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.

July 25, 2011

In two weeks I'll have been on my mission for 18 months. My district's trying to figure out if we should extend our mission or just finish at the normal time. We'll see; we've still got a while. So the work goes on here in Vairao. We should be splitting our ward next week meaning an even bigger sector and even more Jehovah's Witnesses to preach to us. I don't have a whole lot to report. But we had two major successes this week. We fixed the baptism for our investigator Toto for next week. They chose me to baptise him. His last name is really super long Teriiteporouarai and his real first name is apparently worse. Whaterrr. Then his son will get baptised probably two weeks after (hopefully by his father) and then our investigator Poni will get baptised two weeks after that. So we are having baptisms consistently about every two weeks. Also there was one this week and the one two weeks before. Success! Things are really moving along here. I love the work, but I just hope that we'll be able to keep finding people. That's the hard part. We look for help but don't really find it. But I know they try to try. So yeah basically the mission is awesome, hard, but awesome. We'll see what the next few months have to offer.

July 18, 2011

 I've been wondering if it would really be worth it to go to Rurutu. Expensive stuff. I can't believe that President Smith called and/or had anything nice to say. Just kidding but seriously.. I'm moderately shocked. I've always done my best but I didn't think he ever saw or noticed. Sweet. Tell him what up if you talk to him again. That guy's such a boss. Love him. K well I just got pressed to go so I will give you only the purest and most important information (there's not a lot). Last week for P-day we rode bumper cars for an hour and a half and ate cotton candy. I felt like a child at a circus because that's exactly what I was. Tuesday we had a ton of lessons and got a surprise call to take an elder all the way to Papeete for a transfer because he kissed a girl the night before at midnight in the mission house. Yeah, okay. And that's the least of his problems. So as punishment he got sent to an awesome island with Elder Ferrin. Poor Ferrin. We did a lot of looking again this week and just a teensy bit of finding. But we had success on the side of baptisms. One of our not so prepared investigators had a few spiritual visions this week and is now ready to be baptised. So this Saturday he'll be baptised. I'm way super stoked and I'll tell you all about it next time. Well now it's off to the Noni factory and then off to save some more souls. Seeya next week. Also thank you so much for your support.

July 11, 2011

                                                       President Benjamin Tauraa Sinjoux

The work here continues. July is by far the hardest month of the year here cause everyone is on vacation. But we have managed to keep it moving. We do lots a looking and just a teensy little bit of finding. But this week we have seen a lot of miracles in that all of our investigators are taking the decision to be baptised. We have four baptisms fixed for this month and August with at least one more coming this week. Therefore making us by far the highest of the zone. Miracles still happen. Monday we were in Papeete the whole day which was kind of lame. But it was all worth it cause we ate at McDonald's. Wednesday we were in Papeete once again for our zone leader meeting dealy with the new pres, President Sinjoux. He's legit. He isn't really going to change anything but he'll make adjustments where it's necessary. So we all really like him. His wife was a big politician before coming on mission.  She doesn't talk, but she rather forcefully puts her words into your ears. We'll see though. Friday we have a Zone Conference and we'll be talking about a "surprise subject". Normally surprises are great but this one bites. Thursday we drove around in circles to get everyone interviewed by president. I tried and succeeded in my fast and furious skills. And finally Friday we had a baptism for our investigator Rahei. From day one she wanted to get baptised and after a long struggle in finally happened. Everything seemed to be against us but it happened. Normally she is way super timid and stuff but as soon as she came out of the water she truly was a new person. Happy and confident. Also the baptism touched one of our eternal investigators who was there, so after he came up to me and he said he's ready to get baptised. Sweet! the spirit rocks. Don't forget it.

July 4, 2011

Family, I'll try and be brief cause our normal email place is closed and it's really expensive here. But basically after your emails I am way super stoked for next year's 4th of July. I'll have you guys I know I celebrated the Fourth here with something even better than blowing up a piece of America. I blew up a piece of a french country! We burned our garbage in our yard as a celebration. And I guess we totally forgot about a can of aerosol so it exploded like our whole neighborhood and my companion screamed like a girl. I was singing the national anthem during the whole ordeal. America rules! Wario is good and the work is hard. Our new president isn't as evil as everyone says. I loved the conference. Our entire mission was there except for two guys. Yeah sorry I'm not gonna have any money for food later so I'm gonna go. We'll be in Papeete today to take someone to the doctor. Lame. Oh yeah one last thing. This week we went to Fenua Aihere to see some members. Look it up on google maps. It's after the end of the road so we had to go on foot in flip flops through the ocean and through rivers. Just like in the movies. Two guys in white shirts going through the jungle. Just know I'm still kickin. And you guys are living the dream life. Keep it up.

June 27, 2011

There isn't really that much to report this week. Just a bunch of lessons and a ton of looking for new investigators. It's the summer vacation meaning pretty much everyone is gone. A good amount of our investigators have already left on vacation and it's only the beginning. So the work is harder than normal. It's moving along though. Our lessons are as powerful as ever. Our investigators can always feel the spirit and they make changes in their lives. The guy who was mad at us last week was also mad at us this week because we got to his house early. But once again we totally blew him away with the spirit and he accepts the Book of Mormon. Also finally the little girl we teach named Rahei got an answer to her prayer about Joseph Smith. She has always wanted to get baptised but she would never ask by prayer if it was true. Well she did it, dangit, and she said the words I'll never get tired of hearing "I got and answer to my prayer......it was a warm feeling." Way to go, spirit. She will be getting baptised next Saturday. Saturday we fasted and went with the ward to reactivate inactive members. It was sweet. Although with one I came a little bit behind the others cause I had to pee and they had already started. So when we first got there they were only talking to her in Tahitian. When I got there they told me to give the message. So I shared a scripture and gave this whole lesson in Tahitian but she was real quiet. I asked her like three times what she thought and she didn't respond. Finally I asked in French and she looked up and me and says "I like this scripture but.. I don't understand a word of Tahitian." Dang it all! So we had to re-explain everything. Well that's about it. Except for I finally found the identical twin of my companion. Wario from Mario Cart. He looks, acts, and grunts like him. Gotta love the mission.