Tyler In Tahiti

I find it a bit inappropriate to merely say what I did in this last week, here in my last  real  email, so I wanted instead to use this occasion to reflect and look back. ... and then yesterday we went into the city and afterwards spent a bunch of time with missionaries from some other zones, so we ended up having no time to do mail. Classy. So today I find myself pressed for time and without many words. I feel like the greatest summary of all I've felt and learned will be in my homecoming talk, but even so, I would honestly just like to take the time to say how much I love this gospel and how different my attitude towards the gospel and how to handle what's really important in life has changed so much, and I can't wait to continue to share this same beautiful and wholly  real  light that exists in this world, and is all that really counts. Please everyone that reads this, know that I know that the Book of Mormon is true and that the only way to even stay ...

This week was a good week overall, but frankly I don't know how to feel. There's just so many mixed emotions right now. I honestly feel so many at once that it's just a great big overload and in the end I just come out feeling 'meh'. Monday Went to a beach at Tautira and hung out. Also we got really cool zone shirts designed by Elder Peel. Tuesday A great big day of work. Got right back into the rhythm of things and forgot that ficticious life that  ficticiously exists outside of Tahiti. Wednesday More work. Our best investigators right now I'd say are these two girls M and P. They are currently living in cohabitation with innactive members. They're boyfriends are brothers, ages about 18 and 16. M and P are 17 and 15 respectively.  These two girls are just sweet and just need the gospel super bad. They're having a hard time keeping the commitments we give them though. Every time we try to invite them to church they say that their boyfr...

Longest. Week. Thank heaven it's over. Monday Chilled in this guy's sweet field and hung out with the goats there. It was very tranquil. Tuesday Work. We were busy from 10 am until clear into the night. We had a lesson every hour! I was grateful to have a full day of work, but at the same time, since I was feeling sick it was just kind of torturous. Wednesday Same deal. Super busy. Did a service project and helped plant pineapples. They had a lot of them in their field. The bushes that the pineapples grow from actually give forth to baby bushes too, and you just pluck them off the bush as if they were fruit and you plant them and you have more. Weirdest thing. Thursday A full day as well. The same as yesterday really only replace service project with weekly planning. For a moment we were pedaling our bikes and I just wanted to die. I even sent a text afterwards to Elder Smith and Elder Packer to shoot me with a spear gun. Super worn out. This week was d...

 Monday Went to Tautira and played games for pday. It was everything from soccer to "Signs". Soeur Livu (this sister from Vanuatu) REALLY wanted to play musical chairs and we actually did and it was good clean fun. Tuesday A very full day. Kind of frustrating. Lots of cancellations. Our DMP moved our coordination meeting with our newly called ward missionaries to this day without telling us, so that ended up being problematic and then he wasn't there. Wednesday Also rather busy. Our auxillaries are actually showing up for our reactivation and missionary splits ever Tuesday and Wednesday now. It's not perfect, but there's at least two or three people. Thursday A little more calm. We worked on an activity that we're going to do in August. There's going to be several stations, but the last one is Jeopardy, so we were designing our Jeopardy board and punching in our questions and such. Friday Went to Mahina's district meeti...

Monday The shortened p-day. We took the time to plan out this activity that we're going to do for our ward, and went to go do a family home evening that mostly just got cancelled (whoever the investigator was was out drunk) Tuesday In the morning we went to the temple, and that was quite nourrishing (it felt like years since the last time I'd been), and then we went and had a multi-zone conference with President Fox. It went super well. He shook hands with everybody and took the time to talk to us all a bit. He and Soeur Fox are quite nice. We also went to a funeral in the evening at the Protestant church. Sad deal. It was the mom of my old DMP from Haapiti. It was a nice service though. Everyone was trying to keep their chin up and they sang some fun, loud, Tahitian Protestant hymns with the usual drums and ukeleles. Wednesday A full day's work. We had lots of lessons today. The best one was definitely with Mereani and Poeiti. They were super shy before, but...

Monday - no motu. the boat didn't work out. we went and ate lunch in this shack on the water instead. Tuesday - work. Some pretty good lessons. Standard. Wednesday - The last conference with President Bize! Most nostalgic two hours of my life, surely. All of the hymns were Tahiti classics (this might have been the one time i wasn't angry to hear Secret Prayer). Soeur Bize said some touching things and made everybody tear up (I dunno; I did, at least), and then President Bize tried to keep his lively so people wouldn't get too bummed/down. They're coming to Utah at the end of August for a reunion with all the old missionaries, so I'll/we'll really be seeing them quite soon. Thursday - got a bad haircut. Friday - did a rehearsal for our stake missionary choir with the gang after our district meeting, then went to our zone leader's house and fixed my bad haircut. also got churros (i love that churro place) and saw Ravatea and Jesse again (our c...

This week was both long and short at the same time. I can't believe it's already pday again, but at the same time, we had so many cancelled lessons this week and I was sick so it kind of drug on. Best parts were definitely Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. Wednesday I did my last interview with President Bize, which was a wholly touching affair that left me quite nostalgic. He told me a lot of nice things, which were honestly answers to my prayers, and made me feel like I wasn't a total failure on this mission. Even got a hug. Friday the zone leaders announced that apparently our stake wants to do a missionary choir as well, so as soon as one ends the other will start. Super random. We found out about it that very day and had the first rehearsal that evening. It was just fun to go back to the Taravao chapel again, and I even ran into Kevin Brej! The last time we saw each other I was 18 and he was 19, and now we're both in our 20s. Unprecedented. Sunday we ...

Or rather, I was mistaken. Last week's picture of the map made me look really dumb! I figured out that we weren't exactly on the presqu'ile, but I didn't know we were that far away! I assumed that with us being part of the presqu'ile zone we'd be a lot closer! Apparently our sector used to be part of the a different zone but now we're part of the presqu'ile even though we're so far away. Me and my assumptions. These were all things that I found out later... That being said, things are going very well right now. This week just flew by. The first couple of days we were in a trio (Elder Hollowell's plane to Hao wasn't until Thursday), and it was fun to finally serve with Hollowell (we're friends/know each other from zone conferences, but this was the first time we'd ever been in such close proximity). Each day passed at lightning speed. Tuesday was especially cool because the other coaches and I got to go to President's hous...