If anyone knows who, what, or where faaoni is, please let us know

 Iaorana tout le monde!

(This is the part of the email where all of you now say iaorana back.) 

Before we get into it, subject headline comes from Friday morning. On thursday night, Sr Paul had put in a contact in our areabook for Friday morning called "faaoni." We woke up and had zΓ©ro clue what faaoni meant. After an embarrassing phone call with a member, some google maps searching, a dictionary, and looking at our member records, we were still lost. Did Sr Paul have a fever dream and make up a tahitian word by throwing together a lot of vowels? Possibly. 

(But don't worry we eventually figured out that faaoni is a place!) 

I hope you all had an amazing conference weekend and a miracle filled week! 
Our friend Alexis got baptized friday. It was a very amazing baptism and he was just so happy! The spirit was very strong and we are very proud of Alexis and this step he has made! He is having some struggles in his life right now, so pray for him. 

Here are some of the awesome miracles that filled our week! 
1. On Wednesday, we did a tahitian language study with a mami who lives in our ward. We tried to teach the restoration (faaho'i faahouraa mai) but it was very difficult. The next day, we were doing some studies when a lady who used to meet with us called. She asked if we could come over right then. We scrapped our language study and headed over to meet Edith and her niece Tevanui who was visiting from the isles. We started our lesson in french but Tevanui quickly told us that she doesn't really speak french. 
With lots of courage, the Mahina sisters started teaching the faaho'i faahouraa mai and, somehow, it worked. Our lesson was no longer the very broken and mistake-filled restoration from the day before. The gift of tongues is very real! 

2. While street contacting yesterday, a couple waved us into their home. I initially thought that we were walking into what was going to be a Bible bash, but instead we met our new friends Tina and Stefan! Tina told us that something told her to invite us in. ❤

3. We survived Poisson D'Avril (April fools)! We went to our 9 year old friend Tehaunui's house and he and his sister had made no less than 30 "kick me" stickers to put on the backs of innocent sister missionaries. 

4. We also met our new friend Corinne and had an amazing lesson with Manulani and Amulek (this semi-member couple that are so sweet and fun and kind.) 

5. Our roommates did not break our hammer, themselves, our our knives while trying to open a coconut. However, they also did not break the coconut, but miraculously we have strong tahitian neighbors who own bigger knives! 

6. I survived watching general conference in french and at 6 am! This is probably the greatest miracle of all because I did not fall asleep once. I would like to thank the uncomfortable pews at the chapel for this miracle. Although my head exploded with all the french (protip- don't do a tahitian study at 9 pm after waking up at 5 am and listening to 6 hours of french. Your brain will not work) general conference was amazing! 

I really loved Elder Holland's address. While I did not understand all of the talk, what I got out of it was that the world needs all of the light it can get. As children of Heavenly Parents, we have the light of Christ with us, and the world needs that light. Jesus wants me as a sunshine, and the world has need of each of your sunshine! As we understand our worth as children of God, our light and joy shines a little bit brighter. πŸŒˆ☀️🌞🌈

I love you all! Je vous aime and ua here au ia outou! 

Tuahine Rohirohi

Pictures include the baptism of Alexis, pretty ocean pictures, and a papaya tree. SΕ“ur Hatch walks past this papaya tree every day and has yet to understand them. They are literally just sticks in the ground. 









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fun fact: you need to go grocery shopping if you want food.

Image
  Iaorana! Bonjour!  Let's start this email by talking about a strange fever-dream hike I went on.  We woke up last Monday at too-early a.m. and then left in the dark for a hike with our zone.  The second we thought we got to the top of the summit (and thus the end before we headed back), the member we were with said: "And then we will go down this hill and then up this mountain and then up around there..." For a second we thought it was a joke. It wasn't. After getting to the top of the mountain, we walked for another hour and a half before heading back down. The ugly Murrieta mountains made their comeback BUT! There were some pretty cacti and a cool field. So it was good in the end.  And then, our whole zone ate... Oatmeal! And pumpkin pie!   Now, I am not against oatmeal in any way. I love it. However, oatmeal is the weirdest food for a group of 15 teenagers to eat. Add in the pumpkin pie, and it made for an interesting meal at 8 am.  Other not...
Read more

You fall off Γ  chair one time during Γ  lesson...

Image
  And you lose the trust of our entire teaching pool forever.  It was a slow life-flashing-before-your-eyes fall. Bonjour tout le monde!  This week was not too crazy but know that probably 30% of our time was spent trying to figure out Alexis's baptismal papers. Rip.  My tahiti-related abilities are slowly progressing! My french is getting better, I can understand more Tahitian, and I am way better at killing mosquitos and sweeping cockroaches out of our house. And that is growth.  By rough estimates, we think that we have been given $150 of fresh coconut water in 3 weeks. Take that dehydration.  I went on exchanges in Faaripo with Sister Jorgensen! We were on bikes which was fun and we taught a lot of cool lessons! One of our friends said the following:  "Yooooo my friend i hinaaro un casse crout."  That is indeed a sentence in 3 languages and if anyone can figure out what it means, you win!  I don't have a lot to write about this week. We e...
Read more

Rest in Peace Flip flop

Image
  Iaorana tatou. This week was awesome! Last Week was difficult adjusting to my new area, but this week we saw Γ  ton of miracles!  ☆We were out doing contacting in between lessons one day and Sr Mapuna's sandal broke, thus leading to a slow, sad, and muddy walk back home. Rip rop flip flop ☆got out of a lesson with some Jehovah's Witnesses. They gave us some candy! I said thank, and then like an idiot, I said "oh did you guys buy it for Halloween?"  ☆taught English class! It went a little like this.  One student: how do you spell "Hatch?"  Other student: W A S H  Can someone please explain why everyone calls me Wash when w is neither a letter in French nor in tahitian?  We found some new people! This area has struggled to find new friends for a long time, but this week we found Christine, who is super prepared, Teddy, and Marion and Malia, who have a ton of questions and came to English class! God is good! I went on an exchange with none other than Sr ...
Read more