Stand tall, it gets a little better (Tubuai - week #16)

Ia ora na!

This will be a little short, because again it's been a little bit of a less active week. First of all, life is good with Elder Teihotu. He's a good comp and very diligent, a good teacher as well. Thanks to him I've been able to pinpoint some of my weaknesses and become a more effective missionary.

I'll start off with some good things to say before i mention the difficulties. We found a new investigator this week, who is the aunt of our other investigator C-. Her name is H-, and she lives with an inactive member named T-. They have 7 crazy, savage little children who are totally hilarious. H- loves going to church with T-.and some of the kids, and she has seen the spiritual difference between this church and some others. She and T- have such a desire to change, so much that they even scheduled their marriage in February. She wants to be baptized, plain and simple! But the thing with her is, she has family opposition... that same grandmother of C- that i mentioned in the last email? Yeah, that's H-'s mom. Shes already threatened H- that, because H-and T- live on family property, they will be rejected and thrown out in the streets if she's baptized. And because they'll be thrown out in the streets, H-'s mom will call the social services and say that there are children living out in the streets. After that, she'll take their children. H-and T-.know that will happen, cuz its already happened before. That's the situation, and I'll leave it at that. Either way, they want to learn from us, so we'll teach them, help them feel the Holy Ghost, pray for them and her mom, and they'll decide for themselves what shall be done.

As I said, there have been some difficulties. C- decided that, because of his Grandma, he doesn't want to get baptized anymore. All in all, he doesn't want to start a world war, as he would say. Its been sad because he was really enthusiastic about it before. However, we've found with him that he hasn't been keeping his commitments to pray and read the scriptures, excepting our lessons with him. What we gotta do now is really help him know that through these things, he will have really powerful, spiritual experiences that will give him a testimony that these things are true. That will be the motivation for him to overcome the oppression, to stand tall despite the wall in front of him. He's been doing great with the word of wisdom, he's completely given up smoking for three weeks now. I don't know how he has done it without praying, but his willpower really is strong. We're still stoked for him anyway!

Things are all right with our other investigators. Not too many lessons this week, lots of talking with members and committing them to share the gospel with their friends, and to our dismay when we do our follow ups, not a whole lot of action done. It's been tough, but also a good experience to really encourage the members and show them how they can be a help in the Lord's vineyard. I know the members much better than before now, and things are great in terms of trust with them. Just gotta faaitoito!

To wrap up I thought I'd just bear my testimony of the love our Heavenly Father has for us. In our life, we have all sorts of weaknesses and imperfections, and as a missionary, a servant of the Lord, I've found that I have plenty. While teaching the perfect gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and bringing others to His perfect, restored church, one cannot help but feel a little imperfect. But Heavenly Father knows this, he does not expect any of us to be perfect. All he expects of us is to do our absolute best in striving to be like Jesus Christ. Through His help and His guidance and His love, we can overcome these weaknesses. The Lord said to the prophet Moroni: "I ^bgive unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my ^cgrace is sufficient for all men that ^dhumble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make ^eweak things become strong unto them." Faith in our Heavenly Father and humility before Him are what it takes to overcome these weaknesses, and do our best. I know that Heavenly Father loves each and every one of us, and he is willing to help us if we are willing to turn to him.

Anyway, that's about it for this week. Its kinda hard to remember everything that happened this week, felt kinda like a scramble. But with faith, hope and charity, the odds can be overcome. Things will get better! I love you all, and a faaitoito!

Elder Ball

http://mormon.org

Il fait trop beau... (Tubuai - week #15)

Ia ora na!

It’s been an interesting week. Frankly, not too much has happened in terms of lessons this past week. However, there have been some changes and there has been improvement between the full time missionaries and the members here on Tubuai.

First change, new companion! Elder Firuu was transferred to serve back on Tahiti, and I received a new companion Elder Teihotu. He arrived Friday, and since then I’ve been showing him the island and introducing him to the members and investigators. he’s from my first area, Pirae! He’s cool, he’s been on the mission for about a year now. He teaches really well, and he knows how to work hard as well. I’m pretty stoked to work with him and explode the work here together.

As I said, we haven’t had many lessons this week, as sadly we have lost a good amount of them. Like M- and M-, they left for Tahiti for an indefinite period of time. Still searching for new investigators, new people on this tiny little island who want to receive the gospel. We've found some pretty good investigators, thanks to the members! We found V-, a woman who had already taken a few lessons from the missionaries before in her life. She lives with a man who has been excommunicated. In our first visit, she confirmed that through prayer she had already received an answer and a testimony that this church is true, and she wants so badly for her and her son to be baptized. All we gotta do is help them and encourage them to pick a date to get married, and all will be well. She understands the lessons and the scriptures very well, and thanks to her member friend who introduced us, she always has someone by her side to explain things when we aren’t there. She’s a great investigator, and I’m excited for her and her faith in Christ.

Aside from that, we've really been trying this week to improve our relationships with the members and leaders of the church. This week, we successfully had our dinners in the members’ homes every day, rather than them dropping the food off at our home. It was great, we even had some investigators present during the meals! The dinners with the members are just great times to help them out with the missionary work and leave them spiritually uplifted. We've been doing our best to do some service as well, such as working a little in the taro fields of some members.

In addition to that, we've had a district training meeting with all the leaders of the district and branches, which includes elders quorum, relief society, young men etc; all for the purpose of working together in the missionary work. It was just a great chance to lay down some expectations between the members and the missionaries, and form a plan of action of what were gonna do this year and how were gonna do it. Everybody’s in it and a little more motivated than before, which is excellent. Were only hoping for improvement these next few weeks.

Our investigator, C-, is doing great as well. He hasn’t smoked pot for two weeks now! Haha were so excited for him, and he’s been feeling great too. The only problem that rests now is his Grandmother who well reject and disown him if he’s baptized... we’re really trying our best to get him ready for the 8 February!

That’s about it for this week, life is good and beautiful. A little too beautiful... the weather has been sooo hot this week, id say even up to the 100s. Nasty. Anyway, love you all, and a faaitoito!

Elder Ball

Captions: photo #1 above of sunset: à la pêche

Photo #2: Those days when you find a pig head in your freezer

Photo #3: Couldn’t pass up a photo moment like this one

Photo #4 Departure of Elder Firuu

Photo #5 Arrival of Elder Teihotu

Quick note (Tubuai - week 14)

Hey Mom,

I got the two packages Christmas day! We've also had a good amount of rain this past week, but still not enough to keep the water flowing in our house, unfortunately. Also, I would love to send some pictures, but i don't have time today because there was no internet earlier today and I'm just here to say that I'm still alive. 

Hope life treats you all well, love you all and have a good week!

Casey

Party Animals Part 2 (Tubuai - week #13)

Ia ora na!

Happy New Year everybody! That makes 13 weeks here at Tubuai for me, and 8 months on the mission. Time is just flying, feels like yesterday that Elder Firuu and I just barely came to Tubuai. A lotta weird stuff to say about this week--probably the strangest on my mission.

First of all, good stuff happened--we fixed a baptism this week for the 8th of February! C is this 18 year old dude who is a total stud. Hes spent some good time partying in his days, but he is one of the most honest, truth-seeking guys I've ever met. His whole family is Catholic, and we've been chased off by them a few times. but C has such a desire to know more about Jesus Christ and has been looking into other religions. We told him that that's what we're there for: to bring him unto Christ through the fulness of His restored gospel. He likes to drink and he enjoys his paka (marijuana) but that can be overcome through faith in Christ. We're stoked for this guy.

We've found that we have some good success with the teens here. We just like to be friends with these guys and joke around with them and play soccer with them. This week we started teaching two other brothers, Te and Ta. Ta, who has 24 years, has already taken all the missionary lessons on the island Moorea and has already read the whole Book of Mormon. We were disappointed to hear that he never received a response through his prayers that the Book of Mormon is true, but he agreed to learn from us again and retry. His bro Te, 16 years, is pretty interested and just wants to know if God exists. They participate super well in the lessons, and they're fun to teach. They agreed to be baptized if they receive a testimony that these things are all true. It takes prayer and faith, and miracles can happen!

Sadly, there hasn't been much else going on here on Tubuai. Nothing but parties. Our other investigators, like H and F for example, have been so busy with family over that they have not had the time to have us over for the past 4 weeks. We've passed by many times and encouraged them to keep praying and reading the scriptures. They still come to Church, so that's great! But really, its been tough with everyone super busy. Also, it's been tough with everyone drunk.

With that being said, the drunkenness has only increased since last week. We had some nice drunk dude encounters this week. Lotta beer cans thrown at us, some juicy profanity as well. A good experience was us just on our way home, and in the middle of the street, these two guys are staggering and yelling amongst themselves. they see us and immediately they get in our way and stop us. These guys are seriously in our faces (these are big Tahitian guys, too) with their alcohol in their hands and their eyes pointing in different directions, yelling at us why the heck were we here. We just told em stuff like "we're here to tell you that God loves you!" to spare ourselves from another whiff of alcohol breath. We got away pretty easily. It was a very pleasant experience.

Well, those are my experiences for this week. This next week, I hope I can bring in some more teaching experiences rather than funny drunk guy experiences. But that's just a taste of what I've seen this week. The chaos will end soon.

I love you all, take care and live and love the Gospel and the Lord! A faaitoito!

Elder Ball

http://mormon.org

Party Animals on the Loose (Tubuai - week #12)

Ia ora na!

Its been so great to be able to skype with the fam on Christmas! thank you for that, even if my English is kinda messed up now... Definitely a highlight of the week.

Skyping with Casey

Other than that, thanks to the holidays its actually been the slowest week of my mission. First of all, I've never seen a Christmas like they have here... Everyone drinks, and drinks, and drinks, and I mean almost everyone except for most of the members of the church. First of all, we were unsuccessful in fixing any lessons on Christmas and for the rest of the week because everyone was too busy, so that left to contacting and talking with members. And I'm not lying, every single non-member house we came to was a total party wreck, with some inebriated dude stumbling and coming to greet us. Even just riding our bikes we'll see people passed out on the beach or in front of their houses. Needless to say, nobody has been super receptive this week. We've just been trying our best to spread the message that Christmas is about Jesus, not alcohol. Sadly, the party wont stop until well after the new years.

But hey, that wont get our hopes down. With what little amount of lessons we've had, its been solid with them. For a while we've been teaching M. She has had a tough life, being raised in a pretty messed up family, so she has a tough personality. She lives with her boyfriend H and they have one child together. Right now I could say that she is one of my favorite investigators. She is sharp, quick to learn and best of all willing to learn. Since we've taught her we can see now how she's already started to soften up. This week we taught her about faith and repentance, and during this lesson she realized how much she needs to change in order to be baptized and follow Christ. We challenged and committed her to sincerely repent, leave behind her troubled life and come unto Christ. She knows that she must keep the Law of Chastity, and she knows she has to forgive others for their faults. She knows what she must do, and right now we're just praying and praying that she will have the faith and willpower to take these steps. She really is amazing, and she is someone that i would love to see have a change of heart and be baptized.

Other than the few lessons we've had, not a whole lot new. Elder Firuu and I both passed through the transfers without a scratch, so we'll both be staying here for at least another 6 weeks. Also Elder Randall gets his new companion today, Elder Wheeler I believe. Anyway, Its been bizarre living here lately. Our shower no longer works in our house, so we've taken to the hose behind the house to shower off every day. Luckily there are enough banana trees and ferns to censor our nudeness, Garden of Eden style. That's how we roll here on Tubuai. Also, for the past week there has been a cricket in our bedroom. We have no idea where it is, but every night it starts chirping, and it's loud too. Kind of hard to sleep at night, but hey it's whatever.

This island is definitely an experience that I'll never have again in my life. I look back and realize that never in America, or even at Tahiti, will I have problems like these: no water, no shower, crabs and giant spiders in the house, eating raw fish straight from the ocean, and countless other bizarrities. I just wanna say that its been so awesome here on Tubuai. All the experiences I've had thus far are life changing, and I am sure to have more to come. I'm totally fine with staying here. We've got some work to do.

That's about it for this week! Love you all, and happy new year! A faaitoito!

Elder Ball

http://mormon.org

Happy holidays from the middle of the ocean (Tubuai - week #11)

Ia ora na!!

Its been another interesting week! The first half was still spent on Tahiti, then Thursday we headed back to our tiny island Tubuai. Tahiti was a great experience, going on splits with other missionaries and getting to see how things work in other areas.

MTC district together again for mssion Christmas Party

For a lot of our time this week (both in Tahiti and Tubuai) we spent a lot of time doing street contacting and door-to-door... its been a while since we've done it, and man is it hard. In Tahiti there's been some real stingy contacts... first example: Elder Mariteragi and I, we came to a house with a huge gate in front of it (a lot of houses in Tahiti are like that). We can't see past it, so we shout over it to get someones attention. Suddenly the electronic gate slowly opens, and there's an old lady sitting there in a chair. All she does is look at us, wag her finger at us and then close the gate without a word said. Man did we laugh hard or what after that, so wicked. A lot of other houses there consisted of young French surfer dudes on vacation, who simply said "yeah brah i'm on vacation! Get lost!" It was a little tough, but you just gotta know as a missionary that, even though the message we have is easily the most important message in the world, there will be a lot of people who will reject us right off the bat. It's too bad, but just gotta faaoromai (persevere).

When we got back to Tubuai, we were disappointed to find that the drought has not yet ceased, and all of our investigators are at Tahiti for vacation. A lot of lessons have been cancelled for this next week to come, so it looks like for now we'll be spending most of out time looking for new investigators until the new year. Also, because Elder Maples, our zone leader here on Tubuai, has finished his mission, his companion Elder Randall has no companion, so we've been going around as a trio on the whole island to accomplish the work in both areas. A whole lot of biking, let me tell ya. Even if this island is tiny, its still big for us! I have no idea how they did it before with just two elders on the island. Not a whole lot of other news for this past week. Yesterday I did give my first 15 minute talk in French during sacrament meeting. Cool experience, I'm pretty sure I did well.

This week I feel like I've been making a real break through with Tahitian as well. We've had some good contacts with people in Tahitian, and I swear the gift of tongues worked its magic with these people. I understood everything, and my tongue was loosened and the words just came. So cool, its after experiences like that when you feel like a champion. Then after, we go and talk with some members in Tahitian, and suddenly I understand nothing again. Haha, weird how that works. We got some good potential from these contacts however, and we'll pass by them again this week to see if they will continue to follow the lessons.

Life is good, good. We're pretty stoked for Christmas to come, its been such a good time of year here... a little different because there are no Christmas trees or snow, but its been great. I want to testify that this is the time of year when we can really celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our Savior, the Son of God, was born in such humble circumstances, and left His heavenly home to dwell here on Earth as a mortal man, to atone for the sins and pains of the world. I know He is our Savior and Redeemer, and in humility He was born among us on the earth.

Remember the Savior during this fantastic time of year! Faaitoito, e ia oaoa i te Noela!

Elder Ball

http://mormon.org

Exquisite Opposition (Tubuai - week #10)

Ia ora na!

First of all, greetings from Tahiti. Friday we flew in for a Christmas activity for all the missionaries. It was excellent to see everyone again and remember the good old MTC days. Had a great meal and some skits going on, it was definitely a good time. But, I am all ready to get back to work at Tubuai. Its been quite a crazy week here.

Before heading out to Tahiti, we had a great teaching experience. The nephew of F, named M, came in from Tahiti to stay with family. He's a champion canoe racer, super chill dude. We came over to teach his parents, but they ended up not being there, so we taught him instead since he was interested. I don't think Elder Firuu and I ever taught a better lesson than that. It was smooth, simple, clear, and precise, and it brought the Spirit in heaps. We answered all his questions with exactness. We taught the Resoration, and after we had just finished telling the Joseph Smith story, we paused and let it all sink in. After about 30 seconds of silence, he basically said "yeah man... that is way cool. That touched me, man" He really is interested and has a love for God and a desire to know the truth. I'm excited for what comes next with him.

Other than that, not too much awesomeness went on before we left Tahiti. Its been pretty nice here in Tahiti... nice and hot. We got to go to the temple on Saturday, which was another great experience. We've been staying with two other Elders in Punaauia, Elder Gervasi and Elder Mariteragi. Its been good, but since theres only two bikes with them one companionship has to go out on foot and the other on bikes. And like I said, its been hot... Never sweated so much in my life. Its good to see what the work is like in another area and with other missionaries.

Apart from the good times, this week has been rough... Saturday morning we were met with some heartcrushing news. Two sister missionaries were hit by a drunk driver Friday night on their bikes. One came out alright, but the other was left in critical condition. She went to the hospital and was put in a coma. She was a sister missionary in our district in the MTC, and for us all it was difficult news to bear. We love her so much and want her to recover so badly. We've been fasting and praying all the weekend for her and her family. Keep Sister Taylor and her family in your thoughts and prayers. She is an excellent missionary, and her faith and confidence truly inspired me as a missionary also.

What I want to say is that I know God is our Heavenly Father and that he loves us. He is mindful of all his children, and he wants only the best for us. In life there are the most exquisite pains, with the opposition of the most exquisite happiness. Ive just about felt the two this week. But all these things are done in the judgement of God, because he truly loves us and knows how we can grow and progress in life.

Keep the prayers comin, and love life no matter what! Nothin can stop this work, its on a roll.

A faaitoito,

Elder Ball
http://mormon.org