A Service of Love: Chopsticking it up in Tahiti

This week has been super busy. Especially the past two days.

Transfers are happening (that is when missionaries get changed around in the places they are serving. I am staying here in Tipaerui, but Sr. Richards is leaving to go to another town in Tahiti called Mahina. She leaves today :( and I get a new companion, who has been out the same amount of time as Sr. Richards and is from Australia.

That means...MY TRAINING IS OVER!!! Six months later and all the "official training" is over. YEAHHHHH!

Saturday Toimato and Kulani got baptized. They are a young couple with a baby who lives like suppperrr high up the mountain. We always climbed 200 stairs to get there. I am NOT exaggerating, but I like climbing the stairs. It is a good workout. The baptism was so inspiring to see. We made sure to invite the other investigators we teach to it. We packed the Relief Society room. I was happy when at 3 of the other investigators got to see that ordinance too.

Saturday, we also started teaching an English Class for the community of Faaa. The church has signed a contract with them here to teach each week. We teach on Saturdays. I am excited to start that backup, but a little nervous, because with the transfer and everyone being changed out, I am the only one who speaks English and knows how things should run out of all the new missionaries that will be coming in.

Yesterday we spent the day with Sr. Kimball, a missionary who served in this area like a year ago and also I grew up with her a little bit. We spent some time seeing people she used to teach and found some more amis. We were so busy, we didn't even eat until 8 pm at night...oopppppss. Wonder who planned that day??? It was good though because we needed to find more people to teach and now we do.

We also had a lesson with a recent convert who Sr. Arbuckle and Sr. Kimball taught in Takapoto (a little island like 1.5 hr flight away). He is so diligent. He read all the Book of Mormon since December and I guess he got a hold of The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson book that we use for lessons on Sunday and read that whole book through. He wants more of those Teachings of Prophets books to read through. Oh yeah, I guess I should explain why he is here on Tahiti. His mom lives here and was threatening to kick him out if he got baptized, but he got baptized and his mom didn't kick him out. We are going to give him more to read. It is fun to teach an investigator that my MTC companion, Sr. Arbuckle, taught.

We helped one of our investigator's clean house this week for a service. That was fun to do and something different. Normally everyone says no when we ask, "Is there anything we can do for you?" but I have gotten soo sneaky and just started asking, "What can we do for you?" and they still say no. Usually though if you keep talking though you can find something you can do for them.

We have been working with a couple, Elvina, and Yves, who have a 19 yo daughter and who have been taking missionary lessons for the past two years. We started teaching them as a couple in December and since then they have made soo much progress like it is a miracle. Now we are trying to help them set up a baptism date for April. We asked them to pray about that and when we met with them Thursday Elvina had. We asked her how she felt after she prayed and this is what she said, "I felt..... BIZARRE!" haha. YES!! We then asked her to explain what she meant by "bizarre" and we found out it was a good thing. She felt a feeling of warmth and comfort, which is what we call the Holy Ghost.

I used chopsticks this week. It was soo funny because I have used chopsticks before, but obviously, I am not used to it. People use their hands to eat here and a piece of baguette to shove food on to their fork. We were at a members house and they made us this super nice traditional Chinese meal, where you like boil your own food to cook it on the table. It was like super fancy and a good culture experience and tasted good. The funny thing is though that was our meal right after we finished fasting and normally when you haven't eaten or 24 hours you just want to shovel down food. The chopsticks didn't help that, especially because I barely knew how to use them. I guess I could have asked for a fork, but I thought of my sister in Japan and how good of a culture experience this was, so I just tried my best to make the chopsticks work. Then I got full really fast because it was taking little bites.

Yep, so that just about was my week. I started my 3rd journal since being on a mission.

I am so happy to be here in this area. We can busy all day. It is the best thing ever. Even better is that people are progressing here as investigators that have been taking lessons for a long time. That is huge. I am soo grateful to be in a busy area.

I hope everyone has a great week! You love all tons and are so grateful for the letters and prayers!!

Soeur Campbell