Things are pickin up (Week #3 in Papeete Pirae 2)

Bonjour mes amis!

The work here is starting to pick up a little again! Just when things were difficult, we were blessed with three more investigators! One is a couple that the DMP found (Dirigeant Mission de Paroisse aka Ward Mission Leader) and the other is one that we found through OLB (Ouvrir La Bouche aka contacting)! The couple, Julie and William, want to get married soon and have taken the lessons before, and so now they are interested in getting sealed in the temple. So hopefully they stick with that desire and follow through with baptism! The other is a dude named Tehaunui, really laid back guy who just wants to know the truth. He's been chatting with the J-Dubbs (Jehovah's Witnesses... yeah we got a lot of lingo) but so far he likes what we teach better. I'm thinkin' it will stay that way! We've only taught him the first half of the first lesson because of a time crunch, but next lesson we'll go over Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. I'm so stoked for it!

I'm starting to see some improvement in my French! I seriously had a lot of great practice this week. We had mini missionaries come and work with us, basically some guys from Young Men's so they could see how the mission life is. We went on splits throughout the day, and since these guys spoke no English I had no choice but to speak French. We also had an awesome opportunity to go the temple on Saturday. Again, it was all in French! Way fun, and a little difficult. Also yesterday, I taught our entire gospel principles class for the investigators who came to church. It was no problem! At the end of the week, I can say that I can just about understand everything in French, no lie! The change is amazing, now I just gotta work on speaking. The gift of tongues is real!

No weird things eaten this week. But I did play a Tahitian ukulele! It's not like a normal ukulele like they have in Hawaii, they call that a kamaka here. It's like this big banjo type thing, with the same notes as the kamaka but all the strings doubled, so there are 8 strings. It's way fun to play! Hopefully Ill find one to bring home. Also every house we stop by there's a guitar, so the word is spreading that I can play the guitar decently well and they all ask me to play. How can I say no?

Well, life is good! Some good stuff from the Bible has been dwelling in my mind, Romans 8:36-39. I only have my French scriptures with me, so I'll just summarize and say that it says nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, not our trials and tribulations or mistakes or anyone, because God is our Heavenly Father and we are His children. He loves each and every one of us and is watching over us during all of our hard times. Because after all, His only begotten son atoned and sacrificed himself for all our sufferings, so that we wouldn't feel alone during these times and so that we may be able to overcome them and find peace in the life to come. I know Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer. I don't know how many times I've said that in these emails but it's true. It's the most important fact a missionary will tell anyone.

Take care everyone, I gotta split! Love you all, and I hope life continues to treat you well.

A faaitoito,

Elder Ball

http://mormon.org

Please write me: (Put 3 stamps on your envelope.)

Tahiti Papeete Mission
Elder Ball, Casey
B.P. 93
Papeete, Tahiti 98713
French Polynesia