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.
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