Tyler In Tahiti

Why yes, it is possible. Yes, you can hear from your friendly neighborhood missionary before p-day. Tomorrow we'll be going on some boating trip with a guy from our ward and an investigator (we're half-working), so we decided to hurry and do our emails today. Bienvenue encore my friends, to my missionary life here in the Marquesas - the land where white shirts become brown shirts, and I still haven't gotten the guava juice out of my pants. This week was filled with lots of unlikely adventures, including us finally seeing the mayor and fixing up our English lessons (FINALLY!), the Jehovah's Witnesses' Easter-Feast of Christ-thing, going to Aakapa, and going to Taipivai (other valleys on our island). With the mayor, Elder Pearson had already primed him for reception by talking about eternal families, so we just talked about that a little, and how the family is important in our religion and how, as a result of that, we sanctify the sabbath day and hold fa...

Ka oha nui mes chers freres et soeurs! from the Marquesas - the land where kids have a vacation from school every six weeks (seriously, how much time do they actually spend in school?) This week was a huge rollercoaster, full of laughter and copious amounts of stress as we prepared for the arrival of Elder Pearson. I'd say the craziest events of the week besides that were the mega-cleaning of our house (just for Bize and Pearson to never come to our house), my meeting a guy born in Texas to a Jewish family but raised in Argentina who owns a bar in the Galapagos Islands who up and left for the Marquesas one day just on a whim (the captain of a boat that came into his bar asked him) without even knowing how to speak French (he only speaks English and Italian), and Louis and Michelline not coming to church AGAIN. But after all of that, the greatest event of the week was my meeting a general authority; a seventy no less. Ladies and gentlemen, Elder Pearson, the President of t...

Ka oha nui from the Marquesas - the land where pirates probably buried their treasure, only we didn't find it when we went hiking. This week was significantly better than last week in terms of troop morale. We've still been doing a whole bunch of fruitless and tiring contacting, but we actually had a lesson with Kelly this week, so that was good. Best of all was this lesson we had with this lady we met from contacting (maybe not as fruitless as I thought!) named Suzanne and her son Carl, who is kind of deaf but reads lips like no other. It was the classic Lesson One and the Spirit was so strong it wasn't even funny. They agreed with a lot of stuff we said, and they said we made more sense than the teachers of their own religion! I'm really hoping they'll pray and act on what they feel. The laziness can be pretty bad here. Things are going better with our branch too. Our new first counselor and the new ward clerk are really helping to get things going. I just...

Ka oha nui all my friends from the Marquesas - the land where things have been tough with our investigators, contacting has been useless, and we've just had an all-around week of hard work and not a whole lot of new stuff. A bright spot this week was the power of hymns though. The French version of Verses 3 and 4 of How Firm a Foundation kind of wiped me out when we sang it in sacrament meeting this week: (translated by me) "I am your savior, your ultimate rescue I am with you to guide you always In the face of the adversary, I will render you strong I want to, in your trial, bless your efforts. When you face fear and evil you will not be vanquished by their weight for to bless you, I will be close to you and in your distress I will support you" Sincerely, Elder Harrah -a picture from Aakapa -sunset stuff again -Jehovah's Witness doctrine had me like--- -"The Stairs" from Lord of the Rings. No ...