Things are going great here in papehue. I only have six weeks left and since I have only been here 12 weeks I thought that I would finish my mission in this area but president was inspired to place me elsewhere. I'm staying on Tahiti but I'm going to be going to the stake of Mahina (on the north side of the island. I'm on the south side of the island right now) in the area Faaripo. I'm very excited to be able to do missionary work in a different area here at Tahiti.

 

And my big news for the week (if a transfer wasn't big enough news) I got my flight itinerary for when I finish my mission. My plane leaves August 10th at 11:40pm and I get to the airport in Georgia August 11th at 10:15pm, so I'm going to spend pretty much a full day traveling. More time for me to do some contacting! But until then I'm hear at Tahiti in body and spirit. 

 

Our mission started doing missionary concerts, which means that every Sunday we go to a different stake and sing and bear testimonies. The topic for these concerts, or rather missionary firesides, is the Plan of Salvation. Its too bad I can't record it and send it to all of you, it is very powerful and every time we have one of these concerts I feel the spirit testifying to me of the truthfulness of the Plan of Salvation. Everything is dandy here though and I don't have much time to write. I will try to get out at least one or two more blog posts before I finish my mission in six weeks.  AND HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

                           This is our last zone picture before the transfer

 

And this picture shows how we are feeling in French Polynesia at this time of the year. It gets down to like 60 something degrees which is very cold here!

Elder Rose

 

Our area is doing alright here. We weren't able to do a lot of lessons this week, we had a lot of bad luck and a lot of people canceled their lessons, but this week we went to the monthly leadership meeting also. 

And today was pretty good, we went to a singing practice for the concert this sunday and right after that we got to watch meet the mormons. We watched it in French and even if I didn't understand everything in it the spirit was super powerful and I really enjoyed it. It was pretty inspiring for me and I really see the importance of service.

Elder Rose

Our ward had a Hawaiian night activity so I decided to take advantage a little of the props. 

We cleaned out the house this morning and this is what happens after years of members dropping off the food at the missionaries' house. There are probably over 100 plates and one dinner appointment might be 2 plates. 

This is what I do with the Tahitian fruit called rambuton when we don't want to eat it

 

Its been a while since my last blog post so I will try to catch up on everything that has happened in the last six weeks. First off I got transfered. I am now serving at the main island of Tahiti in the city of Paea and my area is Papehue. My companion, Elder Dagry, is a 21 year old French elder that has been serving for a little over 17 months now.  He is very cool and has a funny sense of humor.

Papehue is a pretty small area, maybe 2 miles wide with a lot of neighborhoods. The areas here are very different in comparison to the islands away from Tahiti. First off I went from having almost whole islands to myself to one of the smallest areas in the mission. There is a very high concentration of people here and I find that people are less willing to accept the Gospel here. I'm still trying to find my rhythm in this mildly fast paced city, its just weird because the whole 18 months of my mission I spent out in the islands was a different way to do missionary work. The good thing is we still have a car so thats nice, but we have been doing a lot of walking lately because we found that it is a lot more efficient for contacting.

In our area we have about three solid investigators. One is a 27 year old named Andy; he is like 6'4" and plays american football for one of three american football teams here at Tahiti. Andy didn't really have a religion before he started taking lessons about five months ago, but he really wants to learn for himself the truthfullness of our message. Our last lesson we talked about Alma 32 and the importance of feeding our faith (testimony) with good actions like going to church and reading. Usually Andy comes to church for only the second hour but we committed him to come for all three hours and sure enough Andy was there for all three hours and we even saw him reading the Book of Mormon during sacrament meeting. We also teach a 12 year old boy named Manuarii who wants to get baptized but his parents don't want him to because he was already baptized in the Catholic church when he was a baby. Other than that we spend a good two hours a day doing door to door and street contacting. We are very busy all week long. The past month we have had a good bit of tender mercies from the Lord. We have been able to find a lot of people who have never heard our message of the restored Gospel of Christ and who are interested in learning more. 

Every pday since I have gotten here we try to do an activity with another zone, like flag football or soccer and so pdays are pretty fun. All of the missionaries serving at Tahiti will be singing in a missionary choir sometime in June, and so a lot of our pdays now are going to go toward practicing for the concert. The good thing about having practice almost every Monday is that all the missionaries serving in Tahiti get to see each other often. The bad thing is that we loose over half of a pday so there isn't a lot we can do on pdays now.

Almost every day for lunch we eat something called Chao pao which is slightly cooked bread dough with chicken in the middle. See the picture below.

And for those wanting to know when I finish my mission, I finish August 10th and I am planning on going to BYU Idaho starting September 11th. Don't worry I'm not trunky. Have an excellent week everyone!

Elder Rose

 

                                                                                  My Zone

Pday activity with the zone

We went on a hike and there was a nice waterfall at the end

                                The picture on the bridge is our district. I love our district so much

         From left to right, Elder Rose, Dagry, Lee Chip Sao, Temake, Gouttin, Pruett, Hughes, and Poirier

We ate pizza last night. Its been a while since we've eaten pizza so we were pretty excited

I got to see some of my good mission friends at a meeting we had this week. Its great to be serving at Tahiti now.

  

Last pday we went to Teahupoo, a world fameous surf spot. Don't worry mom we didn't do any surfing. We just took pictures next to the welcome surfboard and then we left

Today (pday) we played flag football against a neighboring zone and lost. It was fun playing football again though.

3 in 1 banana. This thing was massive.

 We flew to Tahiti for a leadership meeting. Its only a 45 min flight. There weren't a ton of people on the plane so we had a little fun.



It has been really good p-day. As a zone we went to a little island today that is on the reef around Raiatea. we played soccer and volleyball and ate. It was a lot of fun and I am suuuuper sunburnt. This p-day was the last p-day for 3 missionaries in our zone so we had to do a big activity.

 

                                                                   On the way to the island

 

                                              Elder Lee Chip Sao (my companion) and I

 

 

 

And thats a pig we saw this week. It weighs probably like 700 lbs. I think he was trying to bite me in that picture too. 

We have seen a lot of miracles in the past two weeks. Its weird because it seems like after every transfer the missionary work really jumps in the area with the new companion. We have been able to see this phenomena in our area and I know that we are being blessed by Heavenly Father right now. 

Here are some cool experiences we have had in the past two weeks. We went to teach an inactive member and we ended up teaching his girlfriend who was at his house also. Her name is Mireille (pronounced meer-aye) and she is a deaf mute. We have found it a little difficult to communicate with her because she doesn't really know how to read and we don't know sign language (I'm really wishing now I would have paid more attention to my mom's sign language classes that I sat in on as a kid). To teach her we show pictures and we try to act things out with our hands. We don't know if she is really understanding everything that we are teaching her but she seems to be happy and has even expressed a desire to be baptized. I'm so happy that the spirit is the one that converts people and not words. Now we are just looking for someone who knows sign language. 

We have been able to find a considerable amount of new investigators during these past two weeks also. We were able to find a young adult named Tenoho who thought he was baptized but when we looked for his name in the ward directory he wasn't there, and we weren't able to find his name in the church records. That means that he has to be baptized (or re-baptized if he was already baptized). The crazy thing was that Tenoho told us he hasn't been to church in over five years and this past Sunday he came to church and had a really great time. Every time he sees us there is a great big smile on his face. Its great to be able to see the changes the gospel can make in peoples' lives. 

Also we went to visit an old investigator named Rose (no we are not related) who had told us a couple months ago that she didn't want to follow the discussions anymore. We decided to go visit her to see if she had changed her mind and when we showed up to her house she was very surprised to see us.  After a couple minutes of talking and presenting my new companion she happily accepted to follow the discussions again. She told us later that she had been touched that we came to visit her randomly. I know that it was the spirit that touched her heart. Last week we were able to help her set goals to stop smoking and she is very determined to stop. We are excited to see her progression. 

My last story for this week is from last night. During the week we were able to contact an older man and we set up a lesson for the following Sunday (last night). When we got to their house, we stood at the edge of their property line and shouted Iaorana but it seemed like no one heard us. We could see that there was someone watching TV. A couple seconds later the man came out and said "I completely forgot that I had invited you two over." but he invited us into his house anyway. After we had started the discussion he explained to us that a couple minutes before we got to his house he had sat down to watch the news and all of the sudden he didn't even know why but he got up and walked outside, which was very abnormal for him to do while he was watching the news. That was when he saw us standing there and invited us in. I acknowledge that we are receiving divine aid and I would like to thank everyone for all of your thoughts and prayers for me and the missionary work. They are being heard. 

Have a great week everyone. I hope it isn't too cold in America. Its raining cats and dogs over here and its still humid as ever. 

Elder Rose

 

I hope everyone's holidays went well. Things went pretty well for us at new years. From what everyone was telling us usually people throw big parties with loud music on new years' eve but this new years' eve was pretty quiet. We think it was because of an epidemic that is going around right now called chickungunya. The effects are a massive fever and intense body aches (and evidently a lack of desire to party on new years' eve also). Something funny about holidays here in French Polynesia, whenever people ask how a holiday went for us the first thing they will ask us is what food we ate. This is a very food-centered culture. 

Also, some news for this week. My old companion, Elder Teihotu got transfered and I got my new companion, Elder Lee Chip Sao. He is a 19 year old Tahitian that has been on his mission now for about 15 months. He has been in leadership positions for over a year now so I have a lot I can learn from him. We have been able to talk about our hopes and expectations for the zone and I am excited to see the progress we will be able to make here in our Raromata'i zone. 

Last week we were doing some tracting also and we had a nice miracle. The third house that we contacted there was a member there that was on vacation from Tahiti. She immediately introduced us to all of her family at the house (about 8 people) and we were able to set up a family home evening in their foyer that next monday. At the FHE we taught about prayer and the restoration of the gospel and afterwards we committed everyone to pray and ask for themselves if our message was true. Right after we asked that question one of the older men that was there responded "for me its not even a question of if its true or not if you two are here in front of us telling us this story". So that was a pretty interesting experience. We will be continuing the lessons with them so we will see where that will go.

And this week we had a baptism. He is an 18 yr old named Leywilson. He bore a simple, yet powerful testimony of his knowledge of the truthfulness of this Gospel. It is such a blessing to be able to be a part of these peoples' conversions. Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers and I wish everyone a great week. 

 

 

                                              New years breakfast with some of the ward

Its Christmas already?! This past week we were able to celebrate Christmas as a zone and we did a white elephant and played games and ate raw fish and beef together; we had a blast. I would like to wish everyone a merry Christmas. On my mission I have really been able to appreciate the real meaning of Christmas. I am extremely grateful for our savior Jesus Christ and for this time to show him our love and appreciation. Through service we can help others feel Christ's love for them. If any of you have friends that you think would be interested in the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ of the please don't hesitate to contact the missionaries. That would be the best gift to receive or give this holiday season. Thanks for all your prayers and support and I pray that everyone will have a great Christmas. Merry Christmas to everyone!

​                                                               Best Christmas present ever!

This is Tepoihere. She is 9 and lives in the Tuamotu islands (islands really far away without a church on it). She came here to Raiatea so she could get baptized se we had the honors to prepare her for her baptism. She was baptized by her grandpa on the left. ​

 

This is a famous rock here at Raiatea. The legend of this rock goes like this; A long long time ago here at Raiatea the men were taller than this rock. If a boy reached the age of 18 and wasn't taller than the rock they would cut off his head. I don't think I would make the cut :( 

We had another baptism this week. Wesley (left) and Ocean (right) were married last week and Ocean got baptized last Friday even though she was really sick that day. 

So news for the week, I got transferred again! This time I went very far, from Tahaa to Raiatea (neighboring islands, about 5 miles apart). I am in the city of Tevaitoa and our area includes the ward of Tevaitoa and a neighboring branch.  One of the best things about this transfer would have to be the truck that we have now, a beautiful Toyota Hilux. My legs are sighing in relief right now. It was sad to leave Tahaa with Elder Franco because we were really making some good progress in that branch and I was really attached to our investigators and the members over there, but I found that the members in my new ward are very inviting also. We eat very well over here, the members feed us at least once a day, so we shouldn't have any problems with that. Also we have a good amount of progressing investigators and we even had a marriage last Saturday for one of our investigators who will be baptised this Friday. 

The work is good here. This gospel is such a blessing to us all and it is such a joy to be able to share it with everyone. We are all so loved and blessed by our Heavenly Father and I know he hears and answers our prayers. Thanks for everyone's thoughts and prayers. Also because people only celebrate French holidays here I forgot that Thanksgiving was last week so I would like to wish everyone a happy late Thanksgiving. I hope everyone got all their black friday shopping done in safety. Now we start the Christmas countdown. Have an excellent week everyone!

 

​So the story to this picture goes like this. Our door can only be unlocked by a key from the inside and outside. Elder Gouttin, the Elder that I replaced, took the 1 house key with him when he took the plane to Tahiti. We asked the couple that works in the mission office to send us the key but they weren't in too big of a rush to get it out to us. For 5 days we climbed through the back window to get in and out of our house. We didn't want to let anyone else see how we were getting in and out of the house so we had to keep it on the DL every time we did it. That was fun. ​

We had a baptism this past Saturday. In the middle is Marama, the new convert, and on the right is my companion, Elder Teihotu. I had the privilege to give him the gift of the Holy Ghost. 

 

 

 We went on a hike at Raiatea this week and saw one of the worlds rarest flowers, the apetahi

This is our district at Tahaa taking the boat to Raiatea for a zone meeting.



This is turtle meat. It tastes like dog.

Elder Franco and I found one of the cleanest puppies at Tahaa

                                                              A pretty average sunset

So I've got some news this week. 

Transfers came along and we happened to be affected. Elder Firuu has been transfered to Tahiti and I got my new companion this week, Elder Franco. He is an American from Heber City Utah who happened to come into the mission at the same time as me. So its good to be serving with one of my MTC buddies again. 

We started out this week pretty well teaching a couple lessons in Tahitian, riding our bikes a good 70 miles, and doing around 3 miles of door to door contacting. The weather has been very welcoming for Elder Franco also, there is a torrential downpour at least once every day which makes riding our bikes adventurous. When it rains the humidity level goes down to maybe 85% for an hour or so, which is slightly comforting and a better alternative to the normal 100%.

Also just an update on conference. For this last conference we had the blessing to be able to go down to Raiatea so I could watch the conference in English. One of my favorite quotes from conference would have to be when Richard G. Scott said "studying the Gospel is more important than sleeping", so that kind of puts the importance of Gospel study into perspective. 

As for the progress here at Haamene we still have three baptisms set, two for December and one for January. Over the past month we have been able to find some new investigators with good potential, so we should have some new baptisms set sometime in the near future. I don't think its possible for a baptism to be easy for an investigator. With every investigator I have helped get baptized there has always been one thing that Satan has done to try to influence them not to get baptised. This pattern holds here at Tahaa and we are doing our best to help our investigators keep progressing and to keep their faith. 

Like it says in 2 Corinthians 5:6-7 we are here to walk by our faith and not by our sight. Our faith will be put to the test in this life. I have really been able to see this scripture come to life on my mission. I am so grateful though for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and for all the blessings and joy that we can receive from it, like it says in Romans 1:16. 

Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers, it really does help me. Everyone have a good week and a good Halloween. Don't eat candies that have already been opened and look both ways before you cross the street. 

Orometua Rose 

My new companion Elder Franco

One of my last moments with Elder Firuu, on the boat to Raiatea

Things are going good here at Tahaa. I'm still companions with Elder Firuu but transfers are in two weeks and we are both feeling that he will be transfered this next transfer. Other than that the work here is going good. We are very busy all week long, which means we are riding our bikes all week long. I think two weeks ago we rode our bikes over 100 miles during that week. My leg muscles are significantly stronger than before my misison because of all this biking. And spending all this time outside I have been able to produce a pretty solid missionary tan line (RMs you know what I'm talking about). 

This past week we got to go down to Raiatea for a zone conference with our misison president so that was pretty fun. There isn't a lot more stuff I can say with the time I have left but I am safe and sound here at Tahaa and the work is going well. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers and I wish everyone a marvelous week and a good General Conference.

Elder Rose

A picture of most of our Zone. The islands Raiatea and Tahaa. Our mission president, President Bize, are located front and center

Elder Firuu and I

SMILE!

This last week I drove a massive ferry boat (not really)

I am looking for my bike in this picture. (my bike is at Tahiti getting its 

 brakes changed)

And we only had one bike for a little bit this week so we were forced to walk for a couple days. We were very excited to be able to walk everywhere.

The zone leaders came down from Raiatea this week and we had a blast with them. I am holding in my hands one of the world's best meals, poission cru, otherwise translated as "raw fish"

I think I have seen pretty much every species of banana by now. These bananas are ginormous.

We taught a lesson at the end of a dock this week. It was a pretty cool view 

The missionaries of French Polynesia are now armed with 12 gague shotguns (joke)

And we did some beach tracing. The feint island in the background is Raiatea