No skype but some emails back and forth

Well, we were all skeptical that the Skype plan would work with Daniel. We were supposed to be on with Jacob and Katie this morning and he was supposed to get on and join us. Daniel tried with his smart phone at the hotel where they live, and then they went to Tabwakea, which is another little village, to try at the home of a member. None of it worked. I'm sure it was pretty frustrating to him. But we enjoyed emailing back and forth with him (while also taking care of our church responsibilities since his emailing fell during our last hour of church--let's just say my class of six-year olds was not as reverent as usual due to a distracted teacher!) I thought you would enjoy reading some of the emails that we exchanged. Italics are us, regular type is Daniel's responses. This is all pieced together between his emails with me and with Rich. 

hey sorry...skype's not working as of yet. Don't even know if it will or what, I'm late cause we came down to Tabwakea to try it and nothing so far....

Okay, keep me updated. Should we go home? 

No if we get to skype I doubt it will be today......

Where are you? 

We're at the only internet cafe that works in Tabwakea...Ya it's not what I would have liked to happen for sure. Everyone else seems fine with it though

How are you?  

I'm good. Elder Buhler and Sister Vailea came in on Wednesday and brought a few letters and my Easter package with them. Thank you so much for that by the way. You're the best. Most of the letters were from feb and some of march.  

How was your week? 

Week was good. watched Meet the Mormons with the branch last night. had to translate the whole thing so that was fun. We're starting work to build a chapel/a big thatched shade structure. Went pretty fast like normal.

You said you guys had a baptismal goal as a district for 20 baptisms this month? How's that going?  

Uhm the baptismal goal is not going as great as it was supposed to...basically right now we are all going through some rough patches (especially us). It's actually exactly just that rough, but it's good for us all to get some humble pie right?

How are you feeling that you'll be out a year here in less than a month? I can't believe that Jacob will be home so soon (in one month). What do you feel are the things that you've learned the most? Any goals for the next year? 

Can't believe Jacob will be coming home soon. It seems weird I'll be the only missionary.  Well as much as I love being out here it's really tiring and I think I'm feeling it more especially today. But it's cool, went by wayy fast. Haven't thought about goals yet. Lessons? Probably integrity. not like lying and cheating and stuff. More like an internal just owning up to my work and not complaining. spoken or unspoken. Hard but it's important and easier to feel the spirit all the time if you do.

Rich shared the following story that happened this weekend: So we had our father and sons outing this last weekend. We've been wanting to catch a lizard and feed it to the snake but haven't been able to get one. We kind of gave up because the snake was hungry so on Tuesday we fed it 3 baby mice.

On the camp out the kids caught a lizard, so they immediately wanted to feed it to the snake. It was a pretty good sized blue belly lizard. We brought it home and dropped it in the cage. The snake seemed interested and the lizard very nervous, but nothing much more than that. I figured he probably wasn't very hungry since he had just eaten. Well the lizard ended up running over the snake and so Zeb attacked him, squeezed him to death, and then ate him. It was really cool. 

Daniel's response: Catch lizards all the time here, we were doing service taking out some

coconut tree stumps to build a new chapel out here and turns out there were a bunch of camoflauged geckos living on some of the stumps so we we took a few of them out with the hatchet and I managed to catch one. Which also taught me that they were the biting kind although it didn't hurt it shocked me enough to give it a quick axeing. It was pretty cool. Plenty of crabs and geckos too. None of the ones you want though. No snakes out here either. They are supposed to have pretty cool birds too. we'll see if one of these pdays we can go down to the place they are at.

It seems we saw a  reference to eating some blowfish which are poisonous but from which the person was going to remove the poison. You're still alive so I'm guessing it didn't kill you ;-)

They didn't end up getting it. next time...

So the reality is that we ended up getting more from him than usual. I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful that, unlike at Christmas, he was at least able to email with us. I miss him today and will be praying for extra miracles and blessings in his work to boost him up this week.