About Me

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Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia
Missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. July 24, 2013 - July 24, 2015.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Laorana everyone,
This week was an interesting one. We started out the week by flying up to Tahiti early Monday morning.  After that we kind of just chilled the rest of the day. On Tuesday Elder Ollerton and went on splits for the day with some other missionaries, which was a nice change to the habitual Rurutu scenery. On Wednesday all the other missionaries serving on islands (around 34 missionaries) were brought to Tahiti and we had a meeting with our mission president and his assistants, so that was pretty cool. On Thursday I found out that I will be transferred soon, within the next couple weeks normally, so we will see what happens with that. I'm thinking I might train this next transfer so we will see. 
Friday was the mission conference. We had some church leaders come to talk to us, including Elder Russel M. Nelson, Elder Tad R. Callister of the presidency of the 70, and Elder Kevin Pearson of the 70. Before the conference all the missionaries got to shake all of their hands which was pretty cool I guess. It was really neat to hear from all of them though. It was definitely one of the most spiritually powerful days of my mission yet.

It was really good to see all of the missionaries that were in my district in the MTC too. It had been a good two months being off the social radar, so it was nice getting updated on everything. Overall a good week but now we have some work to make up on here in Rurutu. That’s all I've got time for this week though. I'll try to keep everyone updated on the transfer status as best I can.
Faaitoito everyone!
Elder Rose


We got to ride on the plane back with the Elders serving at Tubuai! Since the islands are neighboring the plane stopped first at Tubuai and then Rurutu.  

The island of Tubuai, looks pretty cool!
Send letters to:

Elder Cody Tiler Rose
Tahiti Papeete Mission
The Church of Latter Day Saints
B.P. 93 Mormon Mission
Papeete, Tahiti 98714
French Polynesia

Letters take 6-8 weeks (use 3-4stamps)
Packages take 12 weeks

Elder Rose's e-mail address: cody.rose@myldsmail.net

Monday, February 17, 2014

Hey everyone,
So I will start out by saying that I now know the max amount of bananas I can eat in a week; not very many. I will just say that we had to throw out most of those bananas. It was sad but people shouldn't expect such banana eating skills from two American boys. Other than that this last week was pretty good.  We had 5 investigators at our last neighborhood FHE on Friday and were able to set up lessons with one of them. His name is Etera and he is awesome. He already has a massive desire to quit drinking and just repent. We really are blessed to be able to teach him. We will continue teaching him when we return to Rurutu next week.

Other news for this week; we are in Tahiti right now until Sunday! We are having a mission conference this Friday and the apostle Elder Nelson will be talking to us, so that’s pretty cool I guess. I'm not exactly sure why the mission decided to fly us up to Tahiti so early though, so this will be an interesting week work-wise. We are probably going to be doing a lot of splits this week.  That’s pretty much the crazy news I have for this week. I hope everyone has a marvelous week. 
Elder Rose


Send letters to:
Elder Cody Tiler Rose
Tahiti Papeete Mission
The Church of Latter Day Saints
B.P. 93 Mormon Mission
Papeete, Tahiti 98714
French Polynesia

Letters take 6-8 weeks (use 3-4stamps)
Packages take 12 weeks

Elder Rose's e-mail address: cody.rose@myldsmail.net

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Hey everyone! Short post this week.
Broke some records this week also. On Tuesday we received 4 bunches of bananas from a member. For those of you who don't know how much that is, we estimated it to be around 450 bananas (see picture below). I'm hoping I still like bananas by the end of the week. Also we received news about transfers.  No transfer for us! This was surprising to us because we have never heard of a trainer staying with his trainee for over 3 transfer cycles (each transfer cycle is 6 weeks). So as of today I am officially the most trained trainee that I know in French polynesia. Even though I finished getting trained 6 weeks ago I often make the joke that Elder Ollerton is still training me. So anyway, all of that made this week interesting.

The highlight of this week would have to be our first neighborhood family home evening that was held at our branch president's house. We had 2 investigators come (which was pretty impressive because this was planned almost last second) and they seemed to really enjoy it. It was a fun lesson to teach too. We made 2 cakes, one being a normal cake from the box and with the other we added tons of salt and hot curry powder to make it disgusting.  We made the comparison that the cakes were like the commandments and we have the agency to choose between the good and bad and that there are consequences with our choices. Overall it was a good first neighborhood FHE.

That's all I've got time for today. I hope everyone has an excellent and joyous week.  
Elder Rose


The 450 bananas we have to eat this week

Send letters to:

Elder Cody Tiler Rose
Tahiti Papeete Mission
The Church of Latter Day Saints
B.P. 93 Mormon Mission
Papeete, Tahiti 98714
French Polynesia

Letters take 6-8 weeks (use 3-4stamps)
Packages take 12 weeks

Elder Rose's e-mail address: cody.rose@myldsmail.net


Monday, February 3, 2014

Hey everybody! 

I hope everyone in Georgia is enjoying the nice arctic weather. I'm almost jealous but I think I'll stick with my tropical climate for the moment. This week was pretty good concerning the missionary work on the island. For a couple of weeks now Elder Ollerton and I have been trying to set up more church activities to help us find more investigators. When the district leaders from the neighboring island of Tubuai came down about a month ago, they set some pretty massive goals for the next year here at Rurutu. They also gave us some really good ideas too. One of these ideas was to do family home evenings by neighborhood. With the help of our branch president we were able to split Rurutu into 5 different sectors, each with one leader to be in charge of picking the location and date for the FHE.  So during this whole last week we spent a good amount of time talking with all the different FHE leaders to help them to pick a date for their FHE this month. The plan is to do one FHE per week, each week in a different neighborhood, so one time per month per neighborhood.  Now we just have to get investigators to go to those and we will be set!

Also this week were able to teach the family of 6 again this week. We taught them about the plan of salvation and they seemed to really enjoy it. At the end of the lesson both Elder Ollerton and I felt like we should extend some sort of baptismal commitment, so we did that. We asked them (translated) "IF you come to feel that the Book of Mormon is true by the Holy Ghost, will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God?" They all seemed a little apprehensive and we weren't able to get any solid answers other than "we don't know right now" but I still see some good potential in them. We are not giving up on them. We have another lesson with them this Saturday so we will see how that goes.

Something else that I am coming to realize here too is that it is extremely difficult for people to grasp the concept of the authority of God. It amazes me that we are often the first people to present this concept to many people.  We spend a lot of time trying to explain authority and why it is necessary and how Jesus even gave this priesthood authority to his disciples, but people never really seem to grasp the concept. They think that anyone who teaches about God or the Bible has this authority to preform these eternal ordinances. Sometimes I feel like I am trying to explain to people that 2+2=4, when their whole lives they have been taught that 2+2=5. All I can do is promise them that through the Holy Ghost I have felt the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and that I know without a doubt that it is true and is the word of God and that through Joseph Smith, Jesus Christ himself reestablished his church again, along with the priesthood authority of God.  Putting myself in their situation I don't really blame them for being reluctant to believe everything that a complete stranger tells them. Those are just some of my thoughts from this week though. I do know that this church is true and that by the power of the Holy Ghost we can know the truthfulness of all things (Moroni 10:5). These are things I have come to know to be true.

That is all I've got time for this week. Next week there may be a transfer, so that could get interesting. I will update everyone on that next week though. 

Until then, E mau taata maita'i outou, you are all awesome.

Elder Rose       
Here is a picture of a vanilla farm owned by a member of our branch.