Ia Orana i te mau taata na roto i te Fenua! O Tuahine Taylor to'u i'oa. E mea maitai i te hebodoma.
Sometime
I pretend I can actually speak Tahitian, and every time I teach in
Tahitian people are super shocked because the silly white girl is
speaking their language, but really, I have no idea what I'm doing. :) I
adore the language, I prefer to pray in Tahitian, but sometimes I just
make up things I know aren't right. But hey! I'm trying. :)
(yes, that is my super tan arm)
This
week has been good. We successfully managed to avoid more dog births,
and I, once again, did not have the lovely occasion to eat fafaroo. One
day. One day. I haven't hit the point where I'm going to pray for
someone to serve fafaroo, because I know once I do that I'll be eating
the lovely fermented fish every night for 3 weeks. I don't think I could
do that quite yet.
I did however make
some concoction I was pretty scared to eat. It all started with 47
coconuts.... Yes. I was super epic and Tahitian and first cut the
coconuts open with a machete, and then after shredded the coconuts. True
story. I have video. You'll just have to wait for a few more months
because it's too big to send... :) So I shredded the deliciousness into a
giant bowl. (The bowls here in Tahiti are pretty impressively huge).
Fresh coconut is ridiculously delicious. I'd buy a bag every week in
Maraa where the fruit vendor is, I've been missing it in Orofero. I was
stoked to eat my coconut. I'll just say it. STTTTOAKED. So I finish
shredding the coconut, and walk over to help with the other food and I
see the wife of our DMP smashing whole crabs and scraping the
smashedness into a bowl of water. All the little bits went into the
water. Afterwards she had me help with straining all the little bits
out. .... then she poured the crab water into my coconut. SHE POURED IT
ALLLLLL INTO THE COCONUT. My little heart just cracked into a gazillion
pieces when that happened. I do not like crab. I didn't like it before. I
don't like it now. And now the beautiful coconut was tainted with the
intestines of crab. The morning after, after it fermented through the
nice, we chopped up raw tuna and put it in. Then I ate it. It was
delicious. I'm making it again this week. Oh the world is a strange
place...
(that's my super tan hand again. No, not really... this is the smashed crab guts)
We are still teaching Otako. He gave me a waffle this week. It was
the best waffle I've ever eaten in my life. Holy cow. So delicious. It
had a nutella whipped cream on it. It was so delicious I couldn't finish
it. :) He's doing well. One of his friends he invited to a lesson
accepted to hear all the lessons, so we went and talked to his very
anti-Mormon family, and they accepted to have a family home evening with
us. The world is progressing. :) We're literally teaching an entire
neighborhood. 2 weeks ago nobody in the neighborhood was being taught,
now, nearly every house has had lessons with us, and the majority have
accepted to hear the lessons, and 3 people already have asked us to be
baptised. #miracles
(this
punk likes to take my camera and take pictures. I think I have 100
pictures of her dogs on it. They're actually good pictures. :) )
Something that amazes me every single day is the
wisdom of the children. We're teaching a new investigator, her name is
Hereani, in the neighborhood of miracles, she's 10. I think she
understands the gospel better than we do. Her and Otako. They're both
10, and wow. I can't believe their faith and their wisdom. We don't have
favorite investigators here, but I will always prefer to teach
children. Their hearts haven't been hardened by the things of the world.
They're not addicted to alcohol or cigarettes, they don't live in
concubinage, they don't have the same problems that affect all the adult
investigators. They have the faith. That's what's most important.
(sorry
it's turned funny. This is Coeur de Boeuf. aka. Cow heart. It's fruit,
and I will never eat raw cookie dough again. It tastes exactly like
cookie dough and has the same texture)
I got my first package this week! It only took 6
weeks. :) It was filled with all the delicious things from home. Now I
can eat my oatmeal in the mornings with spices. Yes! Score! No more
plain oatmeal for me! I eat fresh guava all the time, and banana, and
soon the mangos will be ripe again. Ah. I can not wait! I love me some
mango. Papaya is good, but nothing can compare to mango and guava.
This
week is going to be a good one! We have lots of lessons planned,
including a new investigator who's been taking the missionary lessons
for 30 years. Yes. Thirty. He just barely moved to our area. I'm quite
excited. I also invited the Jehovah's Witness missionaries to have a
lesson with us on Wednesday.
That's going to be super good. I've been studying for it. :) I love
teaching people who have questions and opinions. That's the debater
inside of me coming out. Those are the people who really want to learn. I
love it. I eat it up. Send me some more. :)
Until next week!
XXo,
Soeur Taylor
p.s.
I've lost all faith in the US Mail system. It only took 2 weeks for me
to get a letter from Finland. And I still haven't gotten all my letters
from the US. Sigh.....
Tahiti Papeete Mission
Soeur Taylor, Morgan
B.P. 93
Papeete, Tahiti
98713
French Polynesia.
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