Me and Elder "T"

This is a mountain.

 This is a grapefruit. They grow everywhere. This one was delicious. They are green inside and very sweet.

 The other end of Raiatea

 Sunset out the back of a sketchy pick up truck.

Same sunset.

Monday 25 November 2013 Uturoa

Editor's note: I left the French words in tact. We will expect more and more as time goes by.

Well this week has been great! I have a new companion, His name is Elder Tumarae. Hes from the island Tupai dans les australes. He is so awesome, we are getting so much work done already, yesterday we had 11 amis de meglise assist chapelle and 6 inactive members! He served in the Tuamotus in the Motu hau, that might be the spelling. I've got a picture of him attached, i think the lord is giving me a break, you made it through the first one, learned a lot, now its time to get to work. The only way I can describe him is like a Tahitian version of Fritz Jung. So its ben awsome.

 

I hit that mark with the language where i can say probably 90 percent of what i want to and understand pretty much what everyone is saying. I've had a LOT of help from the big man though, the gift of tongues is real. Elder Tumarae is shocked with how well I speak and understand French. The first few days I was kind of <> because I had to show him around and introduce him to everyone. He was like well you manage yourself pretty well, you'll probably be a trainer next. That made me a little nervous, but whatever I have the Lords help with everything I do so it cant be too bad. My new Tahitian companion actually speaks Tahitian, so now I can begin to actually learn how to speak Tahitian like a Tahitian!

 

I don't really know what else to say. Oh! We had a family night for our quartier, what they call a neighborhood, and it went...ok. The lesson was on the plan du salvation and we tried to get through the whole thing but there was a minister there, and other people that all they wanted to do was invite a spirit of contention. Elder Tumarae did a pretty good job though he took all the questions, and addressed them by continuing to teach the lesson. It took way too long though. In the end I bore a powerful testimony of the truth of the plan of salvation in Tahitian and french, and of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. Elder Tumarae did the same thing and challenged everyone there to pray for the truth of the message. Everyone was silent after that. I think they were just annoyed by the fact that we have the answers to the 3 deepest questions a man can ask. Where do we come from. What is our purpose on the Earth. And Where are we going after. I'm very grateful we have a prophet and modern day scripture that leads this Church so we aren't wandering around in the spiritual darkness of Lehi's dream!

 

Also whenever you are in a situation like that, just bear testimony and share a scripture in the Livre de Mormon. There's no point in arguing with someone that doesn't care to learn. Even if you look like a fool for not arguing back or trying to prove your point. You don't have to prove anything. The spirit does that for you, IF they have open hearts and willing spirits.

 

I don't have Kirstin's Email ask her to email me? Also she should be kind of settled in now. Japanese is a hard language, my advice is memorize an enormous amount of useful verbs first. Verbs are powerful, they let you say things, the rest of the vocab can come after the verbs. That's how I did french and Tahitian. Also, remind her the cinnamon granola by the food line in the corner near the drinks is excellent and I ate it for almost every meal for 7 weeks.

 

For you guys: Elder Chailloux got transferred on Wednesday i think? He wrote me a letter before he left. Thanking me for the things I said and my example. He said he learned a lot, and was going to turn over a new leaf. There was a lot of other really nice stuff in the letter too, Im pretty sure it was sincere. If so I accomplished my first Mission Trial woooooooooooo. Lots more to come, and if that was the first one, my goodness pray for me. He cant take away the eye twitch eye developed though...maybe it will go away with elder tumarae. Elder Tumarae is almost the opposite of elder Chailloix, I think the Lord is giving me a little break before it gets hard again!

we are approaching the hot point of the year here. Its starting to feel like the one year at pageant, and when there is no Wind it feels like we are in an oven! its alright though because its better than being freezing cold! It also is the rainy season, randomly we will get these super heavy rain storms, we can usually find shelter.

 

I cant believe Christmas is almost here. I was with elder Twede and elder Franco in Fareatai when we realized it was Thanksgiving. So we went out with a machete and went on a coconut/ fruit gathering spree and had a Thanksgiving feast! It was fun. I'm very thankful for my sectuer, it may be large, but there are no nearly as many hills and black flies as in elder Franco's zone!

 

Oh I want you to Watch a movie on Netflix i think. Its called Departures, its a Japanese film live action about a man who takes up a job as a Japanese undertaker. It really shows you some of the customs of japan, and a bit of the people, and the music is cello music and absolutely excellent! The music is by Joe Hisaishi, the composer that does the music for Hiao Miyazakis films. Watch it, it was a fabulous film. lots of good morals.

 

The little music player and that speaker along with prayer is what really got me through this month i don't know what i would have done without music. I got all the songs on my USB from the Zone leaders i now have close to 450 songs including tons of Phil Collins! Love his voice! Our mission president's Policy with music is if it makes you feel the spirit go ahead. So I now have lots of Disney and other songs. It's great!

November 4, 2013 Uturoa

Iaroana Outou (you all)

Things are going well here but slow. We gave a training meeting for the leaders of the auxiliaries this Sunday, and told them our goal. President Sinjoux - through revelation- received the number of baptisms for this year that we need, 1200! Currently we have 609. That’s a lot of baptisms to do in 2 months. However just like it says in 1 Nephi 3:7 the Lord doesn’t give commandments unless he prepares a way for them to be accomplished. For our sector we need 20 or more baptisms. Therefore we did some training and presented our plan to the members, they are to increase their efforts in finding so we can be receiving the highest number of new investigators that we can. Also these areas have been tracted so many times we usually find little to nothing. People generally accept us, but they are very content with where they are and what they are doing. They would prefer to stay in a church that doesn’t require anything except a body in the chapel on Sunday. Please don’t ever just be a body in the chapel on Sunday in our church! We will see what comes to fruition from all this though. There is still that nasty asterisk by the plan that reads <>.

I had a great experience this week that strengthened my faith. On Saturday night, really late, my wonderfully thoughtful companion turned to me and told me I was in charge of the lesson in Gospel essentials on Sunday (Through something that I read as a smirk, after which I had a <> discussion with him it wasn’t with anger though it was about communication in our companionship, later I swallowed my pride and apologized, and told him I needed faith and would teach the lesson) I was initially a little fearful to teach a lesson at church, for an hour, but through the night and that morning I decided I could do it. I added it to my fast, said several prayers and did a little planning during sacrament meeting. After which I went to class and started to teach the lesson. The topic was faith. The class miraculously was very involved, and I ended up teaching without help from my companion for the whole hour...and then went 20 minutes over because we were having such a good discussion.

I talked about how when we plant the seed of faith most of the stages of growth are the same at the beginning. I compared this to when you first start reading the book of Mormon and praying. That is probably the hardest thing to motivate people to do, read the book of Mormon. I don’t think people read very much here, Tahitian was an oral language, so when you give them something as foreign as the book of Mormon with all its names, people, bible lingo, and this funny place called Jerusalem; it doesn’t make much sense to them at first. But if they keep nourishing the seed it will eventually bear fruit, you can’t have fruit the second you plant a seed, and even after you do plant the seed, you don’t actually even see anything come from it for a few days. I think that made sense to a lot of the investigators who were there. I’ll just have to remember that one and use it in the future. Any ways to sum it all up I had a lot of divine help with the lesson in turns of questions discussions and insights.

The language is also improving a ton, the fact that I could teach for an hour and 20 minutes shows that I have some basic mastery of communication my thoughts efficiently now. Even if understanding still is iffy. Understanding takes a lot more time than being able to speak, but I have patience that in 1 to 2 more months I will understand pretty much everything. If I look at my progress from when I first got here to now, I’ve come a loooooooooooong way with lots of prayers and fasting. It will be 1 month in Polynesia in 3 days!

We moved last week! We now live behind the chapel! Elder Chailloux wanted to move and I didn’t really care either way so we did! It this little house just behind the chapel, and its actually really nice. There are almost no mosquitoes, and we have ceiling fans, and with the fans from the other house, I am always incredible comfortable and protected from mosquitoes. It has 2 rooms, a kitchen and the bedroom, ad this teeny bathroom. I like it though because it close enough to the coast that we always have a breeze blowing through the house, and we are never late to church are meetings. Its also closer to the town, the members, and the stores which is super handy. So all in all I think I prefer it. Ill include pictures next week, I forgot to charge my camera so i couldn’t take any!

D&C 88 is awesome. So is all of 1 Nephi 7. As well as Jesus with Nicodemus and the last supper in John. In fact the entire book of John is amazing. We should all desire the love that Enoch had for mankind, That you can read about in Moses.

Love Elder Molinari

This picture was sent by the mission office. It is their arrival in Tahiti on October 7 2013