Texan in Tahiti

Hello my family and friends, 

So this week will be short- I'm doing great! 

I had to figure out my application for BYU again today so that was weird. The end still seems so far in my mind so I know that it will be hard when my last few weeks here are gone. 

This past week was interesting because the work was totally dead during the week but we were super busy this past weekend. Nobody wants to see us from Tuesday-Thursday but everybody wants to see us the weekend. It was great, but we are going to have to change something this week so that doesnt happen again. We ended up doing a lot of reactivation and going to visit former investigators or other potential investigators. It was good- but this week will definitely be better. 

Our miracle family is doing so great. Boniface (the father) is so motivated and he decided that he wanted to be baptized on the 15th of February at 6:00 in the morning instead of the 14th so we'll have another early morning baptism like we did with Linda when I was in Mahina. We're working with his wife Suzanne who is still waiting for an answer. Boniface prefers speaking in French, but Suzanne prefers speaking in Tahitian so our lessons are so mixed up with the two languages and it’s really great because it’s been awhile since we've had progressing investigators in Tahitian. We had quite a few powerful lessons this past week and I just know that Suzanne knows that it’s true. She just hesitates a little bit. Over all, they're both really motivated to change and it's always very touching to see and feel this desire. Their son Ariihei really progressed too and then yesterday, when we had our lesson on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he was totally tuned out and we went over what Faith and Repentance was like 5 times. Oh the joys of teaching kids sometimes :) We made him a little notebook with pictures and all the summaries of the lessons to study because they aren't in Avera during the week, only the weekend. Hopefully that helps him and he will be ready too for the 15th with his parents. 

Another one of our great investigators is Haoani. He's 16 and his parents were both members but I’m pretty sure his mother is excommunicated and his dad is inactive and he lives with his mom and grandparents who are all Jehovah Witnesses. When we started the lessons, we gave him a Book of Mormon that he started reading but he told us that he can’t find it anywhere now! He thinks that his family threw it away and so when Mamie Tiatia gave him another one, we told him to always keep it in his bag and to not leave it at the house. He agreed and when we committed him for baptism, he said he would pray and ask God. It was a sweet experience and he's definitely somebody prepared. 

We found a new investigator as well who is French and the first time we met her she said that it was no problem for us to come back because it’s been 3 weeks since she started praying and everything has been going so well in her life! That made me smile so much and so now, we've started teaching her and she's very willing to learn and do what God wants her to do. (PS this is very rare because most French people here don’t even give us a chance to invite them to take the lessons. They just say no right away. (Ha, I only think of my best friend Jordan who served in France)

Other than that, our converts are doing really well.  Vahinetua is being such a great missionary right now with all of her Protestant family. She's really changed and that makes me so happy. 

I hope y'all have a great week- I love y'all!! 

Soeur Taylor 

  

I didn't really take pictures this past week. This is just a pretty sunset when we had our sport activity this past week!