Tyler In Tahiti

Hello my friends! Before the big news, the weekly update: The missionary Christmas party was a good time. I got Legos, I saw (almost all) of my MTC friends, and just had a good time. President and Soeur Bize take good care of us. Love those guys. The next day, on the 24th, Elder Darguence was sick, so Elder Smith and I went and did the radio! We talked about how both the Bible and the Book of Mormon talk about the appearence of a star at the birth of Christ, and how it's for us to follow Christ too. I said that "Wise men still seek him". Then, on Christmas day, after Skyping and stuff, we had a baptism that went off without a hitch. Nailed it. And now my dear little sister Hanaley is baptized. Look how cute she is! And she seems so much older now. But now, on to the big news... ... chers freres et soeurs, I am going to the Marquises. THE BLOODY MARQUISES! There is a crapload of envy coming my way right now. There are only 5 people cur...

   On Christmas day, we were able to Skype with Elder Harrah for about 45 minutes.  We had some technical difficulties, but we were finally able to see him and talk to him.  It was the best Christmas present a mom could ask for!  I am so thankful for the modern technology we have so we can Skype.  I think of those early missionaries and families who never got to see each other and had to wait months and months for the mail to get back and forth....I don't think I would have made it!  I wish I would have thought of filming it sooner, but I did get a couple of short video clips that I will share here.  In one he's talking about his favorite Tahitian food and in the other, he's teaching us some French.   In the video, Ty is wearing a new tie he got for Christmas that is made in an aweome floral Tahitian fabric.  I think the tie was a gift from the family who's house he was able to Skype us from, but I am not certain.  It is even red w...

Ia ora na tatou from Tahiti; the land where random people see you waiting on the side of the road and give you coconut water. I hope everyone is doing well and with their families this Christmas. This time of year is a great time to be a missionary because of all the miracles that happen, but kinda crappy too because everyone here is drunk. Mostly I'm excited to take a bit of a break. Elder Paulsen and I have been working really hard these last two weeks, and are currently at an all-time high of lessons in a week. Also, our zone has gone from being next to last to second in terms of most successful. Our district has really been turning things around here! In the spirit of all these lessons though, I'm excited to take a little break. This next week is really going to have like one real day of work. We've got a Christmas party with all the missionaries on the big island this Wednesday, and I'll finally be reunited with one or two of my man-crushes from the...

Ia ora na once again from Tahiti; the land where everyone tells me I'm way too small and need to eat more. Seriously, they use their pinky to describe me. Sorry for the explitive last week. In my defense it was a quote from Elder Smith's uncle. (that actually really does nothing for my case) Things are going really fantastically here. We actually achieved the Standard of Excellence this week. (For those that don't know, the Standard of Excellence is the set number of baptisms, investigators at church, lessons, etc that your sector should have, and is something that the president gives us to show us what to shoot for). This was especially encouraging because we have such a difficult sector and we basically did it with just us (Elder Paulsen and I) and the Lord. We were so very close on Saturday night, and I was praying fervently for us to have our 6 investigators at church and just one more baptism fixed by day's end. We got there, and we only saw 3...

Ia ora na encore from Tahiti! This week was especially great because we finally baptized Kevin. After much fasting and prayer on our part, and lots of trials and temptations on his, he is now a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This baptism was really special for me. It was technically my first real baptism. The other two that we had were kind of fixed before we got here, but this was my first investigator that we personally engaged, taught, and brought to the waters of baptism. It was truly a great experience. They say in the scriptures how great will you be your joy if you bring one soul unto God, and I will attest to that with great conviction! When he got baptized and received the Holy Ghost, I honestly felt the peace and comfort that I felt the day of my baptism. It was really great to be reminded of that in such a personal way, and of course to bring this dear friend of mine to that peace and comfort as well. And with his baptism finished, we...

Hello everyone. Just had day 100 on the 27th. May I continue to rack those up like nobody's business. Things have been crazy this week. Things are finally going better with Kevin (his baptism is this Saturday) and we managed to fix another with this 9-year-old girl named Hanaley. Our third, Yvon, fell through though. His parents are rather opposed. Still working on that situation. This week I did my first split with Elder Smith (and on Day 100 no less). We went and saw this investigator that Elder Paulsen and I have been seeing for a bit, Tamatit, and have been having a bit of trouble with. After like 20 minutes of waiting for him, and him talking to his GF in the other room (who, by the way, is innactive and we don't know for sure but she might be one of his impediments, according to our bishop), he came out and said he didn't want to take the lessons anymore. Of course he still hasn't read or prayed yet, even after weeks of seeing him. What followed was a...

Hello my friends!  Yet another letter from Tahiti; the land where the Young Women think every missionary is smoking hot (just by sheer nature of his being white, and a servant of the Lord maybe), the Young Men think we're the flyest dudes alive, and all the kids think we're actual superheroes. The adults too. Like, for reals. This week was better than last. Finally got to see Kevin, and he's doing much better. He unfortunately moved his date, but it was only to like a week later, and he actually attended this other baptismal service we invited him to (and that I had to speak at) so that was highly reassuring. We've finally got some new investigators, and I think we've got some potential. This one chick, Vaianui, is really commited, just from the first lesson, and I'm really excited to see what becomes of it. A really hard experience though was when we met with one of our investigators. We came over and it was a bad time, so we peaced out. Then when we ...

This week we got to go to the temple. I totally did the session in French like a pro. Not a whole ton new this week besides that, though. Still just been working hard every day and, honestly, struggling a bit. This week's been kind of hard. Our bishop hasn't showed up to any of the splits we've asked him to come on with us, we lost an investigator, we've been having real trouble with our current primary investigators in terms of commitments, we haven't seen Kevin in a while and his mom swore at us when we came trying to find him, and we didn't even meet our goal for lessons taught this week. It's been a little discouraging. But, what are you gonna do? We just keep going, and keep working, and trying our best. We've been fasting and praying quite a lot, and I've been trying really hard to be more exactly obedient to the rules (#gettingupatexactly6:30) in the hopes that it will show the Lord how much we need the blessings. I feel ...

Another week has gone by... We ate dinner with this lady who plays the piano in church, and she just loves to correct the missionaries French. She spent like 5 minutes at minimum explaining and re-explaining this one simple phrase to me and basically saying the same words over and over again. Nailed it. There have been not one but TWO spiders the size of my Size 10 foot in our house. The first was almost under my man-purse (not cool), and the second was there when I opened the door to take a shower. Ugh. I got a phone call right then from another missionary, so I went to take it, and when I got back, the other Elders had seen fit to light the spider on fire, as opposed to just spraying it with Zig-Zag. They combined our district and another district into two, and my companion is the district leader! So now we get to do baptismal interviews. We got there early though for our first one, so we played volleyball in the street and shared the gospel with these random kids. It ...

Hi Everyone! Not a whole ton of new stuff this week besides us fixing our first baptism! We fasted for a miracle, and that's what we got, man. His name is Kevin Brej, and he has already received his witness and has come to sacrament meeting and loves everything about the church. He is like the golden investigator, man. He's already to page 27 of the Book of Mormon and we spent Sunday's gospel principles class explaining the Tree of Life vision. He'll be baptized on November 26 (a little ways in the future, but that date has significance for him). It's truly the work of the Lord that we're doing here, and despite my missing everybody so much, I really am thankful to be out here becoming a better person and being a part of this miraculous work. I think that's all for this week, now here are the pictures! -our barbecue as a zone. it rained when we were prepping the food...                           ...

Hi Everyone- Yet another week passes in its splendor! I was so thankful to finally be back to missionary work and not be sick, and the Lord saw fit to welcome me back with plenty to do, and lots of rain. I couldn't have been happier. We've had some really incredible lessons, and I've really grown as a teacher. I'm really learning how to recognize the spirit at every moment and act on promptings. My love for the people has only continued to grow every day. I care so much about our investigators, and can feel the Savior's love for them so strongly. There's this one lady named Lorenza who's really special to me. She's got lots of problems and it's a rough situation, but that just makes me want to work so hard to help her through all of them. There's a lot of tribulation in her life, and I want nothing more than to give her peace and have her feel of the love of God, so that's what I work so hard to do in every lesson. There...