First Full Week on Abaiang!

*We got a short email from Dallin on the 28th.  There was no internet on his P-day, so they stopped by the cafe to send short messages home the next day to let us know all was well.  I left for YW camp a few hours later and didn't have time to get this posted.

Hi mom dad Taylor and cami!

We had a busy week here in Abaiang. First full week, and we finally worked all three of our areas. Very tiring, lots and lots of biking. Some days, we bike for more hours than we teach, so that's kindof frustrating, but when we do teach lessons they go well. 

We're essentially starting from scratch out here. The Sisters who worked here before us left us 1 investigator, out of 3 whole areas. I'm trying not to be bitter. As a result, we have done a lot of finding, mostly tracting. It's going well; it's just slow. We have found some really good families though, and we're excited to see where we can take this place. 

I'm still adjusting to outer island life. Everything is hot and inconvenient, but that doesn't mean it's bad I guess. I'm clearly getting a lot of time to adjust my attitude. The hardest part is sleeping at night. We have solar power during the day, so when the sun is up, we can run our fan no problem, and the house is bearable. But at night, we just have the charge off a car battery that the solar charges up. So we have to spend our solar wisely, on lights and water pump and the fan. So if we save all the power for the fan, it dies around 4 in the morning, so we're cool enough until it actually cools down, so we survive the night. But if we turn in the lights or the pump on for a minute, the fan dies at like 11, so then we just sweat alllllll night long. It is SO hot. So that's tough. It's so gross too. I miss reliable electricity! 

I feel like I'm learning a lot out here, especially about how to teach effectively. It's mostly me teachig lessons right now, since Elder Pulufana is still learning the language. It's weird for me to not have anyone to count on to help me if I get lost, so I have to be super precise and my lessons are improving as a result. I am grateful for the things I'm learning, and I hope I can continue to learn what I need to learn!  

I'm exhausted, and I'm sorry this email is short! It's hard to type on this iPod, but it's better than nothing. I love you all! Thank you for the support and prayers. 

Talk to you all next week!

Love Dal