Fist bumps: a cultural phenomenon


 Iaorana tatou, bonjour tout le monde, et hello


Imagine this: you walk into church. As a missionary, you weave through all of the pews, making sure to give every. single. person. a fist bump. It takes 15 minutes. 
We give fist bumps, or checks as they are called here, to everyone- when we start and end lessons, at the grocery store, on the street, etc. People love to add a little *~spice*~ to their fist bumps, thus leading to Sr Young and I taking the time to name some of these fist bumps. 
We have: 
1. The Classic 10/10
2. The Claw: when you go in for a fist bump and then the other person grabs your fist.  7/10
3. The Snap: typically performed by the youth. When you give a fistbump and they snap their fingers at the same time to add some ~pizazz~.   -100/10
4. The Mami: when they go in for a high five so you go in for a high five but then they just press their hand against yours for a couple seconds. 12/10

Some events of this week, in no particular order: 

Heiti said yes to being baptized!!!!! She is going to be baptized on her birthday in July!!!!! 

Tehaamaru is going to be baptized too!!!! We have been struggling to help our friends actually progress this transfer so it was a huge miracle that both of these friends said yes to our invitations. They are so ready and in need of the blessings of the gospel. 

Our other friends are doing awesome! Ismael is progressing, Manulani is practically teaching us the lessons at this point, and our 12 year old friend Heihere came to church! I love this area because we see the fruits of our labors and diligence and faith. 

But then, I guess that the sœurs of Mahina needed humbling with this boost of confidence because we got food poisoning. It was not a fun couple of days there but we survived, thanks to the healing powers of coconut water and naps. 

Pensée spirituelle: 
Elder Ulisses Soares, of the 12 apostles, came to Australia and New Zealand this week. Because we are in the pacific, we were invited to watch a missionary devotional broadcast that he did. It was incredibly enlightening and uplifting. 
Rosana Soares, his wife, talked about the natural man in all of us. This is the side of us that gets greedy, or frustrated, or short tempered. The natural man fights against the light of Christ that is in all of us. 
She said that "the natural man wants us to have a bad day." We must fight against the natural man to have a good day. 

Elder Soares said later that "discouragement will weaken your faith. When you lose your joy you lose your faith."
I absolutely loved these thoughts. Things that help is grow our faith help us fight against the natural man. Scripture study, prayer, service, kindness, and church attendance are all ways to grow our faith and therefore have a good day. God wants us to have good days. He wants us to be happy and to have faith. 

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

Sœur Hatch, who is currently writing this while sitting in what is quite literally a cloud of mosquitos. Help

Pictures: 
We had to spend an hour and a half tracking a pizza delivery man for a member meal. We were not pleased and the pizza was just ok. 
We went to the temple! 
I am convinced that french is a made up language. 







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 à chair one time during à 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 à 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