Paradise 2.0

Hello/Bonjour/Iorana      Everyone/Tout le monde/Tatou!!

Another Week in Paradise...

No, I am not in Tahiti yet, but it doesn't mean I cannot just love the MTC right now. It is really an amazing place, so many things to learn and young people dedicated to doing what is right. It is pretty sweet. It is weird it would be that way because we are here 11 weeks which is super long, but I don't think I could have learned to love this place in just 2 or 6 weeks. Tuahine Arbuckle and I will talk to other missionaries and they are always so sad for us to "have to be here that long," but we just tell them, "oh we love it!" I can't think of any other place where this many young people are this focused on one purpose. It is miraculous. This week in one of our district devotionals our leader, Brother Markham said, "It will be what you make it to be." And if you rely on God it will be a miracle what happens. I loved this quote and have been thinking about that all week, boy is that true with ANYTHING. I have been here for 6 weeks and that is the running theme for this week. With that said don't worry, I am having a great time. I am just writing this because it is true. I am so grateful to get a full MTC experience. God knew I was a slow learner and would need lots of time to really soak in the goodness of this place. 

One of my favorite parts of the MTC is the choir. Like 800 missionaries join to sing a hymn and learn it in two practices. The director always gives like a mini devotional in the midst of the practice and what he said this week got me thinking, "why do I do the things I do?" As a missionary, I wear a name tag with my name and Christ's name on it. The director also said, "who's name are you accentuating, is it yours or Christ's?" I really don't know what else to write about this, besides the fact that it got me thinking. Christ gave the glory to the Father, am I doing that?

 This week we continued to learn French. It is nice and easier for me to understand. I also am learning to push myself harder with speaking the language. 

Tuahine Arbuckle and I had a skype lesson appointment in Tahiti on Thursday night to practice speaking Tahitian. It was fun. We literally understood like nothing and our teacher was watching us from behind and thought we were hilarious. I just kept saying "aita vau ite" which is "I don't know." The lady was awesome and laughed with us. Come to find out at the end she was asking, "Will I speak with you again?" and we said yes, and then she said "when?" and we just replied, "no." Oh boy! And then she was asking our names at the very end and we again replied, "I don't know." I felt like the missionary from The Best Two Years, who says, "this isn't the language they taught me at the MTC!"

  Friday was full of surprises. Tuahine Arbuckle and I taught a lesson to our "investigator" who would never commit to a baptismal date and she FINALLY did. I wasn't expecting that, but it happened. It was our last lesson with her, though. Earlier that day I was praying for help to love that day because I was starting to loose it, but it was amazing how God answered my prayer by that and many other events. I'll share two more. I never get packages. I got one that day. It was really weird, but it happened. It came from Sister Giles. I had never met this lady before, but I guess her daughter stayed the night at our house because her daughter is serving a mission in GA. It was way crazy how that happened. In it were some super cute Halloween goodie bags. wow. I can't believe that holiday is happening this week, cool. Have a Happy Halloween! I would love to see pictures of the celebration. Ok, last thing for the miracle day. Our gold tag, Alan, came out and told us he was a member. We didn't even ask. It was awesome because I secretly wanted to get to the point where a gold tag had to come out, and it happened. My day was made beyond made. 

One of the best things that happened this week was a classroom upgrade. We moved to a whole new building and it is like going from a motel 8 to a Marriott Marquis, soooo gooooddd! I now have access to a full-length mirror. We have white boards instead of chalk boards. A better window, better artwork, a bigger space, and it just looks friendlier. This change is great because Tuahine Arbuckle and I want to just start new and change and recommit because of it. I love it. That whole move took place yesterday and our district just had so much fun leading up to it. we put all our desks in a circle to read Preach My Gospel and teachers put the teacher's chair in the middle. It was so funny. 

      Funny language story time. Saturday we were in out lesson in French with John (really our teacher Brother Honey) and we always end up laughing during these lessons, because of one reason or the other, but it can be distracting, so we have been making goals not to laugh during the lessons (the struggle is sooo real). We had just taught a lesson in Tahitian so it was all fresh on my mind. Also during the French lessons, everyone else in the lessons (including myself) has to be very patient with me to when I speak French. I was trying to bear testimony of Jesus Christ, but I could not think of the French work for Jesus Christ (it is Jesus-Christ), the only thing that came to my mind was it in Tahitian (Iesu Mesia). So I thought really hard and after some time I thought I had come up with the word and said, "Iesu Christ." I didn't even catch it until I looked at Tuahine Arbuckle and she just said, "Iesu???" Then I broke our goal and just laughed. Ohh well.

Ok so then, the same lesson, I could not think of the word for heaven, so I just said, "Pere in heaven." I didn't catch that one either until Brother Honey told us after the lesson. Fun Times. 

   The last paragraph is some answers to questions I have got. Lessons have ups and downs, sometimes you feel it afterward and sometimes not as much, but we learn little by little or as Nephi explains, "line upon line, precept upon precept; here a little, there a little" (2 Nephi 28:30). I am so excited to go to Tahiti, but I don't want that to be a distraction from me her, right now at the MTC, so I try not to think about it a ton. Teachers sometimes tell stories about Tahiti, usually about the people and never negative or horror stories, because they don't want to freak us out. Travel information will come around November 24 or 10 days prior to departure. 

Best of luck to everyone this week. 

Love,

Tuahine/Soeur Campbell

                                             Brother Honey reading a "wife card" we bought him

  Sister Bellais from Tahiti serving on Temple Square and another sister from Tahiti going to Quebec

                                    Soeur Campbell's Zone by the Provo Temple on Sunday

                  In their old classroom, they put their desks in a circle around their teacher

New Week, New Language

Bonjour good family and friends!!!

As a missionary going to Tahiti, we have the privilege of learning Tahitian and French. For the last 5 weeks here at the MTC we have learned Tahitian and just yesterday we switched to French!!! I feel like I learned so much Tahitian and I really do like the language, but going to French has been wonderful as well for a couple reasons. One french has so many English cognates, whereas Tahitian has like none. Another reason it is SOO GOOD is because my super awesome companion, Tuahine/Soeur Arbuckle pretty much knows french because she was raised in Quebec and has learned French since kindergarten. My companion is a boss at the language. There are so many cognates and words I am semi-familiar with when in Tahitian there is like noo connection with Tahitian and English. The only word I had a connection with was "aroha" meaning mercy and like ten other things, but it is kind of like "aloha" which means love/hello/goodbye in Hawaiian.  This is a HUGE blessing from God, but it also means I need to work hard to learn all I can from her while I can. With that said she speaks to me in French quite a bit and then will say it in English. It is the best thing ever for learning a language!! I am so grateful that she is kind and patient enough to help me. Our district would sit down and read the Buka A Mormona and it would take us forever to get through a chapter trying to figure out words and sentence structure and which meaning of the word it was, because most words in Tahitian have like 5 meanings, but yesterday tuahine (too-ah-hee-nay) Arbuckle and I picked up Le Livre De Mormon and it was sooo much easier. We just tore up 1 Nephi 1. I LOVE reading Le Livre De Mormon, especially with Soeur Arbuckle, because it is just reliving and therapeutic.  

  So Tuesday after a fantastic dinner in the good old MTC cafeteria, Tuahine Arbuckle and I had nothing to do and I saw another "gold tag" on a bench. We just started talking to him. His name is Isaac and has a hurt foot. He is from TX, but claimed to no nothing about religion (that was my first tip-off that this gold tag was acting and really already a member of the church but of course we just went along with it, because that is their job and our job is to go along with it). I think he just started coming to the MTC as a gold tag because he didn't even have a real gold name tag, so it was fun to be one of the first people to talk to him. We got an appointment to start teaching him (side note, his first lesson was one of the ones after a really good study about PMG lesson #1, with the spirit so strong). 

    I also got my first package from home this week. It was stinking huge. SHOUT OUT to my family for spoiling me. They sent tons of homemade caramels and muffins to share with  my district! 

   We started French on Monday, but the Wednesday prior to that our teachers wanted us to make goals, so we did. I was sooo stinking grateful for that opportunity to renew and change and recommit. I am not going to lie some days it takes us FOREVER after meals to get back "down to business." We kind of started to do that but then I had an idea to break up the goals into weeks and make some weekly goals for memorizing and reading things and what not in French. It was an inspired idea and I knew it needed to be done and that is what we did. 

   On Friday our teachers, Ormetua Honey and Tuahine Cook, committed us to three days straight of just speaking Tahitian. I was really excited to give up my English to God and see what He could do to Tahitian. It was pretty hard to not say anything in English, but both Tuahine Arbuckle and I agreed that we learned so much from it. The first two days of this were great, but then Sunday rolled around and I was so sick of like mamu (which means "to be silent" in Tahitian) and missed joking around and talking to my companion, soooo yeah that stopped. Sunday was fun because I realized how much I like to talk and what a great companion I have been blessed with. 

    With that said, Sunday we were asked to lead a district discussion on enduring to the end and because we were still trying the Tahitian thing we never really planned it. But the discussion was like stressless and Tuahine Arbuckle would say one thing and I would listen and be inspired to ask everyone a question or something. She mentioned something about PMG and Christlike attributes in chap 6 and then I felt prompted to challenge the group and pick one to work on this week. It was way cool. We both concluded that this was a blessing from God because we had been making better use of our personal/companion study. 

    Chad Lewis (BYU athletic director and former NFL player) spoke to us for the Sunday night devotional. It was another like really good but almost like a stress reliever hour devotional, because he was funny too. I loved it. He said, "being a missionary means you are called to love people." You think of what love is and how Jesus Christ was the perfect example of the word and how his character shaped that. I had been thinking more about the Character of Christ the whole day and it is just amazing how much you can learn when you open your heart and mind. 

     OK, so I feel this has been a little all over the place but I just want to say what I have really learned this week. I learned more about how God has a huge hand in our lives. He called me to serve a mission, in TAHITI, that is huge. It seems like a job that needs to be done by someone with much better qualifications than me, but God qualifies who He calls. I have felt that this week. Prior to coming to the MTC, I was concerned about being here for so long, but honestly, I have not had one day where I went to bed and was like, "I can't do this anymore." God has given me strength and helped me. I seriously cannot believe the hand He has had in giving me a companion who wants to work hard and helps me. It has been a huge blessing. The last thing I want to express is how God can help us. He helps us through his son, Jesus Christ. This week the line of a hymn ( I think it is Come Follow Me) has been running through my head. It goes, "cast your burden on the Lord and..." ( I can't remember the rest), BUT I know that as we cast our burdens on the Lord and try (or tamata in Tahitian) he is there for us ALWAYS! He is our Savior. He came to the Earth to do the will of His Father. My hope for this mission is that I can do the same or as John writes "do ..the things that please [God]" (John 8:29 KJV).

        As far as lessons go, Tuahine Arbuckle and I are teaching 2 "investigators" that aren't our teachers. We worked hard this week studying lesson number one: The Restoration in Preach My Gospel. We took each key point and put it into 3 works and made 2 questions for each one and then testified. For example, the key point God is Our Loving Heavenly Father, three words:"love, prayer, communication," 2 Questions: "How does God show His love to us? What can we do to show our love to God?" and testify: "I know that God is your Father and my Father. He loves us so much and wants us to communicate with Him as his children. We can do this through prayer. I know He will answer you because He has answered my prayers." We spent some time just going over things like that and then taught 2 lessons on it. Tuahine Arbuckle and I learned there is power in using our study time effectively because the Spirit was so strong in those two lessons we taught to our gold tags about The Restoration. 

      I sure am grateful for this gospel here on this earth and for the miracle God works in each one of our lives. May God bless you with a wonderful week. 

Love,

Soeur Campbell

french phrase of the day: "oui-oui, ma cherie" means yes yes my dear. Sister Arbuckle says this to me sometimes. haha. So I say it right back.

                               Elder on the left is going to Montreal and Elder on the right is from Montreal!

Game Changer- 14 October 2014

This week was a game changer. It started Tuesday night like a slap in the face. We got our new sister who will be rooming with us. She is so kind, beautiful and a good example. Our new Tuahine is from a little island called Vanuatu and is learning how to live in a whole new world here. After talking with her a little, I realized I am sooooo dumb. America is wonderful, just living here is a blessing. The church is providing most of her stuff for her. I tried to talk to her a little Tuesday night. I got literally like two things about her. I asked her, "how far did you have to drive to church (and then thought and rephrased the question, because she is from an island) "how far did you have to walk to church?" She relied on not , "3 hours." I asked, "one way." IN a soft voice she responded, "yes." I just about started to melt. Here I was so concerned about me me me in the MTC and how I would survive. I couldn't im even knowing 90% of the things we do like wearing tennis shoes or never feeling cold weather before or using a computer. That moment has changed this mission I am on. It put things into perspective. Sometimes God does that to us. Some may say this would be a humbling experience, I sure hope in the end it is. I just don't even feel one ounce of humility when I look at the way I have been raised. How can I be humble when I have come from wealth? The other thing I learned from that first conversation with her was that she spent the night at the SLC airport reading The Book of Mormon after traveling who knows how long on her first plane to this crazy foreign land we call America. Wow, I am learning to learn from other people.  I really just want to apologize for the words I said last week about the new roommate. I joked about First world problems, but really. God is so awesome and perfect, boy did He show me.  I don't know this has just been on my mind.

 Wednesday atopa 8 was quite a day. We had our teacher Oremetua Honey teaching us. We talked about PMG chapter 3 lesson 3: The Gospel of Jesus Christ. We talked about having a balance between going into a lesson with a plan and following the Spirit. It really got me thinking. The Spirit was so strong. It was probably the best MTC class I have been in so far. Every day I love my classes more and more. Tuahine Arbuckle and I also memorized the baptismal commitment. For me, this was  a big deal. It is "E hinnaro anei oe I te pee I te hio'ra o Iesu Mesia i ia baptizoraa i te hoe taata tei mau i te mana no te atuahu'araa o te Atua?" Yeah. I had been working on that for weeks. That was a miracle!

   Thursday Tuahine Arbuckle and I taught a lesson and it was hilarious, well at least to us. We taught our "investigator" Christian  (really our teacher Orametua Honey) about The book of Mormon and prophets. The lesson was going great until he started laughing. I could tell it was our teacher laughing and not Christian. I wanted to make sure he was STILL on track to be baptized, but I didn't know the word for  "still" in Tahitian, so I just said it in English, which you really aren't supposed to do. I guess I was so serious as I said, "Ua hinnarro oe baptizoiraa...STILL?" (do you want to be baptized still?). He found it sooo funny, so he laughed first and then we followed and he ended up having to "give US a minute to collect ourselves. I was really confused, because I am pretty sure he needed to collect himeslef more. Then in that same lesson we wanted hime to read Mosiah 15:11 and I as opening to it and trying to show hime where it was in his Book of Mormon and I was telling him where it was at the same time in Tahitian. I said, "E nehenehene ta oe ia tai'o Mosia pene ahuru ma pae irava... ELEVEN." In english will you read Mosiah 10:11.  I didn't even catch that I went to English for that last part. Then he spoke to us in English during this lesson which NEVER happens. He said practically laughing, "stop mixing English with Tahitian!" We just laughed. haha. Well, this is me trying to learn a language. It is fun.

   Sunday, Tuahine Arbuckle and I were in charge of music for our zone church meeting. That is what we do every time, but this was our first go at it. We delegated people to lead and play piano and picked some hymns. It went well. I love delegating. 

    Sunday night for the devotional (we have devo every Tues and Sun), the missionary media head of the church spoke to us, Greg Droubay. He talked about some stats and how the church will be buying out some billboards in times square for a Christmas initive they are doing. December 7 they are buying out the youtube banner space so watch for that. I learned the church pays for over 4-5 million ads every day so they can be the #1 search result for stuff like when you google, "is there a God?" 

    Monday was wonderful. Since it is our last week of Tahitian I have fully recommitted myself to working super duper extra hard. I was seeing the "fruits of my labors" of course it was possible through God and His goodness that He blesses missionaries with. So cool. Also, Tuahine Arbuckle and I taught Leziann (aka our teacher Sister Cook) and we only had 20 minutes for the lesson and it was so lead by the Spirit. we are learning to make that a top priority for any study. We shared the First Vision and Moroni's promise in Moroni 10:4-5 (in Tahitian), bore testimony, and had our investigator do a pray right now to know if what we were teaching was ture. Most of that little thing was not in the lesson plan, but I brought up one thing and then Sis Arbuckle transitioned to another thing and it was just natural and so INSPIRED. After that lesson, we did a comp. evaluation of it, and we were sitting on a bench outside a bathroom and I said a closing prayer in Tahitian and this Sister missionary asked what language was that in? I told her Tahitian and come to find out that she is really from Tahiti. Her name is Sister Bellais and is going to serve a mission in temple square and she is in our building learing Enghlish for the next wouple of weeks before she leaves. I made an appointment so I can practice with her in Tahitian the next couple of weeks every day before she leaves. It was so coool. She is super pretty and kind and was like in President Bize's ward. OOKKK Last story. So Tuahine Arbuckle and I have been wanting to talk to a "gold tag" (everyone at the MTC wears tags, The black ones are for misionaries and Branch Presidencies, the white ones for paid workers, and gold ones are for people we can talk to practice on, sometimes they aren't members of the church and sometimes they are) any who I just went for it. I didn't even ask my compainion, so she couldn't convince me otherwise. His name is Alan and apparently he was roomates with Max Sultan at UVU and I asked him if he had talked with Max about the church. He said he hadn't. (ok lets be honest this guy is faking it, because he goes to BYU and I highly doubt he never talked to Max and as Sis Arbuckle would say, but what ever). We talked to him for a while about his life and it was hard to transition to the gospel, but he made it easy for us and we got an appointment for today to talk to him about the Plan of Salvation. It was soo good. After that we jsut felt on cloud 9. we finished the night with a super sweet comapoinion study and recommited ourselves to our purpose. Life is so good. 

   

As for Tahitian, Tuahine Arbuckle and I reached some milestones this week. We memorized, our purpose, the baptismal commitment and Moroni 10:5 in Tahitian. There is no way I could be able to memorize with out God on my side because memorizing is one of my weaknesses for sure. I played piano for years and don't have any music memorized. It is incredible how much we have learned in so little time. Saturday night we picked up Preach My Gospel and read through a whole paragraph without comparing it to anything. that's for all your prayers and dear elders and I have loved getting dear elders with Max and Journey's letters about their mission. God loves us and provides a way for us to accomplish the things He wants us to do. He is all knowing and all powerful. I love it. 

Fav thing to do in MTC: MTC choir, the choir director is like an EFY speaker and we get to sing it is def a "special treat" I also love to learn, learn Tahitian. learn how to have the Spirit better. It is a wonderful feeling. I also love to feel the Spirit during study time or a lesson. It is the BEST.

      lots of loveeee!

       -Tuahine Campbell

7 October 2014

Lorana (hello) family and friends!

    This week was filled with lots of learning and feeling and seeing God's place in my life for sure. To start things out I found that going to class here at the MTC (which is like 9 hours a day) is getting more enjoyable. I love my teachers and 6 other missionaries I get to be with. We are all going to Tahiti. There are two other classes going to Tahiti making a total of 20 elders and 6 sisters being sent there on December 1. So this week (from Wed on, because I count weeks in terms of p-days), we found out about some changes. My district is getting a new teacher. We are saying goodbye to Ormetua H (who is from Tahiti). He is moving on to teach the new missionaries who already know french. We are so sad to see him go, but c'est la vie. We will still see him in the building. He brought us brownies on Monday and it was so nice to have food, not from the cafeteria.    Somehow I managed to get a little sick this week, but it wasn't that bad. I still went to class and everything. I just wasn't 100% feeling well. 

    Here is a miracle for you. Sunday I woke up and was starting to get overwhelmed for how long we are here because we have been here 3 weeks and have fantastic 7 more to go! It is great, but Sunday morning I was wondering how that would be possible. So I prayed. I prayed that not only I could have a great day, but that it would be the best day I have had in the MTC! After I said that prayer in the morning I was really trying to change my attitude but needed God's help for sure. God answered my prayer and I am just loving it here more than before I had that little hump in my day. I sat through the morning session of conference and tried to listen to what I needed to do, but got nothing. UNTIL... the closing song by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They sang "How Firm a Foundation." The words "I'll strengthen Thee help thee and cause thee to stand" just uplifted my soul. I can feel the power of those words right now. God is there for me. He always has been. I felt the comfort and love I needed. Sure enough, events followed that resulted in a prayer being answered.  minutes after that I heard my first name in the cafeteria (which is unusual bc no one really knows it), sure enough, it was my roommate, Hermana Albach. I knew she was in the MTC but hadn't thought about bumping into her for a while. She was a like a big sister to me when I roomed with her. I just gave her a huge hug and thought about what a tender mercy that was. God is so good.      

Another highlight of the week was seeing one of my friends from GA, Herman Ashley Cain who is going to Washington and Hermana Kaitlyn Albach who was my roommate at BYU and is headed to Argentina. It is great how God puts people in our life sometimes just so we can feel joy. I have truly felt that. 

Tuahine Arbuckle and I assist (assist because the Holy Spirit really teaches) in teaching an "investigator" (it is really Oremtua H.) named Vetea. We went into our first lesson with him this week and had a member present and we were small talking in Tahitian and things were going ok. At one point though I realized the feeling in the room just got awkwarder and awkwarder. It is like we feel off a cliff at one point. Aita maitai (not good) for when you are trying to have the spirit to teach. Yeah. Well, this was the day I was sick and just in all honestly a part of me didn't even want to teach a lesson, even adding to the aita ino part. When the conversation had just about hit the breaking point, I had the thought, "when in doubt, just testify."  Well, that is what happened. I tried to share with Veata how much God loves him and his family and wants them to follow Jesus Christ, from that moment on that lesson, was on the uphill. We got another appointment and soft committed him to baptism and had the member present bare testimony. It was an ok lesson, but we both left super upset at ourselves. So frustrating. We got over it and learned. Come to find out our teacher, who role plays as the investigator, was about to just pause the lesson so we could figure out what we were doing. Another win for the holy ghost!! The next lesson we had with Veatea was much better. We only had 15 minutes and no notes, so we really had to rely on the Spirit. We went in there more focused on the person and the lesson had a huge difference from the first time. It was definitely because we went in there with not the focus of an agenda we had to fulfill. We really just wanted to show our love for Vetea and so we relied on the spirit. It was great. Tuahine Arbuckle and I were so happy afterwards and it was a good moment. 

     

    The Sunday night devotional to follow was amazing. Vai (which vai means to exist in Tahitian) Sikahema, who is a Tongan and NBC sports newscaster in PA, gave the devotional. It was soo relieving just to hear from someone funny. He didn't want us to take notes. I literally laughed a ton from it and it was a HUGE stress reliever. Sometimes you just need to laugh. He talked about member missionary work. Our efforts aren't in vain if they don't end up in a baptism. Keep going on, the world needs good people. You can be on of them. 

   On a more funny note. The phrase "a special treat" is so funny here in the MTC. Leaders use it to denote that something slightly out of the normal is going to happen. For example, we always sing prelude songs before a devotional and they are always from the hymn book. Well, last week we sang "A child's Prayer" which is a children's song. I love it, but they use that phrase to get us excited. haha. We are so in a routine anything gets us excited. Another example, my companion and I were going to gym last night and could see the moon over the walkway covering, so now we refer to that as a special treat. We find many special treats in our day. haha. You just got to love the MTC.

    Other new is that we are getting new roommates so we will have 6 sisters in one room. The sisters in my district and I were not thrilled about this. I love sister missionaries, but not sharing a room with a ton. Ok, so this is an opportunity for us. We decided to make their beds and put candy on them. We complain about 6 sisters in a room where the people in Tahiti don't even have rooms. Oh first world probs! As Sister Kofford always says, "we can do hard things... WITH A SMILE." It will be great. I think they are not from the US and going to Tahiti with us. I hope things are going well in all your lives. I love this work and am so honored to get to be a part of it. Thank you for your prayers and Dear Elders. I can't put into words how good it is to hear from loved ones. It adds a huge upliftment to my days here at the MTC!

Here is for another week as a missionary!!! YAYAY!! Thanks for your support and love. Really, though, I love all my family and friends sooooo much!!

QOW: "The decision to change is yours and yours alone." - Elder Katcher of the 70 (who my district actually got to meet last week. He severed a mission in Tahiti and just spoke in the LDS general Conference)

Tahitian Word of the Week: faaoaoahia It means party. "faa" means "to make" + oaoa means happy + hia means ness. So the word party in Tahitian actually means "to make happiness." 

-Tuahine Campbell

                                          They got their french and Tahitian name tags!