January 7 blog entry

January 7, 2008 The New Year started with a bang and I mean a bang. Four men in their late teens BANGED AND BANGED on our door New Years Eve day evening and they wouldn’t go away. They wanted candy like Halloween and if you don’t give it to them then they take something of yours. They say that is “Marshallese Custom.” Of course we didn’t know about the Marshallese Custom or we would have given them a cookie or something. We told them to leave but they didn’t they just kept banging so Elder Patten went out to tell them to go away, as he did he discovered that they thought our porch chairs would be a nice thing for them to have. So E.P. chased them down and got the chairs back. Three of them were drunk and the other one stood in the bushes so it was hard to tell. Anyway when it was all over E.P. said “ What was I thinking, I am almost 70 years old and there were four of them.” I just laughed at him because the night before when I woke up at 11:58 P.M. I found a cockroach crawling over my leg trying to wish me a Happy New Year. So I bolted over E.P. turned on the light and screamed. All E.P. could say was “Well honey, he won’t take up much room.” So I slept on the couch and let E.P. see how much room that cockroach really took. Other than that we have just been working and working. Visiting many people- another baptism coming up with some people we taught with the zone leaders. The father just needs a little more time to stop his beetle nut addiction. That is a drug that they suck on, chew and spit, a little like tobacco. Pretty gross. He is really a good man though and is sincere about his desire to be baptized. He has been taught for about 3 years and we just happened to get him at the right time. Our Addiction Recovery class went well this week and I have been busy today writing the 2nd step for Thursday. Last Friday we went to a Chinese restaurant with our district to celebrate one of our sister missionaries birthday. It was pretty good food. I just didn’t want to take a look at their kitchen. Yesterday we spent 9 hours in church because of a correlation meeting held after church, it was also fast Sunday, we quickly ate dinner and made cookies and then went off to another appointment at the home where the rats live. I had my eye out for them and didn’t see any this time around. Elder Patten bore his testimony about the importance of chastity and marriage, the couple was not married but had two children, he did a good job and the investigators always listen to him intently. I took pictures of the primary children yesterday and will put them on the blog as well as send them to the Olympus ward Primary – they had sent us a card and I wanted to return a card to the children there. Life is good, we are moving into a new apartment right after zone conference on Saturday and I can’t wait. It will be nice to have a new place with tile on the floor and a clean bathroom and kitchen. We will be in the same apartment complex that the mission home is in – three other couples live there including the Pres. and sister Bleak. We will be there for another 6 weeks and then the Owens in Karibiti will be leaving about 2 weeks after that, so maybe we will go there or maybe we will go to Christmas Island or maybe we will just stay in Marjuro. Who knows? We are good with it all. We love you all and will be in touch soon. P.S. to all our friends out there if you get a chance to look the blog – let us know you have been there. Love Mom/Sister Patten/Lois We have been searching the branch membership records for partially active families. Yesterday I ran into three former branch presidents and three former missionaries who are all inactive. They don’t take kindly to being released from a call. We are going to see if we can find them and see what’s up. We actually found about 40 families that we can go see. That should keep us busy for the next six weeks or so. We are getting so involved here in Majuro that we don’t really care if we stay right here for the rest of our mission. We are realizing that the Lord’s in charge and if we go somewhere we go and if we don’t we don’t. We have made many friends here and feel very welcome. They tell us that none of the senior missionaries have ever come into their homes and worked with them like we have. If they only knew that all I know how to do is sit on the floor in their homes, bear testimony and love them. We are going to another senior couple’s apartment for Family Home Evening tonite so I’ll close for now. We’re taking French bread. Love, Elder Patten