Another Week

19 August 2014 Bora Bora

Gee, this week felt like it went on forever...well not during the week, but now that its Monday it feels like its been 3 months since last Monday...en bref. 

Here are last week's photos from the motu.

Sketchy barge to motu Tapu

Me on the sketchy barge

Motu Tapu and then my battery died!

Since elder Peterson had to do an interview Thursday Elder Gilson came with me to Anau. We did Port à port, but then got caught by a Mami who talked to us for 2 and a half hours - trust me I tried to escape. It used up the entire day :|

Alors, we started lessons with this guy named Teremoana. He's super awesome and I'm hyped to continue the lessons, what’s even better is that his friend is an inactive member named Pai. So I'm pretty optimistic for the direction of the lessons. We will end up saving a soul either way. Somehow we are approaching the 12 week mark here in Bora - just 3 more weeks till we hit it. I guess in 3 weeks we will see who's going to stay.

This week we made pain chocolate

It was delicious!

We had a training meeting that was given by Elder Pearson the president of the ocean pacific area. He talked about revelation and prayer and the first principles and ordinances of the gospel. He said if we feel like God isn't answering our prayers, we aren't asking enough questions. We need to ask more inspired questions to have more revelation. Then he talked about the spirit, and said we need to designate the spirit as our teacher. Everywhere we are we need to be constantly learning from what’s around us, and our teacher is the spirit. In any church meeting, any class, the teacher isn't the teacher, the spirit is.

He then said we can all be taught at the level we need to be in any given class no matter who the teacher is if we designate the spirit to be our teacher.

Well I just kind of rambled on there but that was the gist of it. Anyways it was a nice meeting. President Bize told a story about a lady that he visited whose daughter was getting baptized that said she went to a church meeting and felt nothing. His response was, well that’s natural, you’re not ready to feel the spirit yet. He then engaged her to stop smoking for a week in order to just feel the spirit at her daughter's baptism. Kinda put how much we need our investigators to be prepared for baptism in perspective.

We hiked up to a WWII site. These cannon were enormous!

It was really high up.

well...That’s all I got this week. Love you all!

Elder Molinari

Heiva on Motu Tapu

11 August 2014 Bora Bora

I want to write a lot but I feel really lazy...we'll see what happens.

(Editor’s note: Sorry for the late post. I guess I was “feeling lazy” too or just very busy!)


This week went well, we hit our goal of 20 contacts at the end of the week, and we even hit our goal of 4 new investigators. It was pretty awesome.

We went to a house with a lady named Moea for the 5th time maybe and she was finally there again, what was even better was her husband was there as well. He was drinking but he wasn’t drunk yet and he invited us over. Elder Peterson and I had made a goal to take every opportunity to do lessons, so instead of trying to fix a time to come back we decided to do a lesson right there. It went pretty well, and she even told us that her neighbor wanted to see us. So after the lesson we went across the tiny dirt path to the other house and called hello. 

We were greeted by Ramond, she’s probably in her 50's and she said she wasn’t against having us over. So we asked if we could share a message again and she said yes so we went in. In fact she told us the Moea had been there, one of the times we had passed - she was just hiding in the house. Ramond told her that you shouldn’t do that to missionaries because like the Bible says they light be angels in disguise (little do they know we actually are angels - read the bible dictionary:]).

This lady was really awesome, she’s already had the missionaries once before, but is a little held up by that fact that she is adventist. However, she shared some pretty interesting things with us. She says she doesn’t talk at Church anymore because when she asks question- or thinks outside of the box- she starts an argument. Alors, she told us she now sits silently at church and doesn’t talk. She even said she was confused why if God only speaks truth, and if the Bible contains the truth, why are there so many churches? Her pastor (not sure what they have at the adventist church) said it’s the same God, just worshipped different ways. She didn’t buy it because she said you can’t interpret truth, there is only truth.

She’s super ready; even if she told us she will stay adventist. All we need to do is get her to pray and receive a confirmation of the truth....we'll see how that goes this week. What was even cooler about the lesson is that she was speaking this fluent blend of Tahitian and French and Elder Peterson and I understood it all. It was incredible. So just like that we had 3 new amis and we got our goal of 4 new amis this week.

Also this weekend we went to the Motu Tapu with the 2 wards. We did a mini Heiva, and it was fun. President Bize and the entire Presidency du stake were there as well. We competed in various challenges: sac jumping race, running with fruit (coconuts tied on both ends of a log), a coconut fern roof making race, and coconut husking race, and to finish it off a tug of war and a pirogue race (ocean canoe race) just search Vaa and you'll see what they are. I liked the fruit race, lots of people said I was a rocket. Thank you Pole Vault!

It was a good time. Unluckily, my camera died because I forgot to charge it the night before.

President and Sister Bize et moi

We got to spend a lot of time with President Bize, our mission president, this weekend. It was really awesome. He's a super awesome person; his wife is awesome as well. He's making LOTS of changes that are really good. First of all for all P-day activities he said as long as we tell whatever leader is over us where we will be and what we will be doing we can go. Hikes, sporting activities, even boats in the lagoon are fine as long as it’s not dangerous. He said we need to use our own judgment.

He also made many changes in the leadership of the mission. There is a hierarchy now, because he said there were too many fresh missionaries as Leaders when they still need to be trained. Also, only the most obedient missionaries, as well as missionaries that have been out for a while will be leaders/trainers/island missionaries. This means as well that A DZ must pass by DL, and he said only "older" DZ/DL's will be trainers. (Ed. note: DZ = zone leader and DL = district leader. A zone is made up of multiple districts. A district is a collection of missionary companionships. These are typically designated geographically.)

These changes are going to eliminate lots of problems I think, especially inadequate trainers.

I REALLY like his style.

Plus, he did a meeting just for us to discuss the problems in the ward. We could tell all the problems without being criticized for "complaining" for once. Then they wanted to personally see the house to make sure it was safe and up to date.

Overall from the visit I got the impression that they really worry about us, and that our feelings are their most important priority. It was great.

ummm...Have a great week. I'll try to send pictures later!

Love you all a ton!

Elder Molinari

Pain Raisan

4 August 2014 Bora Bora

This week we had a funny experience en faisant (by doing) port à port (door to door).

We approached two houses at the very end of a quartier ( neighborhood...but a single street), and because I couldn’t really decide which one to go to, Elder Peterson just ended up yelling “Iaorana” to see who would come out first.

The house on the very end ended up being the winner. Two little girls came out one was the neighbor, the daughter of the family. They probably had 8 - 9 years. We said hello and asked if their parents were there. One of them, Ravahere, ran to the house to get her mother.

We waited a little bit and she came back and said her mother was busy. We asked her to find out what her mother was busy with, so she ran back and asked. Then came back and said “with the baby.”

We asked what her name was then, and she told us “Ravahere,” then we asked what her mother's name was. So she ran back to the house and asked, came back and said her name. Then we asked, what her last name was, and she couldn’t remember - so she went to go ask again.

At this point I was chuckling pretty well because she kept running back and forth asking her mother questions. It was pretty cute.

Then she came back. We asked if her mother had talked with the missionaries before. She left, came back, "yes". Where? Another trip. “Raiatea.”

Then we gave her a Book of Mormon to give to her mother - after all the questions. Her mother accepted it and we are going to try to pass by again this week. We gave the two girls each an Article of Faith card, because they have a picture of Jesus on them with children.

It was a touching experience for me to share the gospel par l'intermediare d'une petite fille (through a little girl)

This morning we went and baked Pain Raisan with a couple of investigators that are really old. They had a pâtisserie here in Bora when they were younger. Their names are Jean Jacque and Marie Claude. Jean Jacque is French. He got married on Bora when he was stationed here in the military and never returned to France. 

Jean Jacque, Elder Lee Chip Sao, Marie Claude and Elder Peterson

We went SUPER early this morning and made raisin bread with them. It's been a looooooong time since they baked something. It took us a while, but it was worth it. It was delicious!

Jean Jacque provided instructions. We followed.

One pan done

Lookin' good!

Voila`!

Hiking the Summit

Here are the promised pictures from our hike last week. It takes a long time to upload pictures from these old computers. Sorry for the delay, but here they are! I hope you enjoy them.

It was a gorgeous day for our hike.

This is our companionship -
Elder Lee Chip Sao, Elder Peterson et moi.

So we begin. Onward and upward!

This was from the first lookout point.

The closer point to the left is our destination.

Almost there!

Made it!

This is the view from the summit.

We actually hiked on a bit further.

This is the view of the other side.

I still have those abs!