They're married!!

 Hey fam!

Man we had a super crazy week this week, and a ton of stuff went down.  It was an exciting week for sure, with transfers, leadership council, and a wedding among others.  It was pretty tiring, but things have settled down now, and we should be able to get back to the grind this next week.

We had a pretty busy day last Tuesday.  We were waiting for my companion to arrive, so in the morning I went contacting with Elder Claflin in his new area and had some good laughs in the rain.  We then go a call from the assistants asking to help them out with the transfers, so we head out of the zone and helped moved some missionary's stuff around.  We went to the airport after that and picked up Elder Kerr and Elder Kimball, my second born and my new companion, both of whom were at Tahaa.  We had to drop of Elder Kerr at Papara in my old area, which was an hour away.  We hit up McDonald's on the way, where the drive-through lady roasted me, "Sir, does the person next to you speak French?"  The impatient lady gave us a pretty good laugh, it was humbling hahah.

Wednesday was our district temple trip, so we went to the 7am session.  I love going to the temple so much, it is such an uplifting and edifying experience every time.  While in the celestial room I took the time to pray for and seek inspiration for our investigators.  I noticed how clear and direct the responses to the questions I asked were.  It made me recall President Nelson's talk about revelation, when he said, "one of the things the spirit has repeatedly impressed upon my mind since my new calling as President of the Church is how willing the Lord is to reveal His mind and will."  I testify as well that the Lord will reveal his will to us if we diligently seek it and keep his commandments.  We have the huge blessing of having temples so close to us, and should fully take advantage of being able to enter in the Lord's house, to always stay on the covenant path.

After the temple, we picked up all of the greenies from President's house.  Four out of the 7 companionships in our zone is a missionary in training, so we had a lot of missionaries and suitcases to drive around, and had to drive to the docks to drop off the  Moorea missionaries as well.  I don't know if I already mentioned that, but the neighboring island of Moorea is also in our zone.  Elder Claflin's son is a short Mexican/American name Elder Torres, that speaks flawless Spanish and pretty decent French.  He's pretty cool.

Thursday was our big leadership council at President's house.  It was a really good leadership council, we had some really good discussions.  It is pretty crazy, there is only one missionary in the whole mission that has been out longer than I have...I feel so old haha.  We had a super cool experience that same night as well when we were at Timothee and Ludmilla's house.  Timothee was having a pretty rough time, and going through some withdrawals.  I was pretty nervous, because his wedding was two days later, and I really wanted him to be clean  for his wedding.  I felt impressed to call President Fox and ask him to come give Timothee a blessing, but pushed away the thought because it was already late, and I figured he was probably busy.  But I felt imipressed to call him again, so I figured I better listen.  It turns out that President was free, and so he came over with his wife.  I then found out that Timothee had been praying for that since this morning, but didnt' want to ask for it.  Well President came over, and we had a really spiritual experience.  I don't feel like I should give too many details, but it was an experience that I won't forget. 

On Saturday, Timothee and Ludmilla got married, and Ludmilla got baptized!! Man that was such a cool experience, I really love them.  There was 20 missionaries that came that had all taught them, as well as President and Sister Fox.  Elder Bradshaw, my MTC companion, was the one that baptized Ludmilla.  It was a really happy day, full of laughs and love and smiles.  I lvoe this work so much!!

And also you guys.  Peace out

Elder McQuiston

1-4 are all pics of the wedding and baptism
5-Craig and I

6 & 7-picking up my companion and my son from the airport on their way back from Tahaa

8 & 9- dumping out my investigators beer

Taharaa til I die

Hey Fam!!

Well, this week flew by.  It's transfer day today, and we don't have a ton of time, so we're gonna keep it short today.  Don't feel too bummed out tho because there wasn't' really a whole lot that went down, so you all aren't really missing much.

Speaking of transfers, my companion got transferred to Papeete, my new companion is Elder Kimball, who I know pretty well.  hew as the missionary that replaced me a Tahaa, and we served in the same zone for a few transfers.  I'm super pumped, Elder Kimball is super sweet, and I'm pretty happy to be killed by an Amercian haha.  Elder Claflin, one of my buddies from the MTC got transferred to my zone and is going to be training in the same house as me.  My last two transfers are gonna be way fun, I'm way happy about it.

Let's see what else...we did a bunch of splits this past week, one day I went to the area of the office elders which are in our zone.  It was weird doing that kind of missionary work, not teaching any lessons, just going to the boats and the airport, office work, dealing with missionaries needs, etc. Let's just say I'm way glad I'm not in the office, and idk how dad did it for so long.

Oh!  There was something super cool on Saturday morning, my first convert, Soeur Marie Christine got endowed!!  That was one of the coolest experiences of my mission, seeing her go through the temple.  If you don't remember she's from Ua Huka, and came a long way to her endowment.  Getting people through the temple is our main goal as missionaries, and I was so happy to finally see one of my coverts go through.  The spirit was so strong, I know this chruch is true.  It was nice catching up with her as well, it has been so long. haha
A week ago we were pretty lonely in our 2 person house, so we decided to move into the house with the other 4 elders in our district, and it's a party now.  A good party the don't worry ;)

Well that's about it for the week...I love you all, have a good week!

Elder McQuiston

Pics:
1-We were walking on teh road and like 20 dogs came flying out the garage
2-played some volleyball with the crew
3-Marie Christine's endowment
4-cookin up some fresh raw fish
5-10 -Transfer day; saying goodbye to elder Tomasini and my last goodbye to Elder Omorodion before he takes the plane tonight

3rd times the charm

la ora na tout le monde!!

I hope that all is well back home chez vous!  Things are going pretty well here, it picked back up a little bit from last week.  We were able to have some great conversations with a lot of potential investigators, which gives some hope for the area for the next couple transfers.  All of the investigators that we are teaching progressed as well, things are looking pretty good here at Taharaa.

On Tuesday we had our multizone conference with President Fox, which was awesome.  It was probably my favorite zone conference so far with President Fox, it was really well done, and really uplifting.  We were able to make some plans and goals, and discuss some challenges that the missionaries are facing.  

I don't know if I mentioned this, but we started teaching English classes in our area, and it's kinda going crazy, we are now teaching four classes a week.  On Saturday we had 4 different people randomly call us to ask if they could come to the English classes as well, which is awesome.  it's a great way to serve, and we are making some great contact with a lot of investigators.  Hopefully, we should be able to start teaching some of these people the Gospel as well. If only people were as interested about learning the Gospel as they are about learning English...

On Saturday we decided to make ourselves some sashimi for lunch.  We went to carrefour and grabbed ourselves a hunk of fresh tuna, and went to work at home.  Well...I've got a lot of work to do.  It definitely wasn't the same sashimi that I've been eating at member's houses.  That's alright though, practice makes perfect is what they say. 

Man I'm out of things to say already....not a super exciting week.  Sorry about that folks.  I love you all, have a good week!

Pics: 

1-a pic from a faatamaaraa with a rich family that we ate with that have a way nice home on the mountain.
2-if you zoom in on that pic you see a bowl of cooked turtle, which is definitely illegal, but I had to try it..yah it was pretty good.
3-A pic of my dmp, with his wife and granddaughter in the background, they are investigators that we are teaching.
4-A pic of our house and the car that I drive
5-A pic of my companion all happy because he traced my genealogy back to Adam and Eve

2 birds with one stone

la ora na tout le monde!

How are you all??


This week was a little bit tough in terms of missionary work.  This area is pretty challenging, and we have a lot of investigators that require a lot of attention, time and effort but they progress very slowly.  Gratefully, on the mission, although there are tough weeks, there are never bad weeks.  Even as we go through trials and hardships, thanks to our Savior and our righteous living, we can be joyful regardless.

I may have mentioned this already but drugs are a big problem in this area.  We have a few investigators that are trying to get off of drugs and are working towards baptism.  Well, this week one of these investigators relapsed after having been off of them for a couple of months.  In two days, he spent a thousand dollars and doesn't even remember most of it.  For three days he spent the whole day in his bed and doesn't even know what happened.  And then in the days that followed, we did some service projects helping him get back to normal, calming him, running errands with him, etc.  It is crazy the effects that drugs have, they are so horrible...

But despite the difficulties that we have with our investigators, there were a few highlights of this week.  One of which was that I was able to go to the endowment and sealing of some recent converts from Raiatea.  That was a really really cool experience and was the first sealing that I've been to before.  The spirit is crazy strong when covenants in the temple are made, and I am really grateful for the chance I had to be able to be there.

I ran out of time to say more, but I love you all!

Elder McQuiston

Pics
1-4-This extremely crazy Marquisien guy that we ran in to
5- Me trying to take a picture of the ocean, and I realize that there's an Asian reading a book sideways....of course
6-7- some pics we took from the top of a mountain in our area
8-A picture with the family being sealed

President Nelson has my heart

laorana tatou!

What an amazing conference weekend!  We had a little bit of a tough week this week, but the conference made up for it.  The reason that I say that it was a little bit tough is because of our lack of investigators here.  We don't have very many that are reliable and had a lot of lessons canceled on us this week.  But that is definitely part of the mission, you can't expect much else.

However, we did have a couple miracles this week.  We found a new investigator named Lana.  She is 32, and we found her at the genealogy center.  Apparently, she comes to the chapel every day for hours on end to do her genealogy.  She accepted the invitation to do a lesson with us, and as soon as I said the opening prayer she burst into tears and told us about 10 times that she wants to change religions and become Mormon.  That is definitely something that you don't see every day.  She doesn't live in our area sadly so I won't be able to see what happens with her, but the Papeete Elders will take care of her.  I also met an inactive member the other day names C.  that I met like 7 months ago at Tahaa, when I had shared a message with him. When I talked to him, he remembered exactly what I had shared with him, and he has come back to church here in Taharaa ever since.  That was a pretty cool experience.  He is a super nice guy,  but has a mental handicap or something.  He has a great memory and understands everything, but he takes 5 seconds to process any information, which makes talking to him similar to a phone call with a bad connection that is delayed.  That makes for long lessons, but that's alright. 

So back to conference, what an uplifting and memorable conference!  I felt the spirit so strong and was able to receive answers to almost all of the questions that I had prepared.  The gates of revelation were definitely open!  It is awesome to have a prophet that is active and in shape, he gave some powerful talks.  I really liked the talk that the gave Sunday morning about revelation, and the necessity for each one of us to know how the spirit speaks to us.  The talk that Larry Y. Wilson gave that same session on the same subject was awesome as well, and one of my favorites.  I loved the talk by Elder Bednar as well on meekness, he's one of my favorite apostles, and I think that meekness is something that I really can work on.  The other talk that I loved was by Massimo De Feo about pure love, which should be the foundation of our daily life.  I will work my hardest to love these people with pure love, and to do everything I can to help them feel the Savior's love for them these last three months.

I love you all!

Elder McQuiston

Pics:

Back on the black sand beaches
A picture of my shoe...hang in there, three more month's baby!