March 4, 2013

dear family,

so i have been on exchanges for 6 1/2 of the last 7 days of this week. to be completely honest, it has been kind of rough. but, it has been a really good experience at the same time to see the other areas and who they're working with.

so we baptized little melma skilling on sat., and i was privileged to confirm her yesterday. We actually saw a lot of miracles yesterday with 4 investigators showing up at church. this has never happened since i have been here. thank you for your prayers.

the family we are working with are still doing really well, but there is just a couple of hangups with the father. he is trying really hard to overcome everything and get ready, and we are working with them to get ready for either this friday or sunday (we have a district conference this coming weekend and the baptismal font wont be available on sat. evening. we could talk to them about getting baptized in the ocean though...)

i am really happy to hear that andy is now cast-less and hope that he can straighten out his arm.

something that i am trying really hard to do right now is be exactly obedient. and it is harder than i thought it would be. for example, when i was in utwe area, i would ride for a little without my hands; it was just for fun and to rest my hands a little bit. then i was told that technically, according to the safety video, we have to always have our hands on the handlebars. there are a lot of little things like this that i didn't even realize there was a rule for that i have been trying to learn. trying to obey these rules has helped me understand that every rule is meant to help us and help the work. as soon as we start rationalizing away the little rules, we lose the spirit of obedience and miss out on all the blessings and protection that comes from obedience.

so i have been getting little notes about where everyone is going and it sounds like a bunch of people are going to hong kong? that sounds exciting:)

there is a 16 year old priest who joins us frequently to go teaching, and i finally found out why it is so hard for me to understand his kosraean: he stutters. i couldn't for the life of me figure out what he was saying until just recently my comprehension has shot up and i picked it out. i thought i was just terrible at kosraean and couldn't understand people. now im just terrible at kosraean;)

dad: i heard a little quote from mark twain the other day that made me chuckle: "when i was 14, my father was so ignorant that i could hardly stand to be in the same house as him. when i turned 21, i was amazed at how much he had learned in 7 years." i never really thought you were ignorant, but i am realizing just how much you really do know.

i am safe. i am happy. i am blessed. kosrae is a paradise where the people are humble and faithful. i am so grateful for their faith. i have witnessed miracles worked by the priesthood and faith, and i know that the scripture in the Book of Mormon about miracles and faith (Mormon 9) is true because of my experiences here.

we are extremely excited here on our island for kosraean pamphlets. we found out last week that they had finally been translated and that they had been sent to us. we were all super excited until they also told us that they had been shipped by boat so the mission office could find out how long it takes to send stuff by boat. that was disappointing, but we should be getting them soon. also, the kosraean Book of Mormon should be translated by the end of this year. i really hope i will still be here to use it. we are seeing incredible progress here.

you may have noticed that i've stopped being super specific with miracles that are happening. this is not because they have stopped occurring, but because i don't want them to become less special. know that i am recording them carefully in my journal and will always be ready to share some of them in person. i do want you all to know that they are happening and i am amazed by the faith of the people and the goodness of God.

i know that i don't really talk about the teaching we are doing, but it is really hard for me to write about our lessons because i don't feel like i can do them justice. it is hard for me to describe what a good lesson really is like, and i dislike them to sound commonplace. i think that i am really just justifying why i dont write about them.

i love you all very very much and hope that you are all very safe and very happy. i am finding that happiness is not a situation, but a necessary choice in life. i love my time here in kosrae, and have been discovering God's gift to me of the ability to choose.

love,
Elder Gerber

ps. elder conejero just got back from guam and brought us all mcdonalds. i think i will always have a special place in my heart for mcdonalds for the rest of my life;)