Week 12 Island of Tanna December 22, 2013

Dear Friends and Family,

I'm in Lenakel and want to send a small email before christmas! Tomorrow is christmas eve here and we will be doing a small service project in the morning. We will be tending someone's lawn in Lenakel.  The senior couple came today and tomorrow afternoon a restaurant will be catering for both of the districts here and we will be having cake, ice cream, and many other great foods!  Christmas morning, we will be bringing everybody back to their mission flats.  But me and Elda Samuel will stay in Lenakel with Elda Jones and Elda Leva because Elda Samuel is finished with his mission.  The day after christmas we will take Elda Samuel to the airport and I will stay with Elda Jones and Leva.  Then I will wait for my family to call me!!!! I'm so excited!

This last week was slow but great!  I was able to fix the water on Thursday so we had running water.  How the water works here is their are pipes running down the mountain and water runs through them.  We have a water tank on a wooden tower. The pipe fills it up after it goes to the house. The tower helps because the gravity gives the water in the house pressure. I climbed on the tower and put a pipe on the top of it and it started to fill up! I've done it before but it never fills up.  That night I was able to have a nice shower! It was cold because we don't have a water heater but it was good!  The next day I was watching a church movie on our portable DVD player with one of the people here. Then all of a sudden we heard a big creaking sound and a huge thump which shook the whole house! We ran outside and the tower holding the tank broke and the tank was on the ground and all the water spilled out.  The tower was somewhat rotten and I think from that it wasn't able to bear all of that weight.  Nobody was hurt thank goodness but we made a good memory! I will send
 a picture. 

Saturday was an awesome day! We woke up at 5:00am and got dressed and walked all the way to Port Resolution.  We had 4 baptisms planned there but only 2 showed up. We baptized them in the ocean! I baptized one and Elda Samuel baptized one!  We then walked all the way back up to Saet Siwi.  Our branch had a small activity. Everyone had a friend and they were supposed to get a gift for each other. My friend was a 12 year old boy named Patrick and I gave him marbles and Lastic to make a sling shot.  He then gave me a chicken with manyoke. Another lady gave me a pineapple.  I was so happy and the chicken was so good. The pineapples here are awesome! I never liked pineapple until I came here.

After the activity, we went down to the river and baptized 7 people!  I baptized 2, Elda Samuel baptized 3, and the Branch President baptized 2. It was an awesome day!  Then Yesterday(Sunday), I confirmed 2 and Elda Samuel and the Branch President did the rest.  It was so cool. I could feel the spirit so strong!

The week turned out better than we thought. We baptized 9 people! Mi Glad Tu Mas!
Mi lovem yufala mo mi wantem lo wishim yufala Merry Christmas!

Love,
Elda Beynon

A relay race that we did as an activity

Teaching in Port Resolution

My second Baptism!

A cultural gathering we went to

The water doesn't work anymore :(

Baptism in Port Resolution

Baptism in Saet Siwi

Our Church House

Our house on Tanna Island

Our Bedroom Dec 2013