Bora Bora bum bum bum da da bum bum bum da da

23 June 2014 Bora Bora

You'll have to see if you can find the Bora Bora song on You Tube. I'll have to send pictures later - we are in the clerk’s office emailing, and it’s not allowed to use USB drives here; mostly because they think ANY USB key will bring viruses and crash the computer...non tech savvy people (rolls eyes). By later I mean later today.

Approaching Bora Bora from the east.

We flew into Bora and it was excellent. The island looked beautiful. I thought Raiatea had a lot of blues in the lagoon, but I was sorely mistaken. Bora won. The Airport is on one of the motus around the island, so we got to take the boat- and it was awesome! there are actually 6 Elders on Bora right now; 3 sectors, Anau, Faanui, and Vaitape. The problem is there is only 2 wards. 



They were supposed to divide into 3 wards this month - but it got pushed to the end of July. So we've been going around as companionships of 3 and not 2. 6 elders also means that there are 6 Elders in 1 house. It’s pretty crowded; we all sleep on the floor with super old sketchy mattresses, lots of mosquitoes. Its everything I wanted it to be. 

A view of Bora Bora from the north

It's so nice to be back in the islands, long bike rides, beautiful views. In our sector in Anau we have all those bungalow hotel things - and all the members work at them, so one day we will go visit. We also have Matira Beach in our sector. You can just hit Google to see what that means. It’s pretty awesome.

Matira Beach

Other news I'm not sure I've been in a ward that works yet - that pattern continues - BUT at this point I'm used to it and know what to do. It’s also incredible to be in a sector that takes more than an hour to traverse :)

ok. Expect photos later today.

[Note from editor: No photos were sent. These are taken from the internet, but are the places to which he refers. I believe the background picture behind all of this is Matira Beach as well.]

Love you all!

Elder Molinari

Transfers!!!!!

16 June 2014 Tiapa Paea

Well I got my call Thursday and I will be leaving Tiapa Wednesday morning.

I got transferred out to Bora Bora!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So excited.

Maybe its because I took all those photos of Bora Bora at Raiatea. I’ll be serving in the Anau sector - which is HUGE. I'm pretty hyped to have a reasonably sized sector again. What makes it even better is I'll be serving with Elder Peterson. I served in the same zone as him when I was at Raiatea, he was at Vaiaau, so we already know each other and we are pretty good friends. Im excited for the trip because the airport is on a Motu around the island - which means I get to take the boat to the main island! :)

Apart from transfers not much occurred this week, just a normal week of lessons and stuff. 

One of the members had an air rifle and we shot mangos in the tree with it. As you can imagine it doesn’t knock the mangos down, so there are tons of mangos with tiny holes in them. I nearly got one down by shooting the tiny vine, but it didn’t cut it enough!

In other news I'm very close to figuring out how to solve a Rubicks cube, a member gave one to Elder Smith and I've managed to figure out how to do 2 layers, independently.

Here is a nice video for Father's Day:

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2013-01-002-earthly-father-heavenly-father?category=mormon-messages/mormon-messages-2013&lang=eng&cid=HPTU061014222

I really enjoyed Alma chapters 11-13 or maybe 14 as well. Read with the temple in mind and it’s pretty interesting. I particularly liked the teachings on the priesthood and the pre-mortal life Alma gives in I think chapter 13. 

Ok - have a good week!

Love you all

Elder Molinari

Waterfalls and Birds

9 June 2014 Tiapa Paea

This is part of our sector that we visit a lot.

Well, this week will be the last week of training. I don't want to say anything about transfers because I might jinx something. This week was a little slow, BUT we managed to fix a baptismal date and marriage of one of our investigators thanks to A LOT of divine help. We finished teaching about the plan of salvation and it just clicked for him. There were a lot of things that clicked for me too. We taught it in a series of 3 lessons and it was probably the best we have ever taught it, mostly because he read the chapters in the Book of Mormon we gave him every night.

Before this series of lessons the Plan of Salvation lesson always seemed to me like a really long lesson full of a lot of rather disconnected elements. Now after the string of chapters we gave him, and seeing it right in a row, it was incredible how logical the whole thing is; even the Creation and Fall. The whole thing rests on the two types of death; spiritual and physical, and how Christ's atonement overcame the two. Those two deaths are the stumbling blocks for every living being. It was also interesting that we were sent here to learn and progress and we do that by using agency to choose and then learn the difference between good and evil.

I had an inspiring lesson where I was helped to realize that we learn the difference 2 ways: by following commandments or by partaking. The commandments tell us ahead of time what is bad, so we can learn the difference by following them, and receiving blessings. Conversely, we can partake of the bad and have unwanted short or long term consequences. This is true for people that don’t even realize they are following commandments as well. So in effect, everyone learns something in the end, whether they want to or not. Thought that was interesting. Anyways we finished that, taught the Loi de chasteté and engaged for marriage and baptism the 26 of July. He didn’t even hesitate when he said yes. It was a miracle.

What else did we do...still trying to find people to teach...finding people to teach is like trying to find a perfect pearl.

We went on a hike today that was pretty awesome. It rained ALL day yesterday so we thought the waterfall would be a little more cool than the flop it was last time we went. However, when we were about an hour in it started pouring out. We got so wet, but it was awesome because it kept us a little cold. The waterfall still was just ok as far as waterfalls go, but it was fun being soaked.

It was raining really hard when we got to the waterfalls

All wet!

We were hoping for better pictures. I promise it was only knee deep.

When we returned from the hike, we discovered two birds in our house. 

I tamed one.

I recommend 2 Nephi 2 and 9 again, as well as Alma 40 and 34. They are some of my favorite chapters as far as doctrine goes. We had Stake Conference this weekend and it was pretty awesome. President Sinjoux gave a killer talk, he had a phrase that I REALLY liked, and came as an answer to lots of pondering about how to describe what makes our Church unique. I had already thought to talk about modern Revelation and prophets and stuff, but I needed something with a little more punch. Well he gave it to me, and I really liked it. It sounds cooler in French. 

"We don't teach interpretations of the Bible, we teach pure truth revealed by God himself."
-P. Sinjoux

Ok. Love you all.

Elder Molinari

Another Week of Celebrations

2 June 2014 Tiapa Paea

Not sure really where this week went. Not much to report on this week. We drove around a lot because we had lots of baptismal interviews to do in the other secteurs. I finally figured out how to do the handbrake start; it wasn't as exciting as I thought it was going to be. I had some kind of weird cold all this week, so I've been super tired and my nose is always dripping and plugged up. It's a little better now.

This morning we went to a skate park while everyone was at school. So it was empty. We didn't have skateboards so we used our bikes!

Don't ask.

Made it!

Elder Smith

Elder Smith et moi

We had to go for an epic shot after

Ok, This E-mail took a while to write because I got really distracted. Elder Calves and Elder White came to us while we were emailing, saying they needed help moving the dryer at the sisters’ house. 

So we went over there, and I was rather confused because the dryer should be pretty light. Then they said they needed to move it to the terrace of the house, so I followed them and voila! It was actually a surprise birthday party! The whole zone was there. It was pretty fun. In Tahiti there’s this weird tradition where you sing happyu birthday in French, then Tahitian, and sometimes English. So after that was done I blew out the candles and we ate. It was a nice surprise. 

Yesterday, my actual birthday, I celebrated in two places. One of them I didn't even know was going to happen.

If I get transferred I'm going to miss this zone, it's super unified. I think that’s one thing I've learned from Elder Calves. He's my zone leader, and he was my zone leader at Raiatea. He is always doing something with the zone, even if its poorly planned sometimes, or not much of an activity. The zone spends a lot of time together on P-days, and I think it helps the missionary work a lot by keeping all our morales up.

Here is a link to the 170 Year Celebration we were in last week:

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org.nz/article/mormons-celebrate-170-years-in-the-south-pacific

Sadly we lost our Tahitian lesson with the Mami. She’s really busy with wedding preparations this month for a 400 person wedding. I think she’s in charge of flowers. So she put lessons on hold for this month. But we still go by to visit. Those lessons that we did REALLY I mean REALLY helped my Tahitian improve. ‘Cus we mostly just read the Book of Mormon and then I would connect it with the lesson topic. So I was getting a mini pronunciation lesson when she would read the Book of Mormon. Maybe I didn’t have a lot of baptisms in Tiapa, but I’ve progressed in a ton of other areas, so I'm grateful I was put here.

I don’t have much more else to share.

Love you all!

Elder Molinari