October 3, 2011

This week Elder Bell and I were having an awesome time. We did a lot of great work. We did some contacting and the people did some gentle rejecting. But we had some success anyways. One family, before we even had the chance to talk invited us in to eat. They poured us a couple bowls of coffee. Thanks but no thanks. Then they served us two huge plates of food despite us telling them that we were literally on our way to eat. It was cool. After I asked if we could have a moment and I was able to testify to this whole family about the church with the help of my companion. They accepted it. Cool stuff.  We did some good work and that's the most important.  I'll give it one last go before I get transferred (normally at the end of this month). Pray that I go off to some really cool island and that I don't have to suffer in the city. It can happen. Have a good week. I'll talk to you next time when I'll only have 4 months left. Weird. Time's really moving now. And conference was awesome, but my fourth and last one of my mission. Okay I'll end there. Next week I'll tell you what happens. See ya

September 26, 2011

We had a great week this week. We taught quite a few lessons. One of our investigators just moved into the Vairao Mayor's yard. It was a cool lesson. He's getting baptised the eighth of October with two others. I'll give you the full stories after. We're also making some serious progress with a few others. Torea who found us. Has completely turned his life around. The word of wisdom was a real challenge but he just blew it out of the water. We also taught an ex Jehovah's witness the other day and she was blown away. So the work is moving right along here.  Yesterday we went around and committed their members to find people and went around finding others. There was such a strong spirit. We were very bold and we found a lot of people. I had a blast. Us two (Elder Abner) and their ward mission leader were like the dream team. Also I did an interview for a kids baptism on Friday and he wanted me to confirm him. He lives all the way in Tiare (my old sector). At first I was like "No, come on man I live in Vairao." He persisted and I confirmed him. It was the opening day of the new church in my old ward. Cool! I'm way stoked for conference. I'll let you know what happens here. The zone is nuts but the sector is sweet. Wish me luck.

September 19, 2011

 I'm with Elder Mo now. He's a cool guy. He told me if his companion wants to work hard he'll do it. Sounds good enouph to me. We've gotten stuff done since he got here. New investigators have been flowing in. It's the best feeling in the world to find people that accept us and then accept the message on top of that. We also ate with the Mata family the other day and they brought someone along. She was just a little interested in the lessons. Then she came to our stake conference yesterday and she was so touched by the spirit that she cried, accapted the lessons, and even wanted to bear her testimony infront of everyone later that night. But she couldn't because the stake presidency failed to announce it and then after being informed just shrugged their shoulders and smiled. Come on guys. It's okay whatever. I'm sorry I really have to hurry today. I'll just finish by saying the gospel is still true, and the mission is still awesome.

September 12, 2011

 I pick up my new companion Thursday. His name is Elder Mo. I don't know him very well but I do know his parents. They live in Hitia'a, meaning he'll be serving in his stake. And his parents (who are awesome) already have the bad habit of going to visit their son no matter where he serves. Whatever though, I'm sure things will work out great, even better than now. President is my friend. Oh by the way- transfers are next week and now we'll have four assistants. Three of which are from my district. Frischknecht and Coulson are serving in the center of Papeete as an office couple, they at least have a sector though. Then Redding and Elder Tahiata are going to be travelling assistants. Cool for them!We're still juggling two sectors but normally that will change this week. They're sending the Elder that the members didn't like back with someone else. It was weird being in the other's sector. We taught someone the other day with a baptismal date fixed. I had never met them but it was up to me to share the message. During the prayer I felt that I really needed to ask them about the Book of Mormon. By the way, since Elder Hamula came I feel like each lesson is 100 percent inspired. It's so cool. Anyways after asking a few questions I found out that they didn't read the BOM nor did they know what it is. Wow.. Just wow. Well we took care of the situation but it makes me wonder. We're also starting a new program with our ward mission leader where we now share messages every Wednesday on the radio. Pretty soon we'll go worldwide. But for the time being it's just a few communities. I'm stoked on the idea. Other than that someone died so we had to go to the funeral. It's different here. They invite different religions and each one is given a time to explain there idea of what happens to the dead guy. I'm pretty sure we won. Fortunately I didn't have to talk or anything. It was crazy when they put him in the ground one of his four wives fainted. I really thought we might have to dig another hole for her. She got it back together though. Also I just saw my blog and it's awesome! Way to go mom.

-Orometua Oldroyd

September 5, 2011

Happy labor day! The holiday I've never understood. Home sounds chill. Our house is going to be totally different when I get there huh? I'm glad you can follow other blogs, that way you can get a more complete picture of how it is here. Speaking of pictures I sent home those three usb keys full of goodness this week. You should probably get them about two weeks from now. Also just randomly, I got a whole bunch of spiritual music from Elders Frischneckt and Redding. I'm almost positive I'll only have one more transfer. I'll be getting my new companion next Thursday when mine finishes, suspense. Mine's good, even though he's finishing he's fighting till the end. But my next companion will have the ability to make or break the sector. I'll devote at least 90 percent of my prayers for Tally. Lots of kids in our family now. Tell Liz she doesn't have to wait for me... but I'd really really love to be there. Tell her to hang in there until February. Oh and by the way- president asked us if we'd like to extent our missions until March. At first I said yes but after actually thinking about it I decided I prefer sometime in February. I hope you guys support my decision. Everyone except for Coulson decided the same thing too. We'll see though, it's still a long ways away (in not mission terms). Anyways here's my week in a nutshell. Monday we had our super zone council dealy, Tuesday an Elder was sick so I spent the whole day with him receiving spiritual enlightenment while my companion and Elder Abner did their lessons. Wednesday we had our big conference with Hamula and all the missionaries on Tahiti. Also incredible. That night we had a fireside with him and afterwords we slept in Papeete with the assistants and Zone leaders (Coulson and Redding). Also an Elder from our Zone got sent home to have an operation because he has cancer. He's still a missionary though. That would be as hard as it gets. There with his family and all. Then he should be coming back. They also took his companion. When I called to see what would happen with the sector they asked us to watch over it. so yeah now we do both sides of the presqu'ile. Pueu and Tautira as well as our normal side. So we spent a lot of time trying to find their investigators. We pulled it off alright with the members and all. So yeah that's the big news. Thanks for the package, I'm stoked. Also a guy asked me to ask you guys to send one of those oil holder dealys that's metal on the outside and glass on the inside with the Christmas Package. Weird huh? One more package and it's doneski. Anyways tell me how the Utes to and all, I'll talk to you next week. Love, Elder Oldroyd

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.