Week 17 - The Belated News

Sorry for missing a week, but Happy Belated Sainte Valentin, and I can video my family now! Yes it's very cool, and I really hope it excuses me from the lack of email.

Soeur Jensen is my new companion, and she's awesome. She's from Canada (British Columbia) and speaks with kind of a strange french accent. She's been on her mission for fourteen months, and you can tell because everyone she speaks with absolutely loves her. Truly, everyone we talk with leaves feeling better than they felt before. She's so good!

Other Highlights Include:

• We got to go to the temple last week! It's a tiny little building, so I wasn't completely sure to expect when I went in. But of course, the inside was as beautiful as (if not more than) any other temple I've ever seen. I love the temple so much! It's truly God's house on earth. Also, I took a little leap of faith and did the entire session in french instead of getting a translator. I could feel the Spirit helping me along, bringing to my memory all of my preparation before my mission and combining that with the french I know. It was SUCH a spiritual, strengthening experience!

• We have an amie who told us she's been working so carefully on studying the Book of Mormon that one morning, she didn't even make ma'a for breakfast because she was reading. I don't know if you can tell, but for Tahitians, that's a major deal! She's set a baptism date for the 20 April, and is progressing so well.
• I got to use a machete last week! We did a service project working in an ami's faapu (garden) and we chopped down banana leaves. I didn't think I was going to bother even touching the thing, but I did it for the service (because I think that's what Christ would do??) and it was awesome. Machetes are cool.
• Two parts: apparently I talk in my sleep. Like, a lot. Soeur Jensen said I woke her up because I started singing in my sleep one night, but she couldn't tell me what the song was, so I must be a better singer when I'm actually conscious. On that same thread, I spoke FRENCH in my sleep! You all have no idea how excited I was when I found this out. The grand total of what I said is the english equivalent of "What? What are you doing?" (Quoi? Qu'est-ce que tu fait?) 
• There was this beautiful spiritual moment at the beginning of one of our lessons where the ami, after saying she had read and prayed about the Book of Mormon, said she couldn't describe the feeling she received in response. After a moment, I said, "You can describe it in Tahitian if you'd like." She looked at me, and knew I wouldn't understand, but slowly started to describe in flawless Tahitian her feelings of warmth, of peace. She said she got goosebumps :) And after describing it all, she looked at us to check if we could understand, and I smiled and nodded, because the Spirit could convey all the feelings she was saying to my heart. It was so wonderful! (My desire to learn Tahitian grows every day. I promise, I'm studying really hard. I know it will come, but I'm giving it some time as I'm still waiting to feel good about french first.)
• And, I got serenaded by a Tahitian papi. After our faatamaaraa, he came out with his ukulele and asked what we wanted to hear, and we let him sing four or five songs in tahitian for us. It was beautiful! I'm going to find a way to learn, somehow - even though we can't play the ukuleles. I love it too much to not try and bring that tradition home!

Tons of love and prayers from Tahiti. If we're lucky, I'll sleep-talk some more in french and have an even more update for next week.

Soeur Sperry

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