Tanner In Tahiti: I'm in the Marquesas!

Kaoha!

It's Marquesan now! My first sector is Nuku Hiva, and my companion is Elder Isabell. He's from Arkansas, and has been here for over a year. His French is super good, which is super helpful for me to learn. For the most part it's 100% French that I hear and speak all day. The people here speak like the worst French ever haha it's so hard to understand. Especially all the papa's' (grandpa's), they speak like super gruff low and lazy all the time. The women are a lot easier to understand, they speak a lot better for the most part. There is a lot of Marquesan that I don't understand, although it is really similar to Tahitian, but I'm not gonna worry about that until I'm a little better at French, probably in a few weeks or so. The food here is super super good, fish and rice every meal for the most part. The water isn't clean to drink, but there is like a spring where everyone fills up all of their water bottles that's supposedly clean (finger's crossed), and that's all we drink. The population here is somewhere around 3,000 and we're the only two missionaries on this island. There's also 2 missionaries on Hiva Oa, another Marquesan Island, and that's it for the Marquesan missionaries. Normally when missionaries get sent here, because it's so different, they stay for like 4-8 months, so I'm betting I'll end up staying here for a long time. It's hard because it's one of the most difficult sectors in the mission, the people here aren't nearly as receptive to the church or the missionaries, and the branch here is super small. Idk how many members there are here, but there are about 30-35 active members. We don't have a branch mission president (branch mission leader), which makes it super hard for us to get things done and use the branch. But c'est pas grave! We'll figure out how to make things work here haha. I don't have my suitcases with all my stuff in them, they send them by boat. So I'm living off of like 2 shirts and 2 garments hahaha but no problem.

Tuesday: the plane flight over here was super long, but it wasn't too bad because we could sleep for some of it. I read a talk while I was on the airplane, The fourth missionary by Lawrence E. Corbridge. It is probably my favorite talk I have ever read, definitely mission changing and life changing as well. It is focused on missionaries, but I encourage you guys to read it because you can for sure get things out of it. Especially Ty, you need to read it before you leave on your mission haha. We had a nice welcome at the airport by a bunch of zl's, the ap's, and a senior couple, bearing tons of necklaces.

Wednesday: We all slept at different al's houses that night, and headed over to the President's house in the morning. We had instruction and ate a bunch of food all day, and it was super fun. After that we found out where we were all serving and who our companions were. Because Elder Isabell was already here, I was on a split with the al's of faaa that night.

Thursday: In the morning I had a flight at 6am. I flew through Hiva Oa, we stopped there for about 40 minutes for the airplane to refuel, then flew to Nuku Hiva. The plane was super small, and the airports were sooo small. Elder Isabell was there on arrival, and we drove with one of the members for about an hour to one of the only cities here, Taiohae, where we live. Our house is the most beautiful house in the whole mission, we're super super lucky. We have really nice furniture, and such a pretty view of the ocean from our porch. We taught a few lessons that day as well as Friday, which wen't alright, and our investigators are making some decent progression.

Saturday:We drove to Taipivai and fill up our like 50 huge water bottle with Frere Coco and his wife, an old couple that is super super helpful here and most of the support we get comes from them. They feed us a lot and give us rides everywhere haha. Then Sunday was church and we did some contacting that night as well, without any huge success.

The work is pretty slow here in Nuku Hiva as it is, which means there's lots of room to improve. I really like Elder Isabell a lot, and we're like the first obedient missionaries here ever, I swear, all the members and inactive members and stuff keep asking us to do stuff like watch movies and play poker and stuff, and they told us that all the other missionaries have done that in the past, all these traditions and stuff that we're not putting up with haha. But don't get me wrong, I love it here so much, probably the prettiest place I've ever seen, the only thing comparable being Interlaken.

Je vous aime beaucoup!

Elder McQuiston