Texan in Tahiti

My family!

Wow... I can’t believe it’s already been 40 weeks here at Tahiti.

Life is great here in Tahiti and I am loving Mahina. I have really come to love all the members and amis here but I am so scared to be transferred soon. I hope I don’t get transferred.

This week was pretty dry with the work because everyone is on vacation or preparing for the Heiva (a really big festival where they dance and sing) or watching the world cup soccer tournament. So needless to say we had a lot of people cancel on us and even when we went to do contacting, nobody was there or listened to us! Yippeeeee.

Despite the slowness, we were able to find or recontact a couple of new amis that are really big potentials so we're excited. We'll see how it goes this week.

Remember David? Our "Ghostrider" ami? Well this past week we talked about baptism and the Word of Wisdom. It was a great lesson where we read Alma 7:14-15 and we asked him what he thought the sins that kept us from being baptized could be. We didn’t even have to tell him. He told us then that smoking and drinking were sins. We talked about how smoking and drinking destroys our bodies and when we become dependent, we no longer have our free agency or ability to choose. It was one of the coolest lessons we've had because he totally understood!! I really saw the power of the spirit testifying to him that it was true. The only bummer is that when we asked him if he wanted to stop smoking and drinking he said, “no, not right now.... Maybe when I’m 50?” (He’s 44 right now) I was like what! I hope you live until you're 50 because you're not helping your chances by drinking and smoking buddy. No but really, even though he may not decide to stop, I know that we did our part in teaching him and now it’s up to him to choose. It stinks sometimes because when our amis don’t make the right choice, we can’t do anything about it. But when they do the make right choice, that’s when we really feel the greatest joy.

Like for our wonderful ami Heinono! She was baptized!! It was a great service and I really was incredibly happy to see her finally be baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. I made some chocolate chip cookies and everybody LOVED them. Ha ha so Heinono told me to try chocolate, chocolate chip cookies and so I did and everybody asked me for the recipe. "American" Cookies are really a huge hit here. I can’t help think of you mom when we made all those cookies for your luncheons. Good times.

Other than that, all the missionaries in our zone went into the sector of Tuauru to do a ton of contacting and help them out because the sector is really suffering. It was fun because I got to do a split and work with Soeur Summers!

Yesterday, we went to the temple with our amis because we now have a little visitors center next to the temple which presents the Plan of Salvation with the Restoration and Gospel of Jesus Christ all mixed in and super great. We are going to start going every two weeks with our amis because Mahina is only 15 minutes from Papeete so it’s really convenient.

This Wednesday, we have our leaders meeting with President Bize and all the STLs and Zone Leaders. I’m excited to see how that will go but I know it will be good. President Bize is a great president.

Hope yall are doing well!

Love yall!!