August 30, 2011

                                                                Elder James J. Hamula                                                      

I'll just say for president I am figuring it out little by little. He's a good guy.  It's all good. All I'll really tell you is what happened yesterday.We woke up at three and got there (Papeete) really early. I don't really know why... But it was way super cool. Elder Hamula taught us some pretty incredible stuff. Most of which isn't worthy of being transmitted by email. But let's just say I went there with a lot of questions in my heart and he responded to each one of them as if I had asked him to do so. He prepared nothing coming in but definitely received some inspiration. That meeting will change both my mission and my life. It was cool too since there were probably 20 of us all there sitting on a couch being taught how to be leaders in the mission. Afterwords all of us zone leaders had one on one interviews with him. Too bad for the district leaders. That was a first for me. I learned a whole lot and I'm really sorry that you have to wait to hear it. I definitely felt important though. I gotta bounce. Elder Abner needs us. His companion is either dead or dying of sickness. We'll see. See you next week. I love you all.

August 22, 2011

We had to go to Papeete three times this week. That's an all-day ordeal. It takes almost two hours to get there. Then it takes time and money to find parking and finally we have to walk quite a ways to get where we want to go. So yeah, we had to cancel all or most of our lessons for all of those days. And why did we go you might ask? To buy wedding rings! We also had to buy shoes for the bride and find pants and shirts for the groom. We had some crazy adventures running around in town on foot and even taking other missionaries bikes on occasion to get through traffic quicker.  Friday we had an open house that had so many problems it almost didn't happen. No us, no computer, no dvd, no projector, nobody there, etc. But it happened. We taught the first lesson and watched the first vision movie. Two people there accepted the lessons and one of our investigators who we didn't think would come did and he brought a friend and took him on a tour of the church. Awesome! I gave a Book of Mormon to him and he thumbed through it and said "hmmm this should take me until September."  I was just like go for it dude. He scares me way bad. Normally we can't even get him to look at us or acknowledge our presence even when we're right next door or walking past his house saying hello. Finally after all this nightmare, Sunday was one of the better days of my whole mission. We had a baptism early in the morning for our investigator Tevaria. His father who we baptised two weeks prior was able to perform the ordinance. You could tell his father was the happiest one there. Then at church came the confirmation. So we all get in the circle and then the stake president called his father up with us. I had no idea what was happening. He allowed him to participate the the confirmation telling my companion to change the prayer a little bit to include the Aaronic priesthood as well. Everyone was confused but mostly touched. Especially Toto. He was crying after because he was just so surprised and happy. I was way moved by the experience. Finally that night we ate with an inactive family. We ate a ton. It was almost time to go home and the wife asked for a blessing. Now keep in mind we've done like thirty school blessings this week so I wasn't expecting anything new. She chose me and when I laid my hands on her I felt the spirit just as normal but then something happened and I was completely overtaken. I was pushed to say some things I would have never thought of saying. When it was all over she was totally in tears. I couldn't stop crying even as we were driving away. It was amazing how strong the spirit was. Okay, well I'll leave off with that. Also Elder Abner's email got deleted so he has requested that you put a little "Hi mom" in my blog for him. I'll talk to you next week.

August 15, 2011

Today we went on a hike with our bishop into the jungle. We followed a river into unknown territory for three hours cutting our path through the brush. It was nuts. I killed so much nature today I almost feel guilty. We never found the source but we ate our sandwiches and made the trip back down. IT was pretty cool. Except for Abner walked into my machete twice on the way down. The angels protected him though.  I'm sotally toked on the whole 18 month thing. That's my last big mark. I'm running for home base now. It's weird each six months has gone twice as fast the one before. We'll see how the fourth quarter goes. This is the important one. I've done the other three and I have no regrets. I've just got to finish strong. I haven't yet burned the pants but I will soon. Oh and Elder Redding has to finish pretty close to our date meaning normally we'll all be finishing at that same time. We'll see though. Anyways coming back- there is sooooo much less Tahitian here I am almost afraid to lose it. It's hard. Life goes on though. My companion had a random change of heart last week and registered himself for college starting the 22nd. So now he's trying to finish early. So in probably five weeks I'll have a new companion. Thanks for your support. I'll just keep giving it my all here. Fourth quarter.

August 8, 2011

I know I never talk about weather conditions or food. It never ever changes. It's always between 26 and 30 Celsius in the day and about 20 at night. Sometimes it rains sometimes it doesn't. The food is almost always raw fish or chicken cut up and thrown in with some kind of vegetable. And the rice, there is never a meal or even a snack without freaking rice. I'll have to take some more pictures of food to send you guys. As for our house it's... Classic. Anyways not too much happened this week for me either. We went to Papeete three times. I wanted to die. Monday we were a taxi for missionaries. Wednesday it was for two investigators and a Mormon-hater. The one investigator is a girl and she's pregnant. Plus she's not used to cars so about every ten minutes we had to pull over real fast so she could run outside and throw up. This process of getting on the road, slamming on the brakes, and having her run out and throw up happened at least ten times as we went around the whole island. Sweet. Then Thursday we went up again to go to the temple. It was great. I hadn't been in a year so it felt like my first time. I felt better than that first time though. Plus the spirit was soooo strong I couldn't believe it. And to top it all off this week we finally saw the fruits for all of our searching for investigators. We got some new investigators. My favorite was this one where I just went to shake their hands and say hi before going to eat next door. When she saw me she read my name tag and asked me if I could come teach her about who Jesus Christ is (looking at my name tag). Well sure, that's actually our job. So yeah we came back the next day and had a huge effect on her according to the members present. They followed up and she was really touched. Plus her dying baby was healed because she prayed as we had told her to do. Awesome! Way to go spirit. Well that's about it as far as positive experiences go. Otherwise president is kind of scary right now. He knows everything we do and everywhere we go. Then he uses others to see if we tell the truth. It's kind of becoming a monarchy, and we're the slaves. Just kidding but seriously. We're obedient but we are always put on the spot as if we were Babylon. He even knows where we eat lunch. It should be interesting cause he's coming tomorrow to judge our capability as missionaries. Talk to you next week with less than six months left. Love, Elder Oldroyd

August 1, 2011

Yo mom, sorry I'm so late today we had to go to pape-shootmeintheface-ete to take someone's bike in. Thats nuts that Nelson is leaving. He's two years younger man. Real quick for the questions- I got the flash drives back and I'll work on refilling them and sending them pretty soon here. Plus I bought a 32 gig with the credit card. The other one is full. Wario is as classic as ever. We get along alright. The stuff works, I'm lookin better. I'll probably need more even though I am embarrassed to say so. Wednesday we had a type of leadership meeting where president Sinjoux gave us some tough assignments. Then we had to do two transfers which ended up leaving about 10 missionaries all at the same spot looking at each other all asking "how?". Oh and one Elders companion got transferred, because of his multiple girlfriends, but no replacement came. So for three days we did both our lessons in our sector and his lessons in his. He slept at our house thus leaving the three of us to sleep on the ground. It was sooo fun. I love Elder Abner. He made things fun. He said it was the best day of his life. He was right to say so, we had a spiritual party.

Finally his new companion came Friday night. He has two months left and he is serving ten minutes from his house in his own stake. Can you imagine if I went to serve on like 33rd south for my last ten weeks? Tough stuff. He's stoked though, he knows everyone. He's home. And finally yesterday was an amazing baptism from our investigator Toto. We woke up at 5:15 and got ready. His baptism was at seven. The font was empty when we got there. But it worked out. I baptised him. It was perfect. Afterwords he bore his testimony which blew every one's socks off. After church we gave him the priesthood so that when his son comes back from the tuamotus he can baptise him. I'm so stoked on the mission! Well yeah that's about it though. Sorry I can't give more details but if I did what would have to talk about when i come back? Just kidding I try. Anyways I'll talk to you next week.