Texan in Tahiti

IA ORA NA tout le monde!

Today we had another incredible Pday on the Motu!! This motu is like 100 times prettier than the Motu at Mahina so that was fun. We had a zone activity but half of the zone ended up not coming so we were less missionaries but it was WAY fun. Super relaxing. It was great because this past week was CRAZY.

So remember that Family Home Evening that we planned for overcoming addictions? Well, ALL of our investigators and the families that were supposed to come ended up canceling at the last minute and we were sad. But that’s okay! We are going to try and do it again or try to modify it a little bit but hey, at least we were ready huh?

One of our investigators who is trying to overcome an addiction to smoking is Dewis. He and his future wife (Laetitia) have taken the lessons for a LONG time and they are getting married the 19th of December and getting baptized the 20th. They were investigators that restarted the lessons with Soeur Green when she was here! (Cool huh?) But anyways, we had a lesson after like 3 weeks of not seeing them for a lesson and it was almost entertaining because they are such a typical couple. Laetitia used to be a HUGE smoker. She hasn’t smoked for a while now (ever since she read that our body is a temple in the bible) and ALL she wants is for Dewis to quit as well because the marriage is getting close and she's nervous that he won’t stop before their marriage. She was explaining this in our lesson and at the same time sharing her testimony and Dewis is getting defensive saying that he made the promise that he'll stop before the marriage and that all he wants is for his family to stop repeating the same thing, stop smoking, stop smoking, stop smoking. Ha ha. He kept saying that he could do it, but that he didn’t need help. After they both finished, we were like- Dewis, do you know what will make your family stop repeating the same thing? If you actually do what they say and stop smoking!! He laughed and said that we were right.

We testified a lot about how much his Heavenly Father loved him and about how much his Savior knew how hard it was for him. ALL he had to do was to turn to them and ask for help. We fixed the goal to fast for this past Sunday but we ended up having to move it to this coming Saturday.

So we've been doing a whole lot of contacting but this week it went a little differently. Do you know what we did? We followed the spirit!! Funny, normally we should be doing that EVERY time but I guess that's why we are here to learn. Normally, we pick a neighborhood and we just do the whole street or keep going. But this week, we decided to just ride our bikes and when we felt like we needed to stop, we stop! Simple huh? Well EVERY time we stopped, we found potential investigators. The Lord was merciful to us this past week and we really saw some miracles. Most of them were former investigators that missionaries had never written in the area book or they were people that had already assisted at activities or been to church. IT WAS AWESOME. I promised myself I would never go back to normal door to door contacting!

One of these contacts we did find was a Mamie that had recently gotten into an accident and was confined to a wheelchair. She is an excommunicated member because she isn’t married, but lives with her boyfriend (basically Husband, they're just not married). It was pretty clear that she had some side effects from the accident and so we weren’t totally sure about sharing a message, but she started talking about how she knew a lot of hymns and so we sang a few hymns with her. We were wrapping up to leave when she said- " Je suis pas fiu de vous, vous pouvez rester et chanter un peu plus avec moi si vous voulez!" (Im not tired of y'all, y'all can stay a little bit longer and sing with me if y'all want!) Her words touched my heart and so we sat and sang with her because it was pretty clear that she was lonely. She told me that I had a pretty voice (ha ha. I thought of you mom) and we left her with a prayer. I learned a lot by this visit. I learned that the worth of souls is very great in the sight of God and that it doesn’t take a lot to make an impact on somebody's life. We are going to stop by every week because she loves to see us and sing with us. :)

Life has been pretty fun on bikes. Soeur Falesii and I race home every day and she always wins!! Ha ha. I get so frustrated because I’ll totally be ahead but at the last minute she pulls ahead and wins the race. I always tell her that it’s her islander strength that kicks in and that I was not blessed with that, ha ha ha.

Other than that, my study in the Book of Mormon has been going so well. I love the Book of Mormon. I’m up to Jarom and Omni now and I have loved strengthening my testimony.
A story to share with yall- In Jacob Chapter 7 it talks about Sherem, an Anti-Christ, who turns the hearts of many away from God. He knows that Jacob is a man of faith and so he searches out Jacob to come and persuade him as well (verse 1-3). Jacob knows his bad intentions and he explains that even though Sherem was good with his words, he had a testimony and at the end of verse 5 he says- "wherefore, I could not be shaken." From a lot of experiences on my mission, I know that the devil seeks us out! He seeks us out to try and persuade us because he works extra hard on those who have faith and believe in Christ. How do we protect ourselves? With our testimony. Our testimony that is centered and built on Christ. If we have this hard rock testimony- we will not be shaken.

I hope y'all are doing well, I love yall!

Special shout out to my best friend who is longer a missionary!! I’m still freaking out about that..... Time is flying.

Mamie Salome

A pirogue and my companion. Our lesson got cancelled, but hey, look at the cool view.

We ended up running into our investigator on the road, we had to stop and do a lesson on a member's porch and then had to go to the church. We only had 2 bikes so our investigator took mine and I rode on the back of Soeur Falesii's bike. So Funny! We laughed all the way to the chapel.