Week 10 on Island of Eua

Hey Mom and Dad,

I had a really great week, President Tupou came to meet with us on our P-day. So my P-day this week is on Tuesday. The meeting with President and Sister Tupou was incredible. I never thought I could learn so much in such a short amount of time. President Tupou is very wise. He changed the entire way that I view conversations and how to teach in general not just for missionary work. The meeting was really really cool. He’s a great teacher, I learned so much from him today. I had two full pages of notes that I took throughout our meeting. In the middle of the meeting the Pakalani family brought us a feast. A crab the size of our area book, a bunch of chicken legs, chop Sui mo moa, kumala, watermelon, fish, this weird Polynesian strawberry looking fruit with a pineappleish hard outer shell you had to peel to eat (the inside was clear and mushy and tasted somewhat like a grapefruit), and pineapple. The meetings we had with the President were great. I felt really good afterward. Elder Erickson and I get to fly to the main Island for zone leader training. Its going to be great we will be fun to see all of the office elders again, plus we might go to a temple session afterwards.

Before our lesson the other night I was standing outside of the house with the coconut trees in the background, and I was thinking I’m really glad that I got called to Tonga. It’s crazy out here and a lot of things are really inconvenient and so on, but it’s really an awesome experience. Serving here has already taught me so much, and I love it when I sit down on the floor in someone’s house, look around at the curtain doors and woven mats, and think about how I got called to probably one of the poorest semi-developed countries that there is. I’m glad I got called to a place that’s been able to help me understand how blessed I’ve been my entire life and how grateful I should be.

I’m excited about being able to skype with you on Christmas Day. We've been scouting out member laptops for a while now so we'll be ready. I can’t give you a definite time though. It will be Christmas day for you guys. I’ll probably have an hour or an hour and a half to talk.

About your package you sent, the office elders said that they thought

they saw a package for me but President didn’t come with it yesterday

so I don’t have it yet. I’ll find out for sure next Wednesday when I fly into

Tonga.

 Dad, I really appreciated what you had to say about me making an impact on

people everywhere, and my influence while serving here. Thank you. I thought about you a lot this week. Specifically early Saturday mornings in the suburban or maxima on the way to baseball tournaments. I miss that, I miss those conversations. I’m glad we had all of those. Some of my favorite parts of playing baseball growing up was just talking to you in the car.

I love you lots and hope you guys all continue to do well.

Love, Tay

                      I had turtle for breakfast.

Bananas that grew outside our MQ. They are so good out here.

Sunsets