TAHITIAN WORDS AND LEAVING: July 9, 2010

Dear Family

I am still here and the enter button on these key boards works now and also the period button. We got our travel plans yesterday and we are supposed to leave on the 22nd of July. That is if we get our Visas and stuff; we don't know yet. A lot of people get their Visas like the day before they leave so we will see.  So if  I do leave the 22nd, Ii will be in Tahiti at 6:30 PM Tahiti time on the 22nd.  Also, I don't know what the deal about calling and stuff is,  but I hear we are aloud to call family from the airport.   I'm not 100% sure on how that will go down but we will see. Yesterday we were doing a teaching activity and I was talking about repentence in Tahitian.  I was asking my teacher questions because he was pretending to be my investigator, and I asked somthing to the effect of if he wanted to repent of anything.  He said he hit/beat (taparahi) children and I thought he said he slaughtered/vertically smashed (tupa'i) (one of my favorite words) his children cause they are about the same word and it caught me by surprise.  So I talked to him about talking to the bishop and stuff, and afterwards he told me that that was a pretty big problem and that usually people also don't see the bishop for that and I thought he meant people killing their children,  so I was really confused for awhile until he cleared things up.  But that is one thing I love about Tahitian:    There is a different word for all forms of hitting and that is pretty awesome. My ankle is all better now.  I can't really jump on it,  but it's all good. I hope that I get to leave soon. I've been here for a very long time. That' pretty much all I have to say.

Love,

Elder Cosby


P.S.  Attached are pictures Elder Cosby later sent of his last days at the MTC.