Another Week in Paradise - June 9, 2014

Hello everybody! 

Today I had an interesting experience. I called our Bishop this morning to see how things were going to work our for using the key to the church to do our e-mails. But when I called him he asked me and my companion if we could come with him right then to pick someone up at the dock that had just landed in Bora and had taken the shuttle boat from the airport to the main island. So, we went with him. The person we picked up is the real-estate agent for the church. So he deals with buying, selling, and just all things real-estate when it comes to churchs. But the thing is that he comes from New Zealand and doesn't speak French. So from 10 this morning until about 2 we took him around to look at this land the church wants to buy, also we looked at our church and talked about how we could fit three wards in this building (even with the landslide that has 3 classrooms and our geneology room blocked off).

Then we did the trip around the island so that he could see the ward and the boundaries from the ward when the wards split. And in the middle of that we went to our bishop's house and ate lunch of authentic Tahitian food, or ma'a tahiti. We ate poisson cru, poe banana, uru (bread fruit), fresh grapefruit, and chicken and spinach. Something we do around here is that when we eat ma'a tahiti we don't use utensils. We eat with our hands and that was this guy's first time doing that. And another part of that adventure is the difficulties I had with translating. It's hard to be translate sometimes. When I'm trying to talk to one person in English, and then the others in French and sometimes my head gets mixed up and starts speaking French in stead of English. It was pretty unfortunate but funny at the same time.

Anyway, back to the work this week. 

This week our objective was to talk with the parents of some of the youth that we teach so we can get approval for their baptism. So on Wednesday my companion, Elder Joly, went with our stake patriarch who has been recently called as our ward mission leader to go talk with the mother of three youth that want to be baptized. When they talked with the mom she said it was good but that her husband wouldn't be okay with that. No!! And Thursday it was a brother in our ward who went and saw the father of another two youngin's that we teach. The dad said yes and the mom said she would give her answer Friday. I really hope it works out. Because our stake has the goal of 30 baptisms this week. That would be great if we could succeed in that. 

As for the investigators we have some good news. We were able to fix a baptism! Her name is Maiana and she is one of the friends of Tahia (the daughter of Rosine) and she wants to be baptized with Mahealani. We had some struggles with Mahealani this week and I really [hope] we will be able to keep her baptism. 

So yeah. I felt like I had a lot to say but now I'm not so sure. Ha. Actually Saturday I went on a split with Elder Bagley. I was supposed to do two baptismal interviews for their area. But when I got there for the first one we ended up talking to her boyfriend so that she could get married and baptized. It didn't work out for the moment. Then the second interview I ended up doing and she decided and told me during the interview that she doesn't want to be baptized. That was really unfortunate, but she promised one day she will be baptized but not right now. 

Yup. So not too big of news out here. Just going always. I love you all. I know this work is true and that the church is true and God is good. Keep going. 

Love,

Elder Squires