Hey everyone,

I hope everyone had an excellent Christmas. I had an awesome week.

So on Christmas we started out by opening presents that we had received from our families. My favorite present was the bag of snickers candy bars. I felt like such an American eating all of them. Then after that we were able to Skype our families. It was awesome just to be able to talk to them and catch up on all the news and get some advice. And its weird to think that I only have one more Christmas like this and then I will be going home. So that was good, and for dinner we ate at the branch president's house. We ate poisson cru (raw fish), sashimi (different raw fish), chicken, rice, potatoes, and to top it off some awesome cake. So that was good too. Oh and we also found out the news about transfers. Neither of us are getting transferred! So that means that we will both be here together for another 6 weeks at least, so that was good news. 

Oh and the other awesome news for this week. We were able to set up a baptism date with our investigator Taae finally. Normally it will be February 18th, so I might not be here, but I am just happy that we were able to set up a date. And then there is the other baptismal date news. So of course something came up and we didn't have any baptisms this weekend with Noarii and Ivee. Their parents changed their mind last second so we weren't able to do it. So this week we will be talking to the parents and clearing all of that up. 

But overall it was a good week. Nothing too crazy happened except our propane gas that heats the water in our house ran out and we found out we won't be able to get more propane until this Friday. But that's pretty much all the time I have this week. Thanks to everyone who reads this and happy new year!

Here is a picture of the table at my branch president's house. Notice the little pine tree Christmas tree in the corner.

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 4-6 stamps)

Packages take 12 weeks

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

Ia Ora Na tatou! Its been a while but here is my update of the past couple weeks.

So no crazy baptism stories but we have definitely been making some progress here in Rurutu. We challenged our investigator Taae to live the word of wisdom for a week and he gladly accepted the challenge. At the end of the week we asked him how it went and his response was an enthuastic "Maita'i roa!" (very good). So that was really cool, and we have been talking to him about picking a baptisimal date, so we think sometime this week he will pick a date. Also Noarii and Ivee, the 10yr old and 9yr old kids we teach, keep changing their minds on baptism. They decided on the 28th of December over a month ago and now that we are getting close to it they are kind of freaking out. Also their parents are starting to sound a bit reluctant also about their baptisms. So we have some problems to sort out with all of that this week but if all works out well we should have 2 baptisms this Saturday. Cool stuff! So thats my update of major progress with our investigators.

And on Friday the 13th we packed some of our bags and headed off to Tahiti for 4 days for the mission Christmas. It was really weird just being in Tahiti because I'm so used to being on this small island with barely 2000 people on it. And not only that, for the first time in nearly 3 months I was able to see other missionaries, which was awesome, (And during our time in Tahiti we stayed in a church house in Pirae with 4 other missionaries) so that was Friday. On Saturday morning I got to go to the temple in Papeete with all the other missionaries (about 30) who are serving on islands other than Tahiti and that was so amazing. Then after that we walked into downtown Papeete for a bit to eat at a McDonalds (which is actually really expensive compared to America and is considered really good food). After that we got to go watch a baptisimal service which was really cool too.

Monday was the mission Christmas. We started off by practicing singing for a celebration that we will all be attending sometime in May (The celebration is the 160th anniversary of the arrival of the gospel to French Polynesia). Its a pretty big deal though because there will be some major general authorities there and from what we have heard Neal L. Anderson will be there also. So we practiced for that for like an hour then after that we all ate a huge lunch, which was awesome because the food was all American based. So there was turkey and stuffing and just awesome American junk food that I can really be proud of. Then after that all the zones were supposed to have already prepared a skit to preform in front of all the missionaries. And seeing as which we are in Rurutu and no one contacts us about anything, it was a nice surprise. So we quickly threw together a skit with all the missionaries in the Australes. After all of that we got some messages from our mission president and the assistants to the president, just some faaitoitos. And then we got to talk with everyone, which was really cool because I got to catch up with my MTC district and exchange crazy stories. So that was our mission Christmas, which I am extremely grateful for. I know it was definitely not easy to get 130 missionaries from all over Tahiti and from like 10 different far out islands to one place. 

And now we are back in Rurutu! This week we will find out about transfers. One of us will likely be transferred but we have no idea who it will be because we both got here at the same time. Oh, and yesterday was a first for me, I helped to teach a gospel doctrine class in ALL TAHITIAN! That is one of the benefits of being here on Rurutu, the ability to really practice and use Tahitian, because on Tahiti people really prefer to speak French so people rarely speak Tahitian there.

So there's my little update of the past couple weeks. This week should be pretty interesting too. I'll write back again next Monday to fill everyone in. And joyeuse Noel, merry Christmas to everyone! I hope everyone has an excellent week celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And from Rurutu, peace out.  

Elder Rose

Here is a picture of the Papeete temple

On our way to a faatamaaraa (on Tahiti, not Rurutu) in the back of a van, it really is the way to travel everywhere in French Polynesia.

And just for fun you can compare the McDonalds prices in Tahiti to the prices in America. To convert to USD move the decimal point two places to the left.

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 3-4 stamps)

Packages take 12 weeks

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

Hi Everyone,

This week was kind of hard. At the beginning of the week we had an inactive man that we were meeting with tell us he didn't want to keep meeting with us, so that was kind of hard on us. Also, at another lesson we taught this week (there was a man who was related to this grand-mother and her daughter somehow, he was probably about mid 30s) and we taught a lesson on baptism and why that's important and the covenants that we make when we are baptized into this church. And this guy did not agree with us at all. He took the conversation straight to baptisms for the dead and immediately said he didn't want us to read out of the Book of Mormon at all, only the Bible. So of course we read the super obscure verses on baptism for the dead in the Bible and he just doesn't agree with anything we say because the verses don't straight up say "do baptisms for the dead" and then he read a verse in Ecclesiastics Chapter 9 verse 13.  It’s just so frustrating trying to convince some of the people but, we had some cool experiences happen this week too so that was good.

I'm just super pumped to go to main land in Tahiti, we leave on Friday and we get back on Wednesday. And we are going to the temple on Saturday morning at 9AM so I am pumped for that. 

Anyway that’s my little update for this week. Faaitotio e maiti i te maitai, e e mea roa to'u here no outou i o ra.

Orametua Roti

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 4-6 stamps)

Packages take 12 weeks

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

Some fruit a member gave us this week.

Ia ora na i te mau taata i o ra!

This week has been great. We are making some real progress with an investigator named Taae (pronounced taw-eye). He came to church for the first time yesterday and seems to really like the lessons. He has had some friends approach him and even question him for taking the missionary lessons. But he keeps wanting to take the lessons and he even has started to read in the Book of Mormon every day. Its really cool seeing him progress We have an awesome member integrator for him too so things are going really good. 

The language is really coming along this week and I get along with Elder Ollerton very well. He is a really good guy. We got a call this week saying that we would either leave on the 13th or the 15th for the main land.  We will stay until the 18th, it will be really cool to see other missionary's and our mission president. 

Here is a picture of Elder Ollerton and I riding in the back of a truck with a box of watermelons. Notice the Tahitian hand signs.

And here is 30$ worth of taro that Elder Ollerton and I dug up over the period of 1 hour. Taro is the Tahitian equivalent to potatoes and is not easy to dig up.

So I'm out of time for this week, mais à la prochain,

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 4-6 stamps)

Packages take 12 weeks

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