Message in a Bottle: On Baptisms, Soldering Irons and Not Being Mormon

Wow, when you've been doing this for so long, you don't know what to write about. Back at the beginning all the little things seemed super exciting but now that's just average day stuff. Well, this week was pretty good. We seem to always be doing something or other, yet it doesn't seem like we've accomplished a whole lot at the end of the week.

The highlights for this week were the lessons with Poenui and Manava. They both accepted baptism for the 22 July. When we engaged Poenui, she told us that she wasn't ready because she smokes. We didn't even teach her that that was bad! I guess when you hear the word of God you just naturally want to change and become pure. You don't neccesarily need someone to tell you that you can't be saved if you put bad things in your body, you just understand that it's against the will of God.

For Poenui, she's still waiting for a solid response to her prayers, and she told us that she prays a lot to know if it's true. But she believes that it's true, and I'm sure that that seed is starting to sprout and pretty soon it will be a big tree. I also hope that at that point her testimony will be strong enough to convince her dad to accept her choice. We still haven't talked to him about it.

I was also able to go back to Faaa on saturday to baptise Iriata*, the daughter of the family that we found my last week in Tavararo. That was a cool experience. Her parents are getting baptised at the end of July.

In church yesterday it was a missionary work themed program so Elder Rice and I gave talks. For the second hour our DMP told us last minute that we were doing the lesson and then he left somewhere else. It wasn't the best lesson, but it worked. Poenui had answers to all our questions. She's been studying, that's for sure.

Eperona is a pretty interesting guy too. He has some pretty profound answers to questions too. I think he knows some doctrine better than a lot of members. His answers do make you laugh, though. He talked once about us being either in the gang of "bad boys"(yes, in english) or in the gang of Jesus. Interesting analogy, but it's true. Anyway, we were also given the lesson for the third hour, so we talked again about missionary work. So we ended up teaching all three hours of church yesterday. What blessings!

Now for a couple of funny experiences:

The wire in our fan came out a few weeks ago, and my companion has been meaning to solder it back. But, because we're missionaries, we don't have a soldering iron. But also because we're missionaries, the word for soldering iron is not naturally in our vocabulary. So my comp asked the french speaking elder in our house how you say it. He told him it was "une poste à soudure". So Elder Rice asked around for that, and finally he found someone that said he could bring one home from work. So we pass by and the person shows us his poste à soudure and it was a welder! I guess they didn't question the missionaries wanting a welder, they just got it for us. That was pretty funny. Now we know the difference between a welder and a soldering iron in french haha.

Also in a lesson, a member went off a little and as he was talking he said "C'est mon livre qui est mormon. Moi, je suis membre de L’Église de Jésus-Christ des Saints des Derniers Jours." hahaha that's Lds pride right there. We are NOT mormons everyone.

Alright, that's about it for this wek. Bonne semaine!

Orometua Lewis