell the insides of coconuts for companies to make oil. 

Kiribati islands are a lot wider than Marshalls and it rains more in Marshalls. The lagoon side is a lot shallower here in Kiribati than in Marshall. I could walk for hours and it not get deep.

Our island is really long. Sometimes we are riding for an hour and a half on our bikes home in the moonlight, it’s kind of dope, but tiring. 

We have a little solar panel that charges little hand held lights and we can charge our caneras on it, thats what everyone else has and if they are rich they have a generator that they use very few times. Usually just for parties. Um the rats havent bitten me yet haha, but they get into everything. Food; if you dont put it in a plastic container. Also, they chewed into my eye drop bottle. Rats are respected like people here. They say that if you kill one, all the rats will come and bite you and destroy your stuff haha and people like feed them, its crazy!

There are chikens and pigs, but they are owned by people. But there are a lot of pretty birds and I saw a sea turtle the other day which was really cool. Also, I eat a lot of octopus. But besides rats and like lizards, nothing else

Reason for parties: birthdays, first birthdays, when a girl has her first period, when a girl has sex for the first time, village reunions, when someone moves into the village, and just other holidays.

I will tell more later.

Love you all! Please pray for me!

Much love,

Elder Tingey

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Elder Tingey