Christmas Skype!

It was so great to talk with Elder McQuiston!  He is doing so good.  It was neat to hear his fun personality that we all miss!  He shared some of the top things he has learned on his mission which was super touching to his mom.  He also shared his sweet testimony in French which was awesome!  We sure love this missionary and miss him so much.  We are grateful for his love of the gospel and the people he is teaching.  We love you Elder McQuiston!

Night before Christmas

la Ora na homa!

Transfer calls were this week and...there aren't any changes, we're together again for the next 6 weeks.  That will make 6 months with Elder Omorodion, a fourth of my mission will be spent serving with him.  Luckily we have a good time together, and we work really well together as well.

We had a really cool week this week, we were able o see some really cool miracles take place.  The first miracle is our fireside that we did here at Vaiaau.  We did it last Monday night, and it was awesome, there were a lot of people that came, and several investigators.  The only problem was that we had some serious technical difficulties with the lack of a HDMI cable, as well as the fact that our DMP who was leading it and one of our speakers didn't show up.  We had some serious last-minute scrambling, but miraculously all went well and we had a really good smooth fireside.

On Tuesday, we did a split with the district leader at Tahaa, and Elder Madsen came to work in my sector with me.  We had a really difficult day, NO ONE was home.  But at the very end of the day, our last lesson was with Veihiarii.  And during that lesson, we fixed his baptism!  He is our champion, he is so sincere, and his parents support his baptism, which is a miracle because the only time we met them they yelled at us and kicked us off their property very rudely.  That's super cool, I'm so happy we are finally starting to see some fruits here.

We also had another miracle with Paul, the 9 year boy that we found a while ago.  He wanted to get baptized, but his parents wouldn't let him.  His dad is a returned missionary and was excommunicated.  We went over to their house and had a really inspired discussion with the father.  He was touched by the spirit and said that he changed his mind about Paul.  We're hoping and praying that everything will turn out right for his baptism. 

Saturday was a fun day, we had our ward Christmas party here at the chapel.  For Tahitians, ward Christmas party is code for maa Tahiti (Tahitian food, consisting of all the traditional food here, including a pig cooked in a pit as with a luau).  The whole ward including a lot of investigators and inactive members came to the church, and we all ate together and talked.  After the Christmas party we went to the airport to say goodbye to a sister that was finishing her mission, and then we went to a parade in the city and ate at the roulette.

That's the rundown of the week, I'll send the pics a little bit later.  I love you all!

Elder McQuiston

Pics: me cooking up some fish, our ward Christmas party, the going away for Soeur Turina, our zone t-shirts and random pics.

8 churus

Churu gin

This pday rolled around so quickly, it feels almost like it wasn't a full week since the last time I talked to you all...  There hasn't been a ton that went down since Wednesday, I'll just give you a few updates and stories.

The work actually picked up a lot this past week, we were able to find several really potential investigators!  One of them is named V.  He is the little brother of our elders quorum president, and is 18 years old.  We found him thanks to our fireside, and started the lessons with him.  He is super sincere and has such a big desire to do what is right.  He asked us some really good questions, and wants to get baptized.  He came to church yesterday and loved it, I really think that he's gonna get baptized.

We had a pretty fun day on Friday, Elder Omorodion's birthday.  We had our district meeting, and then went to the sister's house, because the grandma that they live with made us some food for his birthday.  We did a little split after that with the city elders, and then went to a fireside over on the other side of the island.  We ate there and then ended up having a sleepover with the other elders because it was too late to drive home.

I came up with a new motto for the rest of my mission, "Je ne crains personne", which means "I don't fear anyone".  I have decided that I am going to do everything possible to preach the gospel to as many people as I can, I'm gonna open my mouth and talk with everyone.  Kinda funny we were driving and I saw a white couple reading, so I pulled over and went to give them a book of mormon.  Apparently, French people aren't like Tahitians, because they gave us a cold greeting, packed up their bags and left on their scooter...a mission would be so hard in France hahaha.

A funny story that happened on Wednesday, we were at the city buying our groceries, when a drunk guy spotted us.  He started yelling out Jehovahs Witnesses!  You are Satan!  And followed us around everywhere we went.  I expected to get persecuted on my mission, but not by drunk people and for the wrong religion...we got a pretty good laugh out of that.

Je vous aime, churu maitai partout!

Elder McQuiston

Pics: 
 1.  A pic from the lunch at the sisters house
 2.  a pic from an activity with the young single adults

Zone Conference

la ora na famille ma!

At long last pday is here.  That totally threw off my schedule, I was like so tired yesterday and the day before...partly because we had to wake up a little early a couple of times, but who knew how just changing the pday can mess with you after a year and a half.  This past week went pretty smoothly, not a ton of news on the work front though.  We were able to find a few new investigators last week, the most part of which came from our fireside, so that's sweet!  Things are slowly getting better here. Besides that we had a ton of stuff we had to plan for this week, with a tour of the stake that we are going to be doing this next week, and a fireside in every ward.  We also had to plan for zone conference and stuff, so it's nice to have all of that over with.

On Saturday we did a reference harvest, which was a big success.  All of the ward council came to the chapel with the district.  We split into 8 teams, and went to all the member's homes.  We were able to get over 30 references, which was great.  Super funny story, me and Fr. Charles were talking to a family kinda far from the main road, and then started heading back to the road.  We were on a super skinny dirt road, and as we got closer to the exit we saw some people in reflective vests waving us forward.  As we got closer, it turns out that they were really waving us backwards.  We started backing up, and all of a sudden a huge pack of 50 or so runners rounded the corner in front of us, running towards the car.  We hurried in reverse, and I was forced to fly into the ditch on the side of the road...on the side of the road we cheered on all the runners and I made sure to invite them all to church hahaha.  Luckily the truck is 4 wheel drive and we got out of the ditch no problem.  Turns out there was a major race and the family we were talking to lives right in the path of the race...what luck!  Haha

On Sunday the fireside went awesome, we had a great turnout, and we were able to fix lessons with five investigators that came.  I had the easy part, I just had to do the introduction and conduct  I also sang two songs, one with all the missionaries and the other was in a trio.  They both went pretty well, I tried to sing quietly because well...you know.  We all ate dinner at DMP's house after that, and had some good laughs.

Monday was the splits with the assistants, Elder Crandall from Spanish Fork and Elder Donadier form France.  We had some good laughs with the assistants, there was one guy that told u about how he was disappointed in Mary for putting Jesus in a basket on the Nile.  Also during a lesson it started pouring, and when we went to put our shoes on they were literally filled to the brim with water.  We also ate the most money meal, some freshly caught fried lagoon fish, with a creamy vanilla sauce made with real Raiatea vanilla,  mmmmm.

The conference went great yesterday as well, I was a little bit nervous driving President and his wife around, but they are so awesome, I love them!  My interview with President went great as well, all in all it was a really edifying day.

I love you all, and talk to you in not too long!

Elder McQuiston

Pics: Me and Katarina, the missionaries at Raiatea at our DMP's house, DMP is in the back standing up, the sunset yesterday and our zone at zone conference.