Tyler In Tahiti

Hello everyone,     This is Elder Harrah's mom.  Ty left for Tahiti this morning!  He arrived at the Salt Lake airport and called his dad and I about 11 AM Utah time.  It was so much fun to hear his voice and get to actually talk to him after 6 weeks!  He has been sick with what he called the 'MTC cold'.  He's been up all night coughing, etc.  He didn't sound like his usual perky self.  He said the missionaries had given him a blessing last night and that he felt much better today, so hopefully it will pass quickly.       He told us that he and his district had done a musical number in sacrament meeting on Sunday where they sang A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief.  They sang the first verse in Tahitian, the next 2 verses in French, and the last verse in English.  I wish I could have been there to see it!  It makes me teary just thinking about it.  Apparently the Spirit was very strong.   He also said that ...

Hello my friends. I finally find myself on my final p-day in the MTC. Thank heaven. The experience has been good, learning so much has been awesome, feeling the spirit's been nice, but I need to get moving, and I need to eat real food again; even if it's Fafaru (you put a dead fish in a jar of saltwater, let it sit for a week, and then use the contents of the jar as a sauce for the fish you just grilled). I've had some good times here. We've had some truly amazing devotionals. We got to hear from Dallin H. Oaks (the man), and his talk was basically a guide to being a great missionary, so that was awesome, we got to hear from Rosemary Wixom of the Primary Presidency (I've always loved hearing from her in conference so it was cool to hear her in person), we got our very own version of Music and the Spoken Word with our MTC choir and THE Lloyd Newell no less ("This is the 185th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...

P-Day 4 everybody. Still going strong. Things are really kind of the same around here. I don't have a whole ton to report. Honestly, I'm just kind of in a perpetual state of good like all the time. Apart from missing people, every day is full of magnificence and progress in no small amounts. That being said though, I am incredibly impatient for Tahiti. I need to get out and get moving. I'm getting antsy. And I daresay the MTC food is taking its toll (meaning it's getting old, not that I'm getting fat. Actually lost a spot of weight, as a matter of fact). Our district grows closer together and more like a family every day, and we all learn and grow so much each day. We're all making great progress with our current investigators, and are gaining so much experience. It's cool being the veterans of the MTC, and tripping out the n00bies with all the dumb MTC games we know (Snaps, Airplane, and Black Magic). People are especially impressed by my skills...

Hello my dear friends! Week three down. C'est fromage ("it's cheese"). There's nothing I can't handle. I mean, there are still all sorts of new things to learn and grow from each day, but there's nothing insurmountable. I've got the world at my fingertips. Making some seriously great progress in my classes and with the language. One of our last lessons especially felt so calm and comfortable, and felt the most natural and like real missionary work. We've gone from talking at our investigators, to talking to our investigators, and now we're on the verge of talking WITH our investigators, if that makes any sense. One of our instructors said he wanted to "hear more of us" in our lessons, and I think I'm on the brink of doing just that. Speaking of him, his name is Frere (French for "Brother") Kellett, and he's one of the chillest guys ever. He's a genuinely caring person, and he's very patient wi...

Hello everyone! I'm still alive. Fancy that. This second week has been infinitely better than the first (not that the first was bad). We've all found our groove and now we can just go. Things have been just dandy. We've started teaching two new investigators, each one a unique and different set of circumstances than our first. The one has been taking lessons from the missionaries before but just hasn't gotten anywhere, and the other is Chinese, thus meaning that he grew up in a society that tells you from day one that there is no God and you're on your own. We committed the former to baptism in our very first lesson, and we got the latter to pray at the end of our lesson for his very first time! It was really incredible. Thank heaven for the Spirit being in our lessons. We get to go to the temple every p-day, and that is a real blessing as well. You can really clear your head in there, and of course being that close to our Heavenly Father is one of the ...