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

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

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.

Bonjour everyone! 

I hope everyone has been enjoying the nice cool weather up in the northern hemisphere. I want to just start out by saying that last week was pretty hot, as in probably at least mid-high 80's with near 100% humidity. That's not to brag or anything, that's just the preface for this next part. With that being said, we had BOTH of our fans die last week. That's what you get when the mission office(the people who send us stuff) buys us $13 fans and we use them 24/7 for a month. Luckily God really does work miracles and after only 5 days without fans we received another one from the mission office. This really is a miracle and I still do not understand how it happened. There have been things that we have ordered from the mission office over 3 months ago and we still have not received them. We ordered that fan from the office a little over a week before it arrived here. So that was our little miracle for the week ha ha.

The past two weeks have been interesting in the aspect of missionary work though. We started to have a lot more lessons down in the city of Hauti, located almost 4 miles south of where we live. All the trips down there make for some pretty solid thigh muscles. Through street contacting we were able to find another investigator named Yohan who is actually really interested in the church. Also we were able to start teaching a family of 6, which was a really neat experience. So after all of that we had a nice 7 new investigators for this week. Now they just have to get baptized ha ha.  Our investigator Alaska Taae is getting more and more prepared for his baptismal date for the 28th of February so that is super exciting. All in all, we have been very blessed this week and the Lord has been working some awesome miracles.

That is pretty much all the time I have for this week. Sorry its so short. Merci à tout les personnes qui lire cette page. Ua here au ia outou! Faaitoito noa e tamaa e tae noa'tu e farii outou i te oaoa. Until next time,

Orametua,

Elder Rose

Here is an action shot of a member getting a coconut

And here is proof of the fastest I have ever gone on my bike 58.1kmh-36mph (MXS stands for max speed). And yes this was going down a mountain, don't worry mom we wear helmets.    

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

Hey everybody, its been an interesting last two weeks but I don't have a lot of time so I will just share the highlights. And I will preface this post by saying that the week of new years is full of many traditions and celebrations here on Rurutu. 

During new years week we were able to participate in a Rurutu tradition called the Tere (which means voyage in Tahitian) where people from the whole island form a convoy of cars and drive around the island, stopping at each city to tell the story/history of the cities, and directly after the story telling there is a tradition where different people lift three very large rocks, the smallest around 60Kg (about 130lbs) and the largest weighing aroung 135Kg normally (nearly 300lbs) and people just go and lift up the rocks onto their shoulders. Very impressive. So we spent a good chunk of a day doing that.

This was a little less interesting thanks to the massive amounts of rain that we have been receiving from a cyclone near Tonga. Every time we would try to go visit members (during the rainstorm) they usually would make us come inside and wouldn't let us leave until it was done raining. But this week was cool also because I got to change the brakes on my branch president's truck. Its been the first time in about 6 months that I have been able to work on a car and it was awesome. Also, it was cool because right after I changed the brakes my branch president (who is a fisherman also) let me take a picture with the 14Kg-30lbs Mahi mahi that he had just caught (picture should be below this post). So that was super awesome.

This week we made some major progress with our investigator Taae also. The only thing really keeping him from being baptised was the word of wisdom - his addiction to alcohol. Coolest thing ever, during our last lesson with Taae I committed him to stop drinking alcohol and on the spot he agreed to stop drinking alcohol and live the word of wisdom. That was our little miracle for the week with Taae.

And this last weekend the church leaders from the nearby island of Tubuai came to visit Rurutu and give some leadership training and set some new goals for the year. Rurutu's new goal. Create a new branch within a year and a half. So in order to do that there needs to be 30 baptisms before that time. So basically we have a lot of work to do right now haha! 

Anyway, thats the major hilights of the week.  I have been able to see God's hand in things this week and have been able to witness some little miracles. I know that God has a plan for every one of us and that he does have a hand in everything. And I know that the Book of Mormon is the coolest, most true book on the face of this planet. That was my week though. Thanks to everyone who reads this. I hope everyone has an awesome week, and until next week, faaitoito

Elder Rose

                                               Here is a picture of me with the 14Kg mahi mahi

and here is a picture of a big guy lifting a big rock during the Tere.

OK, no blog post this week, but next week I will have a big update.  Here a few pics from this weeks work.

                    Here is a picture of Elder Ollerton and I with our elders quorum president, Matias 

And here is a picture of me below the welcome sign in our city Moerai.

Faaitotio e maiti i te maitai, e e mea roa to'u here no outou i o ra.

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 3-4 stamps)

Packages take 12 weeks

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