Texan in Tahiti

Ia Ora Na Tatou!

Eaha ta outou huru?! (How are yall doing?!!)

This week was a little interesting, wasn’t feeling totally myself this past week, but we had a great weekend to make up for it so that’s good, right? Funny how the mission works. It’s literally so up and down but I love it just the same.

Our investigators are doing well and I love seeing how Mahina is progressing. We've been getting quite a few references lately and it's been so great for finding new investigators!

On Thursday we went to go visit an inactive member who's girlfriend is not a member of the church. We shared a message with them- they weren’t totally interested- but right after we finished the lesson we saw a couple with a baby at the other side of the house so we went over and started talking to them. Turns out that they just moved into the house and that they took the lessons with the Elders at Arue (In between Papeete and Mahina)! They were still interested and they accepted for us to come back! It was so great because the husband has a twin brother who actually is a recent convert and he has a lot of family in the church so we were really happy to find them! I just kept saying, I don’t know if we would’ve found them if we hadn’t talked to them!

Another cool experience was a reference that we got from the Sisters of Tuauru. It was a member’s friend that actually lives with her boyfriend who is inactive. The whole family is pretty inactive. We’ve visited this family a few times but she has never been there and finally we got to have a lesson with her. It was so great because she really is a GOLDEN investigator. She grew up Catholic and was really practicing but after she met her boyfriend, she started to learn more about the church and she learned a lot of things that she had never heard before in the Catholic Church. She learned about the Plan of Salvation, where we came from before coming to the earth, why we are here on the earth, and where we will go after we die and she was interested and has been wanting to see the missionaries ever since. We talked about our objective as missionaries and just tried to get to know her and at the end of the lesson she asked, “so how many lessons are there before the baptism?” We were like oh, you want to be baptized! She was like, Yes I would really like to but I want to better understand the gospel before I get baptized. We were blown away and were just like “well, that’s why we are here!” So great. They came to church yesterday and her boyfriend talked to the bishop and is going to come back in the church. They have a cute little baby too so I’m excited to see this little family start to progress towards becoming an eternal family.

And Voila- Our DMP! (Ward Mission Leader) He has a cute plaque without a name on it. He says that that just represents that he’s a member. LOL.

Other than that, we've been working with a few of our amis with addictions to stop smoking and drinking. It’s been hard for me to relate and understand how to really help them because, well, I’ve never been addicted or even touched alcohol or cigarettes. SO in an effort to better understand them, Soeur Faana and I decided to give up something difficult for a month to help them and to be a support for them. I’ve totally tried this in the past but have never succeeded because I didn’t have a lot of motivation. This time, though, we were motivated. I chose chocolate and Soeur Faana chose Sprite. So far we're going on week 3 and I’ve only broken once! (it was an accident- I totally forgot and didn’t even realize until the next morning) It’s been a good experience for me because with SO much temptation (because I love chocolate) I’ve been better able to understand how they feel when they want to drink or want to smoke so badly, but they know that it’s bad. When everyone else is doing it and the urge is strong- Its hard!

I know that I’ll never be really able to understand but it’s been nice for me to gain some perspective.

This Sunday is Mother’s Day and I’m so excited!! I can’t wait to skype with my family!

I’ve been thinking a lot about my parents and especially my wonderful mother and how grateful I am for her example. I can’t tell y'all how much I’ve seen qualities of my parents show in my missionary work. For example, if y'all know my mom, yall know that she is a hard worker. If she has to do something, she is going to give it her all and she’s going to do it right. Well, that's how I am with missionary work. Soeur Faana tells me all the time that she gets tired just looking at me. Ha ha she tells me all the time that I’m crazy and that I just never stop but all I can say to reply is that I really am my mother’s daughter! Ha ha. I can safely say that I come from the best family. Happy early Mother’s Day to all yall!

Moms are the best!