Happy Summer

Bonjour tout le monde,

  I hope it is starting to get warm over there in the US. It has been warm here since I came in December and hasn't changed. Anyways if the temperature is starting to heat up... WELCOME TO SUMMMEERRRRR!

  This week we had a movie night and watched the Joseph Smith movie. We invited all our amis. One of the people we invited was a man we started talking to earlier that day on the side of the road. We told him about the movie night and invited him to come, and by a miracle he did. 

  Saturday Leila, Elvina, and Yves got baptized in Tipaerui (my old sector in Tahiti). I am so happy for them. All of the three have had contact with the missionaries for over 2 years, and Saturday they started a new spiritual life. 

  Ok back to Takapoto. The members here are so wonderful. One family this week was supposed to have us over for dinner but insisted we come over for dinner and lunch. This family works hard for what they have and we so loving and giving to share with us. When we had lunch and dinner, they fed us the best of what the atoll has to offer. Their love towards us was incredible. They made us tart and cake and ice cream (which is super expensive here) and fries and pasta and rice and steak and fish and shrimp. It was a ton of food!!

  I found out that our members go spear fishing and swim with the sharks with just a little knife as protection. The members tell us though they are protected because they pray before they go out. After hearing that I really wanted to see a shark, because they said the sharks come close to the coast. 

  We prayed every day this week with our ward mission leader and branch president. We are praying for miracles and are being blessed to see them daily.

  We started teaching a young man who has never wanted the missionary visits before. That was a huge miracle. 

  Another man we teach has been asking his family for weeks to read the scriptures with him, have a family night, or go to church with him, and they haven't wanted to. A couple weeks ago he told them he was going to church the 24 May and without him even asking his family to go to church with him yesterday, they were all there. He told us it was a blessing because he has been reading the Book of Mormon and praying every day. We supported that conclusion. 

  One of my favorite questions now is to ask "What spiritual experiences have you had since the last visit?" or "What spiritual experiences have you had reading the Book of Mormon this week?" It is great. I don't even ask them if they read this week before I ask those golden question because it sets the expectation that they read or had a spiritual experience. 

   Today we went fishing again with the family Tehiva. It was super fun and beautiful. This week we cleaned house and did our studies before we went out and we caught 30 fish altogether. That is 2 times the amount of fish them last week when we rushed out the door and didn't prioritize our day. The best fish they say is the tamarae (dance in English). I caught 3 of those. While trying to bring them up on the boat though the sharks ate 2 of them. I was soo sad. I brought up my fishing line and all there was was a fish head. So yeah I got to see the shark I wanted to see, but he ate my fishes! We went to a little paradise spot to eat again and they taught me how to clean the fish using a shell to get all the scales off. Then we cut open the belly of the fish and pulled the guts and heart out with our bare hands. It was a good culture experience. All this was by the bank of the lagoon and then the sharks were right there too, but they were little, like 4 ft long. 

  Also, I would like to give a HUGE SHOUT OUT and CONGRATS GRAD! to my little sister Kadee who graduated from high school with honors (and a ton of college credit) Friday. I am praying for you out here and am so excited for you to head out to the Polynesian island of HI for school in November! 

  Well, I hope everyone has a wonderful week and summer for you GA kids and BYU kids who finished your school year. Don't do things you will regret later! 

  Love,

 Soeur Campbell

My companion Soeur Sommers and I. She is from Paea, Tahiti and is wonderful. She helps me speak French better.

Today on the boat with Brother and Sister Tehiva, and our friends Moorea and Teroku.

                                 

Pahua, it is calm.. This man is in our ward. He is in his backyard getting the food out of the clam to sell today. When we went on the boat, they had me eat some of the white part plain. It was okay, but really salty. 

Tamarae fish today. It was not eaten by a shark! 

Nous avons eu un bon peche. (We had good fishing)

Shark I wanted to see today

Sharks up close

Cleaning the fish today. We had to get all the scales off.

The new spot we ate at today

My First Week in Takapoto

Dear Family and Friends!

  So last week when I said that being transferred was like a whole new mission call is sooo true. Things are so different here in Takapoto. People either  do one of 3 things for work: fishing, cutting up coconuts to get the meat out and sell or creating a calm by putting a rope in the ocean to sell the calm after. It is super interesting to see how the economy says so much about the culture and then it effects the missionary work. For example this week we literally couldn't find any of our investigators because they had "gone fishing," but they literally were gone fishing. Then we found out that the boat that usually buys out the coconuts people sell for a living stopped buying the coconuts, so there are many people who don't have that source of income right now. 

  Another thing I am learning is life here revolves around when the "boat is going to come." There are 3 boats that drop off goods and then normally take the coconuts that people have prepared to sell off the island. Everyone talks about when the boat is going to come. It is like that movie The Other Side of Heaven. Then the airplane comes once a week and people literally will just go to greet the plane to see who is new on the island. It is just awesome. 

  I am learning pretty much if I can figure out fishing, the method people use for the coconut and clam businesses, I can use those analogies to help people learn the gospel. We have started doing service for people and went fishing today. We strung clams on a fishing line to put them into the lagoon and started talking to some people who were in the middle of taking out the meat of the coconut to sell. 

   So the work people do here is normally a huge process with many steps, which is great because that principle of small consistency is exactly like in the gospel. They say "by small and simple means are great things brought to pass." That is exactly what we are having to do here to as missionaries. Simple consistency. We have started an invite to pray with the branch president here every morning and with our ward mission leader every night. Since life is pretty chill here, everyone has time. 

  That is another thing I am learning, there will ALWAYS be an excuse why you can't do something. You decide to do something and just do it, if not it will never get done. 

  We have been talking a lot about goal setting with our amis here. They think I am crazy, but really life has a purpose and it is good to give yourself something to work for and especially to write things down. Simply put: Our lives will not change unless we exercise a little faith and change it. So we teach a lot of lessons by the beach. 

  Thursday we rode 30 km (18.6 miles) under the sun in sandals and a skirt to go to a service project for the branch. They were making a fish pond. I don't really understand how it works,  but they placed rocks in a certain position to trap the fish who swim from the lagoon (inside then cheerio ring of the land) to the ocean. We were just there for a service project but the colors of water and the water was the best water I have ever seen in my life, yet everyone there didn't even go in it. 

   We started music lessons. 5 people came on Saturday. I thought it was a pretty good start. It is really nice to do English and things like that here because there isn't much else to do and people will come. 

 Sunday church pretty much got canceled. Church is at 8 am and we went there for sacrament meeting and found out there was supposed to be a regional broadcast at 11 am, so we weren't going to have Sunday School or 3rd hour because they were going to set up the computer for the broadcast. We went home and studied all to come back and find out that they couldn't get the broadcast to work, so we didn't have 2/3 of church.

  We teach a lot of men, which is really different because in Tipaerui it was all women. We literally taught like 4 20-year-olds with them sitting on their scooters in their garage. We taught them about how this life is the time to prepare to meet God. It is good they will listen to us.  

  So today we went fishing with some members because President Bize told us we can go as long as we have life vests. We had like no success until we started catching fish left and right. I started calling to the fish in English by saying "fishy, come here." No one else in the boat understood what I was saying, but the method seemed to work pretty well because that is when I started to catch fish. We didn't even use a fishing poll. We were in the lagoon and just threw the fishing line and hook over the boat. I caught four fish and we used chicken as bait. The fish were like a foot long each. After we caught 14 fish we went to a little paradise spot and cooked the fish over an open fire (they use coconuts for fuel here) and ate the fish with our bare hands. They gave me a fork because I was the only American, but then I couldn't be the only one eating with a fork, so I used my hands. We also drank coconuts. 

   You are probably thinking I am joking, but seriously this is real life here in Takapoto. People fish and eat the fish they eat. People give us coconuts all the time to drink. Since we can drink the tap water (it comes from the rain) we drink a lot of coconuts and coke. I have drunk more coke here then when I was raised in ATL (where coke comes from).

   As for the work, it is a nice process and we are praying for miracles. 

  I hope you all have a great week and are loving life and are grateful for all the wonderful blessings you have! Love you!

 Soeur Campbell

Another fish I caught

                                                     My first catch of the day (this is in the lagoon)

                                                         Paradise is where we had our picnic

                                         How Tahitians cook fish

I am NOT on AN ISLAND anymore!!!

Hi Everybody!

  So the huge surprise of the week is that transfers are May 18. That is normally when all the changes happen in a mission. This week on Tuesday, May 4, my companion, Sr. Marrett told me the assistants called, I needed to call them back that it was concerning the transfer, and since they are calling early, that means I would be getting transferred off the main island of Tahiti. I told her to stop messing around with me because transfers weren't until another week, but I called the assistants anyway to find out if what Sr. Marrett was saying was true. Well, it was. They told me I was going to be going to Takapoto. I was suppppppeeerrrr surprised because there are only like 5 islands other than Tahiti sisters serve on and it was my first transfer. The night after I received that call I didn't sleep like at all. 

  So Takapoto is a pretty new sector for sister missionaries. I'll be the 6th one to go over there. My MTC companion Sr. Arbuckle was trained there and our good family friend Sr. Kimball opened the sector. 

  It isn't even an island. It is an atoll, meaning its land mass is like a cheerio and there is a lagoon in the middle. There are about 500 people who live here and a branch of about 30. 

  It is a huge change compared to Tipaerui, which is in Papeete (the capital of Tahiti). I would compare getting that transfer call to receiving a whole new mission call. There were going to be a lot of changes.

  So Thursday morning I called and asked what I needed to do about my luggage because the plane I would take over to Takapoto only allows people to have a 20-pound suitcase and a little carry on that is supposed to be 6 pounds. I made that call at like 7:30 am and found out that the boat that all my other 2 big suitcases needs to go on leaves that morning. Meaning if I didn't get my stuff to the boat asap, my stuff wouldn't be going to Takapoto to meet me. So I dropped what I was doing and me the three other sisters in the house packed all my stuff from the last 6 months into 3 suitcases in 45 mins. By 8:15 we were on our way to the mission office to drop the bags off. That was soo stressful, a transfer horror story. Good thing my stuff made it to the boat and that was Thursday. Today is Monday and my stuff should arrive here in Takapoto on Thursday. Until then I am surviving off of a couple of books and 2 skirts. 

  After Thursday the rest of the week in Tipaerui was spent having a bunch of lessons and saying goodbye. That is never fun. 

  I had to break the news to Elvina, Yves, and Leila that I  wasn't going to be there for their baptisms. That hurt, because we have been working hard with them since December (when I came to Tahiti) and they have progressed so much. It is really a miracle. 

  Those last couple days in Tipaerui were so busy. That last week in Tipaerui was the busiest of my mission so far.

  Saturday I left for the airport. Sr. Paulette, Elvina, Yves, and the other sisters in the house were there to see me off. That is a big tradition here. It was weird because all my life I have been used to just being dropped off on the curb of the airport to fend for myself. 

  The flight had like 60 seats, a little twin engine jet. Who would ever think that being transferred meant going to the airport?? The flight was an hour long to Takaroa (a little atoll just next to Takapoto), then another 15 mins to Takapoto. 

  I got off the plane and all the sudden there was a little kid hugging me. Then a bunch of  little kids and then everyone welcoming me with leis and everything. These people are so loving. I really felt welcomed.

   Then I had been on the islands less than an hour and I had told the kids my name at the airport and we were riding bikes and could just hear all the kids saying, "Soeur Campbell, Soeur Campbell."

  Then we live like at the basketball court for the church and the branch pres is just across the street. We didn't have a fixed dinner appointment, but they came knocking at our door telling us to come out for dinner. Things are really slower here like a small town feel. I like it a lot. 

  Sunday I was asked to speak in church. That was ok. I ended up playing the piano too. No one knows how to, so later this week we are going to start music lessons.    

  Then Sunday dinner we had right on the lagoon, which is super pretty.

   We also get all our water from the rain, The gutter on our roof leads to a huge black cylinder and it collects water. There isn't a water heater.

  Today we went to go get groceries and went to all 5 stores on the island in like 30 mins. I came back with some cereal, yogurt, a little thing of nuts, 3 packages of crackers, milk, and chips and spent $30. The stores here are comparable of the Whitewater High School concession stand, except the concession stand is bigger and nicer. Some of the stores you just pick what you want  like a concession stand.

   So things are pretty good. It is weird to be in a new sector but I like the feel of things. We are going to be doing a lot of service with the coconut business of cophra, English class, activities, and music lessons and working with members. Totally different then what I was doing before, but I am excited.

  There you go. The update. Love you all. Have a fantastic week. AND HAPPY LATE MOTHERS DAY!! 

Love,

 Tuahine Campbell

                                                 The Lagoon. Check out her slippers tan!

                                     Drinking their daily coconut water with a member

                                                                   Cophra

                                  This is the beach

Hey! Yes, things slowed down. No money, no phone, no credit card, no food!

Bonjour mes amis et ma famille,

 So this week slowed down a bit. We kind of ran out of food and phone credit. We have this running joke that the mission is making budget cuts. The only thing we had in the fridge was something called "poulet citron." It is fried chicken with some citron sauce. When I first got here that was harder for me to eat then the raw fish. I am from Georgia, but I have eaten way more fried chicken here than in my whole life. Since it was the only food we had for 3 days I ate it, hoping maybe it would satisfy my Chick-fil-a craving.

   Towards the end of the week things really started to pick up. It is great.

  Sunday Toi mato and kulani got called as ward missionaries. They are recent converts and I am so excited that they are official ward missionary now.

  Saturday we were with some amis trying to encourage them to go to church. One of them works late Saturday night and then it is hard to get up to go to Sunday morning 7:30 am church. I shared a story of a man in my home ward who would work from 9pm to 6am in the morning, then take a little nap and be at church by 8am to do his calling as  a counselor in the bishopric. Because of the sacrifices he made God has given him and his family innumerable blessings. The moral of the story is that if you really want to do something, you will make sacrifices to do it and then, of course, there will be awesome blessings from God.

   We were talking to another man about how it is possible to have an eternal family. He told us he couldn't have an eternal family because it was expensive. Sr. Marrett and I were happy to explain to him that it doesn't cost a penny, because of Jesus Christ's sacrifice for us.

  Lately, we have been devoting a lot of effort to finding people. President Bize has challenged us to find 15 new people this month. So we were talking to Valentina on the side of the road and across the street, I could see this boy looking at us, so after we finished our conversation we walked over there and talked to him. He comes from a tiny island in the Tuamotus called Pukapuka. The island is supppeerrr tiny, like 130 people tiny. He told us they were all family and all Catholic. He is here for school because most of the little islands don't have high schools, so the kids in high school come here to Tahiti to get their education. We proceeded to talk to him about pray and the restoration. We asked him to pray about the things we shared with him. The next day we went back there and he prayed and told us what happened. He said he felt a feeling he had never felt before. We explained to him that  was the Holy Ghost and explained the Book of Mormon and gave him the brochure. Well, sad but true, he leaves Tuesday to go back to Pukapuka, and doesn't know when he will come back to Tahiti. We left him though with the engagement to read the book and pray. He said he would read it in 2 weeks. Who knows what will happen, but at least we did our part. When I have experiences like that I  can only but think of all the times in the Bible and Book of Mormon when God talks about even the aisles of the sea He loves and hasn't forgotten. Now that little  island of Pukapuka has someone on it who has a Book of Mormon.

 The other great finding miracle happened this week at a dinner appointment. We were over at a ward member's house on Friday. It was our first time there and the member's sister, who lives in the house was there too. She isn't a member. At the beginning of the evening, I literally said a prayer asking God to help me talk to her in some way. Over the course of dinner, she shared with me how there was a huge recruit to be a prison  guard here and they had a test and a ton of people cheated on it. People want the job because it pays good money. Because people cheated the people who actually worked hard and did well don't have their fair chance for the job opening. So she and her sister, who worked hard for the test are fighting for what is right, but have a lot of opposition. At the end of a dinner, we always share a message. I shared Alma 53;20-21, that talk about the young 2000 warriors who fought for what was right, even though their adversary had at least double a number of warriors. The young 2000 fought the fight and were protected. Not one of them was killed because they had faith. She had never read in the Book of Mormon before but loved how applicable their story was to hers. We set an appointment to come back and give her a Book of Mormon. We went over there yesterday and I was a little nervous because you never know how first appointments will go. She was super ready, though. After we left Friday night she stayed up until 12 midnight talking with her sister about what we talked about. The lesson went well and she told us she wants us to come over and talk about what she reads in the Book of Mormon. She also told us that us meeting her Friday night was not by chance. She has been missing something in her life for a while now and really wants to find it. For me, that was a huge relief and answer to a  prayer. I love talking with this lady because her mentality is very work oriented and she is super excited to read and find out what is in the Book of Mormon. 

  Last week I bought a gospel art book at the distribution center. I am now obsessed with it. Every lesson I use it. I love it so much.

  At the end of the week, things got a lot better and we saw miracles. That was so relieving. I even started sleeping better. And today is Sr. Marrett's birthday, so we are going to celebrate big! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

  Well, thanks for reading and for your prayers. I am praying for you all too. God loves you. Have the best week of your life!

 love,

Soeur Campbell