Update from Becky: I only saw videos and pictures in Adam's emails today, but later I noticed another email that had a great letter with lots of enthusiasm about the work and a fun ward party the missionaries put on. I'm adding the letter at the end of the post.
Elder Kaoanohi playing ukulele and singing! I can tell Adam is doing background harmonizing. Fun!!
Frere Rochette going hard in a solo dance at the Tahitian party
One last one .... HAHAHAHAHA
ELDER kaoanohi crashed out on the floor....nice....
 |
| All the dudes getting up to follow Frere Rochette in a dance |
 |
| Frere Rochette goign hard in a solo dance |
 |
| There you go, it was super legit to see, reminded me a little bit of the Piula family. Because that's like the only other time in my life when I've seen legit Polynesian dancing. It's pretty cool! Wish yall could have been there. |
Other Pics
 |
Also I forgot to mention, Brother and Sister Rochette (above) taught
Julia with us last Wednesday and then took us out to dinner after!! It
was super chill :D :D Thanks Rochettes we love you guys!
  |
 |
This is the very tunnel the English surrounded to trap and capture
Joan of Arc. she was captured here in Compiegne and then burned at the
stake in Rouen in northern france. Pretty cool huh?
  |
picture bombed me mom that was awesome!! :) hahaha. If you want I
could start an iCloud thing maybe that would make it easier to share
photos. Would you like me to do that?
Thanks for all the updates, glad to see everyone is well. Happy to
hear about your conference, Mom, sounds like life chilled out for you
Dad since your big trial (thank goodness), and BOY GABE IS TALL. HOLY
CRAP. O.O Dude he's gonna beat me up when I get back (you can tell him
I said that, I want it to be a challenge :) ) But man seriously that
kid is tall! You're a tall baby bro bro! You are no longer the little
Geeber who would stick his one arm out of the burrito wrap. Heck nah.
Anyways love you lots and thanks for the update.
I'm also excited about mother's day call! Holy cow Mom calm down it'll
be okay. Haha you can wait a week. Miss you lots too. No worries. I
think Elder Kaonohi's mom was the most excited in his famiy too. Haha
she called it "Christmas and Skype day" hahaha if you picture that in
her cool Tahitian accent it's pretty funny. Anyways so I was thinking
we could start in between 4-6 PM my time. Have you changed to
daylight savings this spring yet? If you have, you should be 8 hours
behind me, so that would be in between 8-10 AM your time. We
have permission for an hour, but I really don't care if we go over,
this is my last mission call and I won't get to see you guys for a
while. Haha I can't let my vision get clouded with the end yet. But it
is close, huh? Getting weird. I will be starting my 13th trasnfer next
Monday and I already hit my six months to...uh...attractive :D haha
yeah so it's weird.
I am going to briefly summarize the week and then barrage you with
photos and videos. BTW, it is possibly near the end of my stay in
Troyes, this last week or two went by CRAZY fast, holy cow!!! It flies
sometimes. It's only been 3 months since we got here, but since we
came in at the same time, ad it is unusual to spend more than 3 months
with one companion, one of us will probably be out, and we're having
feelings maybe somebody will, even though we would REALLY LIKE IT if
we BOTH STAYED. Might be smart to send stuff to the mission address
here for the next couple weeks just in case. Just FYI it would break
my heart to leave right now. I'd be really really sad. We will find
out for sure Saturday so we can talk about it Sunday. It'd break my
heart. I love the Rochette family, they're great. They're so inspired
and do so much good work, not to mention the Tahitian Fete they pretty
much put on by themselves haha. I just love a lot of people here we
have so many great members and amis. The Elder's Quorum President is
really cool. But yeah I just really feel like we click well with so
many of our members and they're firing up with missionary work. It's
awesome. Can't wait to talk about the Tahitian ativity later in the
email.
We had a lot of great stuff happen this week, among th emain things
our Tahitian Fete or Party, a great lesson with Julia and Brother and
Sister Rochette, she's progressing well, we were also able to give her
a baptismal date for June 4. So we're hoping that'll go through. She's
REALLY legit. Really cool. She's our best, most progressing
investigator. So everybody pray for her please.
I read a lot about self-mastery in scripture and non-study time in the
Ensign and Liahona and that kind of stuff. It was really good. Learned
about spiritual strength. There's a really good talk by President
Faust, the dear sweet brother who was in the first presidency for so
many years, about it, I encourage you to look it up. It's from the
April 2000 General Conference and it's called "The Power of Self
Mastery." SO GOOD. I also read some other resources about it, I
encourage you to search in Gospel Library about it, you find some
pretty powerful stuff. Search it in the scriptures. He says that in
short, self-mastery or self denial is the ability to do the thigns you
need to do when you need to do them, and to not do the things you are
not supposed to do. :) Thought that was pretty cool. Love reading
stuff that challenges us to be manly. Gotta be a man right. Learned a
lot about that. Really good lessons, please read that.
Now--the Tahitian fete. It was SO MUCH FUN. WOW. It was originally a
missionary activity but our ward mission leader honestly did a
terrible job supporting us, literally did just about nothing about it,
so we needed a lot of help from the Tahitian family, the Rochettes.
They took up the slack from us! Me and Elder Kaonohi, we didn't really
know what to do, either. So we just kind of asked everyone to come
Friday night (planned well in advance), to bring a dessert or main
dish with an island theme, and to bring friends. HOLY COW AT LEAST SIX
non-member people showed up with their member friends, it was AMAZING.That is a TON for such a small ward as this. We are really getting
firey I feel, or at least we are improving a lot. People have told us
that we're helping the ward a lot. I really hope so. It's the Lord who
does all the good anyway, though, no need for us to say it's us
because it's not. But yeah, there you go. We had about 25 or 30 chairs
set up (an enormous amount compared to other activities we've thrown
here, like our movie nights where 12 is really good) and BOOM so many
people come that the seats were filled, people took other chairs in
the corner of the room by the performers, and there were people spread
all the way out into the hall. Man it was awesome. Such a big success
for the ward. The bishop was there, Frere Rochette is the first
counselor, so he was there, Brother Chilla, whose house we were at
earlier today, brought a really cool happy friend, Sister Amantchi, a
sister from Cote d'Ivoire, brought TWO (what a beast right) and the
Rochettes also brought a full family pretty much, a mom who really
liked talking to me and Elder Kaonohi and who was really chill, cool
lady. She said she hoped she could come over to the Rochettes house
next time we would be up there so that's rpetty sweet huh? It is
amazing to see how amazed people get when we describe our service to
them. They really get genuinely surprised bcause they're not members,
and for all those who aren't jerks, they really respect and cherish
that service because we give it freely and we have families and stuff.
ANYWAYS we had a ton of dancing, us the elders, we did a Mauri (New
Zealand) Haka (not the same one as in Forever Strong), and it was
really cool, Sister Rochette and her daughters did some cool Tahitian
dances, it was just all around awesome. So much music, fun, and
dancing, and then there was a TON of food after. Best time ever.
Coolest and best success of a ward activity I've ever had in my
mission, I think I can say, at least for a while. So yeah. All you
elders and sisters--do activities! They work. Just get the ward
involved and tell them to bring friends. It was super legit. Even
though we didn't ask for any phone numbers to avoid pressuring the
amis, we had a good time talking to one or two, and we're going to
follow up with each of the members to ask how their friends liked it
and how we can see them again (another activity, an appointment, an
FHE, etc.) So yeah, really cool right?! Huge success, that also marks
the end of our member work transfer with that activity, but the work
continues on until forever!! We do killer work here in Troyes with the
members, we take pride in it. Also had 5 amis [investigators] in church yesterday, it
was awesome! Some Sundays Gospel Doctrine just seems to be packed. I'm
so glad, we are so blessed!! Thanks Heavenly Father! He is just
pouring in people for us to teach and it feels awesome. I feel like
there is so much He wants us to do, so many people He wants us to see,
here in this possibly last week for us together here in Troyes. It'll
be an epic week.
Yesterday we went by the Majokko house and taught Nathalie and Martiel
for the second time, as well as a new friend in their house, Joseph.
(Ironic--haha learning about the Mormon Church, his name is Joseph,
but he was super sarcastic and jokey for a while, hahaha who cares)
Was interesting quick PoS lesson but hey we got Joseph to soften up
because we answered all his dumb funny questions with in a straight up
way and we just took it so seriously he had to respect us. Haha. Even
asked us to come by tomorrow and pray for him before he heads back to
Guyana for a vacation so that's cool. They're all family members of a
member who was here but is currently there on vacation, cool because
it gives us the chance to teach them a little bit. How can we make
them legit and interested? Ahaha that's the next question.
Also saw our new ami Remy this week, he was really cool and is going
through a lot of confusion and stuff. really hope that guy figures
stuff out if you could pray for him that'd be great.
Also we went to the Ganga family's house today. Had lunch. Ate
tiramisu (no worries it was kosher). Drank alcoholic Peruvian soda.
Nah nah that was a joke. :D haha It's called Inka Kola but ti's just
sweet, no bad stuff in it. Tasted like candy it was kind of good.
Sister Ganga is Peruvian and Brother Ganga is half Spanish half French
so they're a cool family. Really cute kids, their little four year old
Julie reminds me of the cute girls in Tony and Andrea's family. BTW
got to use my running shoes from Tony again today. Was good.
Ok! Love you my family. Have a great week ok? Hope to talk to you
soon, God bless. Prepare for the photo and video barrage. ;D
Love
Elder Edwards
No comments:
Post a Comment