Last Day in Tahiti

From one of the people he baptized:  Merci d'avoir envoye ton fils pour me sauve, moi et mon epoux.

18 September 2017

Sorry we went to Moorea today and came back late so I wont have time to send my email, but I'll try to send it later!!

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(That was the entirety of his last email home.  However, a couple he taught posted this on facebook with photos)

Bientot le depart de notre elder Lewis il rentre chez lui a Los Angeles tu va nous manquer enormement on taime fort moi et mon epoux merci pour tout seke que tu fait pour nous merci encore grace a toi tu a changer notre vie gros bisous a lundi soir pour ton depart bisouss

The Lord is Good

Here are a couple updates on our investigators:

We had a really good lesson with Natia, and she wasn't sick of it. She had to go give her bike back to her friend who lent it to her, and she came back on foot for another two hour lesson. We were at the chapelle and as we were discussing she asked who two men were outside in the hall. We explained that one of them is in the Presidency of the stake and the other one was a ward missionary (those two just happened to be there) and she asked to meet them. So we brought them in and she had a nice little interview with president and a little later a member who just happens to live across the street from her came into the room also and we just talked and she quickly became friends with all of them. Then, that member who lives across the street invited her to dinner. Now that is good missionary work.

Natia also talked about how she knows this church is true, just based on her experience this far, not actually knowing a lot of the doctrine. She just has a lot of faith. The only downside to this experience is that she didn't show up to the next lesson, and we've lost contact with her. We're hoping that we'll be able to find her again. We're not sure what happened, we're just going to put our faith in God and let him do the rest.

Things are going pretty well with Ivan. He talked to his copine and apparently she wants to get baptised with him. They're just planning their mariage and haven't chosen a date yet. His wife is thinking of doing it on her birthday, the 9 november. It's still not sure yet, we'll see.

When we told Brigitte that we were bringing by the shelves that she had asked for, she was super happy. She said that in her church they didn't do things like that and she was super thankful that we would do something like that for her. Service makes miracles. Remember that. If you want people to be happy, and if you want to be happy, serve others.

So that's the big news with our investigators. Other than that I have a few fun experiences to share with you:

Elder Marae came home. For those of you that are wondering if you should know who that is, look back at my pictures at the MTC. You might find a few pictures of me and some other elders with a tahitian elder. In the MTC we were always with eachother. He would tell us about the tahitian culture in very broken english because he was just learning to speak and we would try to talk to him back in very broken french. He taught us some tahitian and we had a lot of fun experiences.

Anyway, he's back from his mission, and we were invited to the homecoming Tamaaraa here we ate some delicious maa tahiti and he talked to me in really good english and I talked to him in really good french. It's cool to see that difference that two years can do to a person.

We were called to give a blessing at the hospital. It took us about thirty minutes to find this woman because all the information we had was that she was in room number five. We finally found her and talked a little bit and asked if she wanted a blessing. She kind of just ignored the question and kept talking. She showed us her book of mormon and kept telling us that it was proof that she was "mormon". She would show it to the doctors and nurses, and anyone else that came in (including the missionaries) to show them that she was mormon. She also talked about how she knew that the missionaries would pass by that day. We tried asking her if she needed a blessing, and maybe she just didn't understand because she just kept talking, so I tried in tahitian too and she still didn't answer. Basically in the end she told us to come back the next day to talk some more. Maybe all she needed was a little bit of company. It's just a cute little mami that's proud of her beliefs.

I saw Hamuera this morning. He was driving to his new house in Tautira in his new car. He told me that he had gotten the melchizedek priesthood and was able to bless his son when he was sick, that he and Sefina had gone to the temple, and about the calling he had received in the church. I am positive that they have received all these blessings because of their choice to become disciples of Christ. I was so happy to see how the gospel has changed their lives. There are a lot of people that I talk to here that say that they will change when the have their own house our that they will keep a certain commandment on condition that they receive a temporal blessing.

That's not true.

Read jacob 2:18,19. If you want temporal blessings, first turn to the Lord with all your heart, then you will receive all the temporal blessings that you need. That's what this couple did and the Lord really blessed them.

That's all for this week. The Lord is good. He watches out for all of His children. He's calling us home and if we listen to his voice we will succeed.

Orometua Lewis

Good News

Iaorana tou'u mau taeae e to'u mau tuahine!

Mark got baptised! It went well. He was a little scared at first, but he pulled through and now he has entered by the gate that leads to eternal life. He still talks a bunch about doing missionary work with us so we're excited to start going with him. 

There's one really cool experience that I wanted to tell you about this week. We had a Multizone Confernece this week and right after we had a cours d'anglais so we had the other elders drop us off at the chapelle instead of out our appartement to get our bikes. No one showed up at the Cours d'anglais so we were just stuck on foot the rest of the evening. So we decided to go visit an old investigator that told us that she's too busy right now to take our lessons. We went to her house and she wasn't there, so we walked back to try and visit someone else. As we crossed the street a woman suddenly came up to us and asked us if she could take the missionary lessons. We ended up talking for a while and found out a lot about her. 

It turns out her copain is a member inactif and right now they're separated. She's deep in the Catholique church. She's been searching a lot lately for something better in her life, and there is a member that she works with who has told her a lot about our church and proposed that she talk with the missionaries. She also has a close friend who is témoin de Jéhovah who set up meetings with her church, but everytime they had a rendez-vous it got cancelled and she took that as a sign that it wasn't the right path. And then, the evening that we walked down the street she happened to be reading a catholique thing(I'm not really sure what it was exactly) that talked about a light coming into her life and she looked out the window and saw us. WOW. That was a really cool experience. God set that up perfectly. If our english class hadn't been cancelled, or if we had gotten our bikes, or if we hadn't tried to see that old investigator, or if that member hadn't talked to this woman about the gospel, maybe she wouldn't have known what to do to find what she's been looking for. She kept thanking us, she was just so happy to see us.

That's definitely the best experience for the week. Her name is Natia* (the american). We'll see how things go. I'm so grateful for the gospel and how it blesses our lives. God is preparing people to receive this good news, and I know the the Gospel will bless our lives more than anything else in the world.

Okay, I have to go. Faaitoito noa ia outou. Ua here au ia outou!

Orometua Lewis