The Island of Robinson Cursoe
I received an email from Riley today and thought it would be fun to update everyone again. From the sound of his letters he is loving the work and his new area. He is working hard and finding creative ways to get to know the people of the island. The following is a exert from his email, (with a few grammatical corrections).
I hope he was not in the process
of eating this cute little snail!
Well this week was a good week too. I have had a lot of fun doing the work here. You asked for a funny story and I have one for you. It was Friday night and we had gotten home, did our planning and all of that stuff and went to bed. I was sleeping so good when all of sudden we hear this banging on our windows and someone outside yelling to us "ELDER! ELDER!" I finally woke up and become conscious enough to know someone was trying to get our attention. Then I realized it was our mamita. She explained that there was a house on fire and we needed to go help put the fire out (there is no fire department on the island). So we got out of bed and I looked at the clock. It was 4:00 in the morning. We got dressed and ran to the fire. When we got there we ran into some members and they told us what had happened. Some little shack was on fire and by the time we arrived they had put it out. But the funny part is on a weekend in the middle of the night, at 4:00a.m, the environment outside is not very good for missionaries. The night was full of drunks and the funny thing was as they were all helping to put out the fire they were smoking at the same time. My companion and I thought of a scripture that could work. Where Christ says that we need to take the beam out of our eye before we take the beam out of our brothers eye. I think we could say take the cigarette out of your hand before putting out the house fire. And then the mom of the member family that we met up with made a really good point. She said "what would happen if the Savior were to come right now?" Lets just say they would´t be ready. My companion and I threw one bucket of water on the coals and realized we were wasting good sleep time so we started to run back home when the drunk women started making cat calls at us. So we ran faster and got home and went to bed. I learned a very good lesson; There is a big reason why Missionaries don´t leave at night unless it is an emergency. I don´t plan on being out again. Really the island is fantastic during the day. I love it, it is a million times better than the big city of Santiago. But at night I am sure it is all crazy. But oh well it was fun. I am really enjoying the island either way. Well how are you doing. That is funny that it is getting cold there. I am loving the weather here. It is really nice. I think it's like in the 70´s. My health is good. I have been running a lot here on the island. Actually last week we ran a little 5k deal with the community. A whole 20 people showed up for it. It was fun though. My companion and I took fifth. As we came up to the finish line we were running side by side and the people wanted us to try to beat one another but we didn't want to, so we crossed together. It is fun here, we have to work in different ways to get to the people. So the run was a way to gain more trust from the community. I was thinking in my next package could you send me some flea collars. I would wear one on my ankle. The fleas are a bit of a problem on the island. Well I love you and thank you for all of your help and support.
Love,
Elder Riley Davies
