Greetings from Dubuque. It's French, so it's pronounced "Duh Byook," and is french for "Dubbuquay." All of the poor, unused letters in the french language, having to sit there, unnoticed, at the end of the words to which they are attached.
But anyway.
I love it here! It's a city! There's stuff here! And a great ward, and great people. I'm with Elder Noel, who is often quite serious, but is still cool. He also wants to work hard, which makes me even more happy. Things are going great and I'm so happy here. There's a large amount of Marshalese people in the ward, and there are more coming. We are going to teach a new one this week who has been coming for awhile and wants to be baptized, and possibly a friend of his. We have a large teaching pool, too, which is so wonderful. I'm going to love it here, and I hope that the predictions are true and that I die (mission term for go home) here. Speaking of dying, Elder Noel is about to. This is his last transfer, and seeing all of the emotions and things that go along with that are both entertaining and terrifying. It's not to long before I'll need to face my own demise as well. Things are going fast. It won't be long until I'll be telling you all of the stories I have to share in person.
But enough trunky-talk.
The past few days have mostly been service for some less active or part member families, and it's been great. The definite highlight, however, besides church, of course, was the Marshalese Party. You see, when a Marshalese child reaches one year old, it is a GIANT party. Seriously. People drive from all over and even fly in from the Marshal Islands. They all get together and eat and dance and throw money at the child (usually I would use that term metaphorically, but seriously, they really do throw money at the child). They also begin late, so we didn't get to see much of it. We did get to eat some food, which was great. They are very giving people and so they had all of the visitors eat first. As I grabbed my plate, I could not help but wonder what exactly I was looking at in the giant bins of food, some of which was looking back up at me. That's right. Fish heads. A lot of other raw fish as well. When I returned to my seat, I chowed down on my plate full of, you guessed it, rice, ham, noodles, and cole slaw. They catered to us white people as well, which was appreciated. No worries, I got cultural as I did eat some raw fish. Ok, so I use the word "ate" very loosely. It was more of a nibble. I had one of the Marshalese youth provide me some from his plate and he graciously took a picture of me doing it. I, however, ungraciously, and, may I add, involuntarily, gagged. Luckily nobody was watching as I struggled to hold down my lunch. It tasted GREAT, don't get me wrong, just the thought and texture hit me at once as I closed my mouth down on the slab of raw fish with the scales still attached and I realized that there was a divine purpose for me having been called to the midwest and not somewhere foreign. Imagine the hundreds of people I could have brought into the gospel and the thousands I could have offended had I gone foreign. It's not for my sake I'm stateside, it's for theirs. Yet from the whole thing I was able to gain lots of friends in Young Men and talk to the Marshalese young man I mentioned earlier that has been coming for awhile. So all in all it was successful.
I also have obtained a Charlie Blue Tie. For all those that understand what that means....
I guess that's it!
--
"For business reasons I must preserve the outward signs of sanity." -Mark Twain
Love, Elder Charlie Gates
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