Kaoha, meitai

I'm loving life in the Marquises! We had a super good week this week!  We saw a lot of progression with our investigators, and taught a ton of lessons.  We had a few really good lessons with the branch here as well, and hopefully we should be able to do a lot more splits and get a lot more references.

On Monday we had a super super fun pday...We went  fishing with the Bonno's, a non pracitquant famille.  We drove like 30 minutes to this secluded empty beach, but the water was super high there so we could' fish there.  So we hiked around the mountain basically in the ocean and got completely drenched from head to toe cuz the ocean was so crazy and splashing everywhere.  Free Bonno went insane, and was flying over the rocks killing crabs, super funny.  Then we were fishing, and all of a sudden Frere Bonno jumps in the water with his rod and starts fishing in the middle of the ocean, I have no idea what he was thinking haha he's crazy.  That night we had a faatamaaraa with one of our investigators Kevin, which was super weird cuz he's like the only American here at Nuku Hiva, and we just taught him in English.  He's a super good cook, and made us Spaghetti, a nice break from straight poisson haha. 

There's a ton a reyreys here, which is the Tahitian word for transvestites.  We have some that live on the botton floor of our house, and they invited us over for lunch on Wednesday.  It was super super weird, cuz they both kinda look like girls, but when they talk it's super low and manly.

On Friday we went to go on a split with Frere Hokusai, and when we got there he asked if we had dinner plans, and we told him no. He then asked us if we wanted dog or pig for dinner, which he had killed earlier that week.  We said pig haha and he went inside and came back out with a actual pig leg, with everything but the fur and went and threw it in the sink to defrost.  Then after splits we came back and he prepared it frolic two hours while we just sat there, listening to him and his wife yell at each other over the stupidest stuff.  Bad situation.  Then after all that the food was mediocre at best, and we hustled and ate and left.

On Saturday we were a t Frere Louis' house, our most recent convert here in the branch, although it's been like 8 months or something since his baptism.  We were eating this homemade ice cream sort of stuff out of these small plastic cups, and mine suddenly exploded, and drenched my shirt orange.  Super funny haha it was so bad.  But it's all good I have two more shirts...And we're hoping my suitcases come around Tuesday, but no one really knows haha.

Kotanui everyone, je vous aime!

Elder McQuiston

 Frere Boono fishing in the middle of the ocean

The view form Frere Louis's house 

Our Chapel 

Me waiting for church to start

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

The house I stayed at the first night in Tahiti 

View from the first house I stayed at 

 A Chinese temple in Papeete

The mission home and all of our luggage!

The Temple in Papeete 

 At the Mission Home

 The small airplane I flew on to my first area

 The small airport

 another picture of the airport

 A few from our Island

 Me and Elder Isabel

 A view from our island

 Another view from our island

 The view from our house

A spider I found at our home

I'm in Tahiti!!

Elder McQuiston flew out to Tahiti Tuesday, Sept. 16th. We haven't received an email from him or his Mission President yet, but I did get these pictures off of his Mission President's Facebook page.  Grateful they take the time to post these pictures!  

Deep in thought :) 

All the new missionaries 

 First taste of Tahitian food

 The mission home

Some of my district at the mission home  

 Being picked up at the airport

My Batch at the airport

Mon Dernier Email Dans Le MTC (my last email in the MTC)

la ora na uo'u utuafare!

I can't believe it's finally my last letter here in the MTC!  I've been here so long...1/12 of my mission already.  I'm so pumped to finally be getting on a plane this week, just 4 more days!  (I know countdowns are bad on the mission but we couldn't help it, we're too excited to get out there).  Next time I email, a week from Monday probably, I'll be wearing a pareu in like the prettiest place in the world.

On Saturday I finally reached Alma in the French Book of Mormon, my goal before I left the MTC.  My Tahitian has gotten a lot better, we can teach lessons now in Tahitian without any notes or anything, and understand most of what our investigators are saying.  But it's definitely not super good, so hopefully my first area is French speaking so I have some more time to study Tahitian.

Elder Dayton has been having a lot of problems with his knee, so he prayed and felt like I should give him a blessing.  So on Sunday I gave him a blessing, and the next day his knee was feeling good enough to play Spikeball!  It's not 100%, but hopefully he'll be able to ride a bike without any problems now.  The gift of healing is real.  We also had a devotional by Chad Lewis (Dad will know who that is), and he conveyed to all of us the enthusiasm we should have for spreading the gospel and doing God's work.  He really stressed the difference that we can make on the Lord's errand.

On Tuesday we had the opportunity to hear from Elder Christofferson.  That was super cool to have an apostle come to our second to last devotional, and it was super cool.  He taught us a few things, for one it's more important to be trusted than to be loved by the Lord.   God loves everyone, but does he trust you to go out and do the work?  Does he know that you will be obedient and follow the promptings that you receive?  He also stressed our simplified purpose of teach repentance and baptize converts.  he taught about how all aspects of the gospel revolve around repentance and Christ, and our investigators need to know that that is what our message is.

Yesterday we had in-field training, where we learned a lot about how to work with members, use key indicators, and find people to teach.  We watched a video clip of one of Elder Bednar's talks, which really stood out to me.  He told a story about how two missionaries came to his house one morning, and stayed for about an hour and a half, eating breakfast and playing with his young son.  They then asked him for referrals, and Elder Bednar said that he would never give referrals to missionaries like them.  He said that he knew that they didn't get up on time that morning, or do the studies as they were supposed to.  He also told them that they had wasted an hour and half of the Lord's time that morning.  He told them the kind of missionaries that he would give referrals to, and told them what they should've done with that visit instead.  Three weeks later, the missionaries returned and followed his advice, and had a total different countenance about them.  They then asked for referrals, and he said he would love to give referrals to missionaries like them.  We are on the Lord's time, and there is no time to be wasting.

Well I'll talk to you all in a couple weeks, from TAHITI!

Ua here au ia outou!

Elder McQuiston  

My batch sporting our BYU ties for the BYU/UTAH game 

All of us with our Blue ties and Elder Bradshaw with his Red tie 

All the Tahitian missionaries 

Saying goodbye to all my buddies 

Wearing the Pareu from Elder Tetauru

Deux plus semaines!

To'u utuafare!

This week was so  much better with Tahitian thank goodness...Not that i'm good at it by any stretch, but I didn't feel completely helpless during all of our lessons, so that's good.  I had another super cool experience with the gift of tongues in our TRC on Tuesday.  Our first lesson was pretty normal, we understood very little of what he said, and he probably understood less of what we said haha.  But our second one was super cool, it was with a rm that got back a few months ago.  During our lesson, I understood almost everything he said, and I was saying words that I didn't even know, and remembering words that I'd only heard a couple times.  He said our Tahitian was amazing, even tho it usually is terrible haha, really cool.  It's comforting to know that the Lord will help me with the language if I'm doing my best and praying for the gift of tongues.  

On Saturday Elder Claflin and Elder Bradshaw were super sick, so I was pretty much stuck at the residence for most of the day.  I just studied the Book of Mormon in French and studied Tahitian all day.  Luckily though they got better pretty quickly, and they were only stuck in bed on Saturday.

On Sunday we were unassigned as zone leaders, and Elder Stainton and Johnson were assigned.  It was super cool, I got to host Elder Stainton his first day, and we're super tight.  He's from England and has the sickest accent, and is amazing at soccer.  They're both headed to Lyon, and all the Lyon, Paris and Tahitian missionaries leave on the same day, like 50 missionaries haha our branch is gonna be empty at the MTC.  Our devotional was pretty sweet that night, it was by the active director of the mission department or something like that, and he brought some missionaries that are in the district 3 that's coming out, as well as a convert they taught.  It was really cool hearing their experiences.

On Tuesday all of the Canadian missionaries left, so like Elder Yerke, Brenchley, and Hunker.  It was sad seeing them go, but they were pretty excited to get out there.  It's kinda funny , they were the first missionaries in our zone that came here after us and left before us.  Thursday we had a really cool devotional by President Maynes of the Presidency of the Seventy.   He gave a super cool talk on how to improve our teaching skills, and the impact that we can make in the field.  He talked to the mission president of a missionary that the baptized and taught on his mission, and the mission president shared a journal entry with him.  He said that the missionary was the best missionary he has ever seen, with an incredible amount of baptisms.  He said that what made him a great missionary was not that he was a great teacher, or that he had a great knowledge about the gospel, but because of his attitude, his hard work, and his obedience.  That's something that all of us missionaries can do, and something that we can all improve on.  

Well that's pretty much everything exciting that happened this week...2 more weeks and I'll actually have a ton to email about!

Je vous aime!
Ua here au outou! (Le meme chose)

Elder McQuiston  

 Our whole Zone before the Canadians left

 With the new Zone Leaders, Elder S. and Elder J.

Again with the new Zone Leaders

Maururu no te horo'a o te mau re'o

la ora na!

K if I thought French was hard I was sadly mistaken.  French is like English to me, it's so easy, but man is Tahitian killing me.  It's soon difficult to speak and especially to understand...But for the most part they speak French in Tahiti, so that's super relieving.  We had a TRC with like the best Tahitian speaker in the world, who served his mission in 1960 or something like that.  There was another TRC member who taught the same old guy for TRC when he was in the MTC, and he said he really probably is one of the best Tahitian speakers in the world, he didn't meet anyone on his mission that spoke it better, even the people that only spoke Tahitian.  But one thing that old guy taught us was "If you speak Frech, the people will understand you, if you speak Tahitian, they will respect you."  So even tho most people speak French, I'm going to do my best to master Tahitian as well so I can connect with the people. 

On Sunday we had our devotional by the Nashville Tribute Band, which was pretty cool but they already came on the 24th of July and did the exact same devotional, so it was a little bit repetitive haha.  But that's pretty much as much real music as we get, so it was nice.  One of the members of our Branch President is Brother Markham, and he is like the most educated man in the scriptures I know.  And also he's super rich and travels all over the world, but the coolest part is that he has a huge vineyard where he makes his own grape juice.  On Sunday night he taught my district and one other about Jacob 5 and brought some grape juice, and holy crap that stuff is amazing.  It's definitely the best grape juice I've had and probably one of the best drinks I've had period haha.  But that was super cool there's a ton of really cool stuff in Jacob 5 even tho it's really hard to understand.  

We had to say goodbye to the other district on Monday that came on the same day as us that are headed to DC north and a couple places in Africa, and man that was super hard.  We have been super close, and their dorms were right next to us and stuff...But it made me super pumped to get out in the field.  9 weeks is so long, and I'm just ready to go haha.

On Tuesday we had a devotional by Elder Aceda of the 70, and that was super cool he is like the cutest peruvian old guy ever.  He was super super nice and humble, and shared really cool experiences about his conversion story.  His main message was to serve with ALL your heart, might, mind, and strength.

On Wednesday we did the orientation with all the new missionaries going to Africa, 21 total I think.  I can't believe we are still the zone leaders, it's been so long haha.  We;ll probably get unassigned next week I'm guessing, but we'll see.  But it's great, the orientations are always super fun, but all the running around gets a little crazy with the Tahitian that we are missing.  

Haha probably the funniest thing that happened this week was the other day someone sent Elder Dayton just a watermelon as a joke, so we spent like 15 minutes trying to open it.  Then we didn't really have any spoons or anything, so we just kinda went crazy on it with our fingers haha it was like the best watermelon ever, pretty funny!

Jusqu'a prochain semaine!

Elder McQuiston

 Me eating the best watermelon ever

 My bed without sheets because it's so dang hot at night

 Me downing Elder B's Sriracha sauce

A little bit of Tahitian

Bonjour tout le monde

Welp today is officially our last day of French...I do not feel like my French is good enough to go out in the field haha...It's weird to think that all the other French missionaries would be leaving right about now.  I'm not gonna lie I'm super pumped to learn Tahitian, it sounds super sick, but I'm way nervous at the same time.  It's nothing like English, and it sounds like it's pretty much pure vowels when you listen to it.  But apparently it's way easier than French when it comes to grammar and stuff like that, so we'll see.

We had our last day with Soeur Waldron on Saturday, which is kind of a bummer because she was really really good at French, but she went to Lyon for her mission so she wouldn't be able to help us out with Tahitian haha.  So Soeur Erekson is our new teacher, and kinda funny she also got taught by Soeur Cook (our other teacher) when she was in the MTC.  But she has way too much energy haha and she acts so Tahitian and uses a ton of it in her French.

Sunda was pretty normal for the most part... We made a goal during district meeting to only speak French the past four days, and it didn't go too bad... The first 3 days we pretty much did it but lost it a little bit yesterday...It's kinda sad that a few of the elders and sisters in our district don't really try too much, and they're really struggling, they haven't really improved the whole time we've been here.  But for the most part our district is doing great, and so is our zone.  We also watched 17 miracles, and it was a nice change of pace, but that one is so sad compared to Ephraim's Rescue for sure.

It's so hard for me to sleep so much here haha.   I always have a hard time falling asleep and I always wake up like an hour or so early...I wonder if my sleep habits will ever change haha we'll see.  We had a devotional on Tuesday by Sister Oscarson, and it was a pretty good dev.  She spoke on Elder Christofferson's talk on the current bush, a super good message that the Lord will bring us to our lowest so that we can become the people that we have the potential to be.  He knows the end result, and he knows how to get us there, we just have to trust him.  

The new Tahitian Elders came yesterday!  There is only four of them, kind of a big difference between that and our district of 12 haha but they're great, and it's fun to have some more missionaries going to the same place.  The French teacher that is in charge asked me and Elder Bradshaw to be like the example missionaries for a meeting that all the new missionaries went to on Wednesday...And there were like 536 or something like that haha.  We were super nervous, but it went pretty good and the spirit was super strong.

Hahaha so funny thing that happened yesterday...Our class was asking Sr. Cook a bunch of questions par rapport a Tahiti and stuff, like how often we have dinners with the members and stuff like that.  Elder Bradshaw raised his hand and started a question, then paused for a sec like he was thinking of a word or something, and asked Sr. Cook if everyone in Tahiti ate with their feet hahaha apparently he mixed the word fingers with feet haha pretty funny we were all dying.

Well, nothing else that I can really think of...So cya next week!

Avec beaucoup de l'amour, 

Elder McQuiston

My district with Sister Waldron (one of our teachers)

Me with Elder Ugbah in my district and Elder Tatauru form Tahiti

 Me and Elder Yerke

 My district with the other french district that came the same day

Me and Elder McKay