"Hulk Jésus-Christ"; " Every time I go into the temple, the Spirit be like, 'DO YOU WANNA WRESTLE ME BROTHER?!?!' "--Week 81

What a week. Again, not as busy as those other two, but still, we've always got lots to do.

Tuesday

Had a bunch of lessons. So many in fact that we had to cancel one to get Elder Sylvestre to his boat.

Wednesday

Picked up Roylance's mini-missionary. His name is Kevin. Super chill. He and Jordan and I do Rubik's Cubes sometimes.  Had our usual sport activity and English class. It was alright. Still trying to get more people to come honestly... (everybody says they want to come to an English class right up until you start doing an English class)

Thursday

Lessons, if you can believe it. We never have to go/go contacting. There's always plenty to do. The Thursday curse kind of hit though, and some cancelled and we had to do some weekly planning instead. And then we had our coordination meeting. Sort of. Priesthood Executive Council is on Thursday nights too, and normally it's at 6, but don't worry this week it was scheduled at 5 (when ours was supposed to be). No one told us. That being said, they didn't start on time and neither did we. We only had two people show up for our meeting (and it wasn't until half an hour later), and that's when some peeps on the priesthood exec council showed up, so then as we're waiting for this one guy to come to our meeting, the first counselor just gets up and starts welcoming everybody to the PEC and I was like, "Um, what?" Super funny. People do not question the missionaries' presence at ANYTHING here. I feel like we could go to a Relief Society meeting and get away with it. Anyways we then proceeded to have a meeting with all two of the ward missionaries that showed up and then had a bunch of drama getting the baptismal papers sent off to the mission office. Very fieu.

Friday

Did zone meeting and Skype was even more buggy than usual. *sigh* The new challenge for this month though is to get 5 new people at church, and we all agreed to put that as one of our objectives/reasons for fasting this Fast Sunday.

Also we fixed another baptism! This lady Célina Mau has been a member for years and had a crazy accident that she miraculously survived, but she hasn't been to church in a while and her husband is still not a member. We were trying to work with him, but getting nowhere honestly, but her 10 year old daughter (Fetiarava) has certainly been open to us and the Spirit was like, "Dude, engage her. Engage her right now!" And then her mom was even like, "Well go ahead you guys you can ask her." So we did. She'll be getting baptized in April.

Saturday

Kind of got pooped on today too. Engaged this couple to baptism and it just all went way awkward. Kind of a let-down after the awesomeness of our engagement on Friday. And then I got in a partial argument with this other guy who actually said a "quote of the week" last week.

To explain, I've started collecting the craziest quotes from people for you guys each week, and I intend to share them. The other week, there were three:

1. this one lady who has been following the missionary lessons for years and has not been progressing made it into the quotes of the week last week. We asked her why she'd been following the missionaries for so long ("Aren't you tired of us?"), and she said, "Because you guys have the truth." I then asked her why she didn't want to get baptized, and she said the classic, "I have my Catholic religion, I'm Catholic, etc." but the quote of the week was this; I ask her, "So wait, which church do you want to join/go with? Do you want to go where the truth is, and where the church of God is, or do you want to go in the church of man?"

She then responds, "Both."

2. the aforementioned dude that I kind of argued with was informing us that everything you ever need to know for life can be found in the Book of Timothy ("It encapsulates all aspects of life!!!!") and that all you need to do is have faith and do good acts; "no ceremonies or incense". He also told us this: "What was Jesus Christ's last great lesson to his disciples? TO PRAY OVER YOUR FOOD! The bread and water that he blessed represents the bread and water we eat every day!!!!! HIS LAST GREAT LESSON IS TO ALWAYS BLESS YOUR FOOO°OO°D1!!!!!!!1!"

3. I was talking to this Chinese guy about the state of the economy and getting a job in Tahiti, and he randomly blurts out "The nuclear era is over," mid-conversation. In his defense, back when there was nuclear testing done by France out on this one remote island of Tahiti, it did give people a lot of work, but frankly, that was at least 50 years ago.

Now on to something actually worthwile.

Sunday

I was reminded of the miracle of fasting. Hundreds of people were at church today. Just at random (or not so random). We had to sit outside. There wasn't enough room. This one lady who hadn't been back to church in 20 years came. 7 people from Rapa Nui just decided to show up (two of them only speaking Spanish (they speak Spanish out on Rapa Nui (I'll tell that story another time))). We need 6 investigators for the Standard of Excellence each week. We had 12. We needed 5 new heads at church for the challenge for the entire month. We got 7 on the first Sunday of the month.

Such a humbling experience. I haven't seen the powers of fasting like that since Toahotu and my training. It was a very touching, spiritual moment.

We also did the baptismal interview for Vahinehau, and all is well. She will be baptized this Saturday.

Also, a thought for you all, mixed with a scripture. A thought Joshua shares with us all in the Bible (that I put in my own words), and that I shared with the lady that wanted both churches:

As Joshua says, "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." The prophet of the Lord literally doesn't tell everybody, "Shut up and get back here in the Lord's church," he tells everyone, "Don't be wishy-washy, get yourself figured out. Choose ye this day. And then he says, "but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15)

Life is way too short to be sad. Do what you need to do to be happy. Don't waste time in waiting. Take charge of your life. Act, don't be acted upon. If you're sitting there trying to choose between two of anything, pick one. Don't wait. You'll be happier. And that's just science and reason. That's just true even from a worldy standpoint.

But that being said, the best way to be happy is to follow the Lord.

It's just that simple.

If you don't know if this is true yet, figure it out for yourself. If you're already on the Lord's path but you find yourself doubting, figure it out. Ask. Just don't waste time, whatever you do.

Take charge of your life. Be happy. And, if possible, choose the Lord.

-Elder Harrah

-Kevin ("Elder Scotch-Tehiva")

-Mélodie and Narii, and their baby Huiarii