All,
This week has been great. In fact, The entire time I've been here on the island has been great. I have simply been loving life and everything in it.
Did you know that There are 3.5 million patriarchal blessings preserved in the Church History Library? If placed end to end, they would reach from Salt Lake City to Kansas City, Kansas.
I don't know about you, but that is information that I think is vitally important to our salvation. You can imagine the final question Saint Peter gives you: "How far would the Patriarchal blessings reach if placed end to end?" I jokes. But memorize the trivia anyway, just in case.
Work here has been great. Apparently, Mom says that I haven't been sharing enough details about the area/mission, so I'm going to have you close your eyes and picture this:
Open your eyes, actually. You can't read with your eyes closed...
There is an Island. It's covered in trees, and always raining, or at least misting. We're in the middle of a rain forest here.
Ravens and bald eagles are basically the dominant birds. Spend any time outside, and you'll see a couple deer, which are the size of large dogs, if not smaller.
People on the island are friendly, but set in their ways. most of our finding is tracting; not many people walk around, except on very sunny days. Our members are incredible, nice, and very strong together. We have about 80 members coming every week, except for the last months, where everyonewas out of town and we only had about 25 people coming, more than half of that being under the age of 10.
The island is too big, and too spread out, for us to really do any walking. We have to drive most places. We volunteer a lot around the island; at the Slum DI (power company), the Senior center, and anywhere else we're needed. Members call on us a lot to help them or their friends do work.
There are a lot of members who don't come to church on the island. Many of them are natives who have been caught up in the normal native lifestyle, which is very laidback. A lot of people are just simply out of the habit of coming to church. Many people come to the island because they are running from something and some are here because they've been offended elsewhere. Not a whole lot of people are receptive to formal looking men coming and knocking on their door. Apparently we resemble FBI or something.
Aidan, get off my computer unless you're burning my Classical CD I asked for for my birthday. You promised!
Anyway, There are only a few main churches that almost everyone goes to, if they go at all. There are also a lot of agnostics, who believe in God, but don't care to think about God at this time, thanks very much. There's the Church of God, which is a Pentecostal, a Catholic Church, a Baptist Church up in Thorn Bay which doesn't really care for Mormons, Us, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Salvation Army (what do they believe, anyway?) and some kind of non-denominational church up in Naukati. People don't really like the attitude of the JWs, and mistake us for them a lot, to our detriment. The baptists are really hardcore, and not a lot of the islanders care much for how harsh and strict they are.
I'm out of time, but I'll briefly mention that Elder Terry was sick almost all week, which culminated in us being inside most of the week, and all Saturday. Therefore, we don't really have a lot of mission things to relate to you...
To brief you, We got an opportunity to slaughter and butcher rabbits with one of our members, who breeds and eats them (Rabbits are DELICIOUS). The following picture is the end result. You'll notice it was on one of the most beautifully sunny days ever. Perfect for killing small, cute, furry, (NOT HARMLESS;My Arms were torn up from their kicking) woodland creatures. I have video; don't worry, I'll show you when I get back. The part where we hammer them on the head became my favorite; second is the part where we behead them completely.
Happy Fourth of July, by the way. And for founding fathers information critical to our beliefs, go read D&C 101:80, 1Nephi 13, and Alma 46.
Love from me, formerly having never killed a living animal, No,-I-don't-feel-bad-about-killing-those-rabbits-North,
Elder Darcey
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