Pearl of the Pacific (Bora Bora - week #1)

Ia ora na!

So, voila la suite! Like I mentioned at the end of my last letter, I got transferred. It was a little expected, but nonetheless bittersweet. After being in Vairao for almost 6 months, it was tough to leave the members and the amis that i grew to love so much. I had the chance to bear a final testimony during testimony meeting, and at the end they decided to put God Be With You Till We Meet Again as the closing hymn. Whattup with that, that's not even fair. I almost cried! I said final goodbyes to the members before leaving that chapel for the last time in who knows how long, and before I know it that Sunday night I was at the airport ready to leave for Bora Bora.

And now the nitty gritty on Bora. I have been transferred to the Anau ward with Elder Lee Chip Sao as my companion. He's from the Papeete 1st ward, he's been 8 months on his mission and he's already been here in Bora for about 4 months. I already knew him well enough since he served in my last zone before and we've been on a split together which was totally rad. He's a total goofball, and I'm excited to serve with him.

Upon arriving at the Bora Bora airport (which is on an outer islet surrounding the main island), he and a couple young single adults from the ward were there to pick me up and we took off on a shuttle boat for the main island. This island is insanely gorgeous! The whole main island is surrounded by a huge outer reef mostly formed by smaller islets, so because of that there is a beautiful lagoon in between the main island and the islets. There are all kinds of shades of blue in the lagoon and on all of the islets there are white sand beaches that stretch out. If you want paradise, this is it. They call this island the Pearl of the Pacific, and it is rightly named.

On Bora, there are two wards, Anau and Vaitape. We live with the two elders for Vaitape, Elder Gilson and Elder Requillart. Their ward is kickin', and they do great work. As for the ward Anau... let's just say that the work has been low... and pretty low.  I'm supposed to see whats going on and boost the ward up a little bit, since there will be a division in the two wards in the coming month. It's a little different from my last ward, but despite the difference we got a ton of work to do!

I can say first off that the Lord has blessed us this week. After getting to know the area a little bit through the area book and the things that Elder Lee Chip Sao showed to me, we managed to fill our time up in seeing inactive members. On the island, there are around 1000 members... and there are maybe 400 that are active. So, this place could use some reactivation anyway! In doing that we were able to find a large amount of references, and that gave us even more things to do! Through one reference we found a new investigator named A------. He's living with a less-active member named K--. We had an awesome first few lessons with him this week, and he even came to church yesterday! First week and he's already progressing. We're stoked to be teaching him, and he loves the lessons!

I had the chance to meet a good amount of the members of the ward as well, including the leaders. I love these people already, and its apparent that our ward has a lot of potential and that most of the members want to work.  Our bishop took us around the area Thursday to see a couple inactives and to teach an investigator lesson with us, and we assisted the ward council and had a coordination meeting with our ward mission leader and everything. I'm confident that things will get moving here soon.

That's about it for the week! P-days are pretty awesome here, last week we went on a hike and today we spent time in a service project removing dirt from a mudslide that landed on the church building a couple months ago... and unfortunately, i cant send photos! There's a virus on my memory card thanks to the computer at Vairao, and I don't want to soil the computers here. Photos will come as soon as a clean it somehow! I love you all, and until next week!

Elder Ball

Alrighty, I managed to find a good photo on the computer, its a shot from the airport. Pretty cool