Peanut Butter

 Hello! Bonjour! Salut! Ia Ora Na!

First off Jame got his wisdom teeth taken out and it was WILD. 
Do you remember how last week I was talking about missing listening to Dvorak every day? That I was experiencing withdrawals from not being able to listen to his symphonies and quartets in order to get through each day? 
Well, this week God delivered and I discovered that DVORAK IS IN THE FRENCH HYMNBOOK.

 *screams*

The hymn is Souviens-toi, number 179, and is absolutely gorgeous! It is also a hymn that mentions that we have Heavenly Parents (parents is plural!!!!), which I am all about! Dvorak is good but God is better! 
Speaking of music, I wanted to say today that I can play Called to Serve on all of my instruments but the harmonica is ROUGH and it sounds terrible. It is just a bunch of parrot-like squawks and squeaks. I did play around on the mandolin today at a music store and am adding it to my long list of desired instruments. 

To make learning french fun, I have started playing bananagrams en français. (or should we say les grammes des bananes. I actually don't know if any of that is correct, but doesn't it SOUND French? I think so.) It is interesting and I am not amazing at it, but I have gotten a lot better! I force myself to only use words that I already know instead of relying on our French-English dictionary. It is quite fun. 

Next week I start full French immersion for 4 weeks. EEEEK! I am excited but very very nervous. I have started to realize that you can't just bet that a word will be similar to the English word but with a French accent. 

Our French tutor, who served in France, always talks about the "cute Tahitian accent," but I truly DO NOT hear what she is talking about. I cannot hear the difference between France French and Tahitian French. Someone help me. I do know that they roll the r's down in the french-speaking islands, unlike the guttural french everywhere else, and I do not know how to roll those r's. I always thought it was something you could either do or you couldn't, just like winking or making weird tongue shapes, but now I have to learn how to do it. It will be a wild frenchy time. I already know that my younger brothers who are fluent in French will be going crazy with my mistakes. 

My companionship had our first two teaching practices. I thought they went really well, but I know I need to improve a lot in my French. 

Last week I talked about how much I love poppies. This week's love letter is to peanut butter. I love it so much. Peanut-butter anything is my go-to snack for our breaks. 

An idea that I really liked this week came from Al Carraway and Elder Uchtdorf. Uchtdorf said that "when our wagon wheel gets stuck in the mud, God is much more likely to assist the man who gets out to push than the man who merely raises his voice in prayer--no matter how eloquent the oration." We must GO and DO! God will provide a way for us to accomplish the things we need to do but we must ACT. Get moving! I have been listening to the hymn "I will Go and Do" in French and Tahitian and I love how all the versions of that song leave you with an urgency to just move forward. No effort is wasted! Get going, get moving! Here are the links to those songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UD8NLkadtk&t=58s

Have a wonderful week! I love you all! 
Love, 
A big fan of Banane-grammes 

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