dear family:)
so the way we did questions and answers last week was wonderful. i sometimes feel bad when i send off my email and then realize that i didn't answer all of your questions.
this week has been really great. Likiaksa is doing extremely well. he has started coming with us a little bit to teach people, and he just gave a talk in church yesterday. he was supposed to receive the priesthood as well, but we forgot to have him sustained in sacrament meeting.
sister maiye is doing well; she is still reading her Book of Mormon, but she has yet to come to church. we are pretty sure it is because of her mother-in-law who lives with her. her name is sepe ma fohkfohk, which being interpreted, means sepe dirty or filthy things. she has a sister named sepe as well, and is sometimes called sepe kalmacn, or sepe repeat. i think this may have something to do with why she seems so unhappy all the time. anyway, she is very strong in the protestant church, and doesn't really like us coming over and teaching sister maiye. but, we have very high hopes for both of them.
i don't know if you remember the whole "what would jesus do?" saying that got pretty popular a few years ago, but i've adapted it a little bit: "what would i do to jesus?" to me, this is more comprehensible and is helping me to treat other people with more love and respect.
we are teaching brother likiaksa's sister, zoraline. she really likes meeting with us and told us that she wants to see the blessings of the gospel. she is reading the Book of Mormon and is very happy about what she is learning. her only set back is that she is a school teacher during the day, then goes to night classes, and then has 4 small kids to take care of. her husband is a policeman so he doesn't have a set schedule.
we have been meeting with brother Bernice (sorry about changing up spellings, but this would be burnias. spelling somebody's name here is kind of impossible without asking them) every day since last tuesday, and we have been committing him to Christ for 24 hours at a time to help him overcome his betelnut addiction. and he has been betelnut free for the last 5 days. this man is incredible, and i am very proud of him. he has an extremely strong desire to be baptized, and sometimes feel bad when we have to tell him that he still isn't quite ready. we are now working with him to get him to come to church consistently, as well as to do some clean up with coffee and drinking occasionally. but he has proved to himself that overcoming his addictions are possible already, and we always have very spiritual lessons with him.
there are a couple of mountain roads that we bike on at night, and i have discovered something wonderful: glowing mushrooms. i have been tempted many times to pick one or two to take home, but i always feel as if i am disrupting something beautiful, so i have yet to yield to temptation. this leads me to another wonderful thing about the utwe area: i sleep on the lower bunk, and on the bottom of the top bunk, some thoughtful elder stuck up some glow-in-the-dark stars, and wrote "fong wo" (good night). it was very well done, and is surprisingly soothing. my only frustration with these two stories is that you can't take a picture of them. they don't show up.
we have been making some wonderful local food lately. this morning, for example, we made usr rice, which is basically rice mixed with mashed bananas, coconut milk, and sugar. it is pretty darned good:)
things are going very well. we are seeing a lot of miracles and people are getting more and more open to us. thank you for your prayers.
i love you all very much and pray for you. i hope things warm up soon:)
love,
Elder Gerber
p.s. President Mecham just told us about the rule change for emailing; we are now allowed to email our friends as well.
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