Alrighty. Now I'm settled down and not in such a rush. It looks like 
this website is actually not that slow. Perhaps it was just a huge 
amount of traffic (all those missionaries sending e-mails on 
Preparation Day), or something to do with either their server, or the 
computers here, but anyway, it's loading quick now.

In the way of sending me letters and such, just send them to the 
mission office. They will forward them to me, so you can be sure 
they'll always get to me.

Hooray, I have another nephew! I have two things to say: 1) 
Congradulations!, and 2) Finally! Now tell David and Betsy to start 
cracking so I have nieces and nephews to play with when I get home 
(since Dallas will probably be married by then...who am I going to do 
stuff with?). ;-)

Well, forget about the linguistics book, I can probably do an 
inter-library loan. President Seal offered to BUY a couple copies of 
the book (I don't think he realizes that they're like $400, and no 
one else is going to know what the heck a subjective present case 
is). I'm beginning to be able to read some of the Book of Mormon, but 
I can't really speak it, because I have no clue about the structure 
of the language. A good Marshallese dictionary would make for a nice 
Christmas present, though. Oh yeah, let me know who I have so I can 
hurry and send something out in time...which reminds me of another 
thing: Heather Faussett wanted my farewell talk. Go ahead and put it 
on the blog. The document should be somewhere in the My Documents 
folder, probably as "talk.doc."

People here speak with a bit of an accent, but it's not bad. I can 
understand them pretty well. They actually sound more like they're 
cowboys from Emery County.... Elder Morrill is from Roosevelt, Utah, 
and he actually doesn't use e-mail (and I can only write letters on 
Preparation Day). He's being kind of hard on me, but I need it.

Honestly, the first week I had bouts of discouragement, and wanted to 
go back to college, but I'm doing a lot better now, and am excited 
about the next two years. I haven't been feeling very hungry (until 
yesterday), and actually was feeling nauseated every time I ate, but 
I think I'm over it. My only concern is that I'm way out of shape, 
and have some difficulty getting up hills on my bike (this area's 
actually quite hilly). Gotta work those legs!

To describe the Marshallese language to you would require me to use 
linguistic terms you wouldn't quite understand. It's a bit like 
English in the way of word order (Subject-Verb-Object), but 
apparently the tense of the verb (and also certain moods like "can" 
and "should") are carried by the pronoun. For example, "Ij katak 
kajin Majol" is "I study Marshallese," and "Iaar katak kajin Majol" 
is "I studied Marshallese," with "i-" being the pronoun "I," and "-j" 
and "-aar" being the tenses (present and past, respectively).

We have a couple of current investigators. First is Glen Allen, who 
is trying to overcome a smoking addiction (he says he's cut down 
considerably) so that he can be baptized on the 16th of December. We 
also have the Turnipseeds, a young family that we really need to 
teach another lesson to so that we can commit them to be baptized 
(they seem pretty solid). We also have a girl named April, who's 
grandfather was a Baptist minister. We found her while knocking on 
doors, taught her the first lesson (on the Restoration), and left her 
with a Book of Mormon, and the commitment to read certain passages 
and to pray about it. She invited us over for Thanksgiving.(!)

In the way of a Christmas present, also, a CD of family members 
singing hymns and stuff would be great. Include Betsy and Cindy 
singing "Baptism," and why not have Betsy, Cindy, and Becky singing 
"Our Savior's Love."

Well, I need to look for a book on Marshallese grammar. See ya next week!
Brady