Thursday, November 14, 2013

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