TSUNAMI ! ... well, not really

(Here's Elder Winget on a recent windy day)
Well, speaking of TSUNAMI-- that's about all the excitement from this week... Or rather, not exciting at all. We were chilling in our apartment on thursday morning when we got a call from the Zone leaders and they're like Hey there was a Tsunami in Vanuatu this morning and New Caledonia has a Tsunami warning so don't go close to the beach. And we were like so if we were planning on doing "service" at the beach, we shouldn't do it? They said yeah don't do that. Thursdays we're supposed to do service for people and no one ever wants us to do service for them so we have to make something up. Sometimes we pick up garbage and a few times we helped someone move or paint or whatever.. This time we just thought about going to pick up garbage on the beach. So we're like well, what now? Then about 10 minutes later the Zone Leaders called and said that president said to evacuate everyone to higher grounds as a precaution and that they were picking us up in 5 minutes. So we were like hmm, maybe there is something? So we went up on this big hill to this property the church owns- for when there is finally a stake here they'll build a stake center.. And at 11:15 there was supposed to be an earthquake again. Since Vanuatu is really close and there was actually an 8 magnitude smoething there i was thinking, well, maybe something will actually happen for once. Whenever pres and the ZLS freak out it always means nothing at all will happen. So we waited.. and waited... and nothing ahppened. it didn't even rain. I was like come on, just a Little wave even... There are no waves here since the entire island is a lagoon- so the water is always really calm. No waves, no earthquake, no nothing. so we went back home. And then it turns out Vanuatu didn't even get hit by a tsunami, they were just on tsunami warning... there was a 8 mag tremblement de terre ( earthquake) in the ocean though. Hmm, watev.

Conference was great! For once there were no problems with the transmission thing so we got to watch all the sessions. We had some amis there and they liked it. I was happy. The most intense talk would have to be Elder Holland's talk about the Book of Mormon. I really enjoyed it. We all said they should have just ended the conference right there- it's anticlimactic to do anything else.. :) Anyway, it was great. I also liked when President Uchdorf talked about mormons being known for streams that talk, and trees that produce popcorn. We had a huge laugh about that.

Other than that, not much happened. We did a small family home evening thing and invited Soane and Vaea who weren't able to come- but we did a small lesson and ate anyway at a family's house in our branch. The wife is from Vanuatu and speaks english and the husband is from here, and did his mission in Vanuatu. They have unidentical twin boy and girl that are absolutely adorable. In Vanuatu they have a ridiculous language called Bislama. Look it up- it's really interesting. It's basically like putting English in a blender.. We meet lots of people from Vanuatu here- it's close and they speak french over there.. kind of. Anyway, so the little kids think that missionaries are all named "shakehands" because their mom always says shake hands to them when they see the Elders. So they called me Hey! Shakehands! And I'm like what!? What's my name? Shakehands! Ha ha!!! It was adorable and hillarious. I'll have to get a video of them.. I'll try anyway.

Well other than that nothing much happened. That's the scoop. Hey I might ask you next week to make me some CDS from conference- so you could send me them in the next package. But I want them in a special way so I'll show you with the computer controller thing next week or something. I wanted something else in a package.. But I don't remember now. Blah. Don't worry too much about me getting a package by halloween-- I'm not super concerned about it.

Good luck with the primary program-- as long as the kids are singing I dont' think anyone can complain about it. And if they do you can tell them to take their kids to the other primary in the ward... ;)

Thanks a million! I love you!

Love,
elder winget