There can be Miracles... If you believe and are named Marie Jo

There can be Miracles... If you believe and are named Marie Jo

I know....I wrote a lot.

Craziest Miracle of my companion's mission so maybe it's worth it if you read it all.

 A woman from a small island in the Tuamotu's called Tatakotu needed a medical check up in Tahiti (the big island) and decided to stay with her brother-in-law.  He and his family are recent converts in our ward.  She hears about how they sometimes (because they are inactive) attend church, and she is curious and wants to go.  So Sunday comes and they all go to church.  Marie Jo decides to approach us at church, introduces herself by saying "Hi, I am Marie Jo. I am Catholic.  But we believe in the same God, right?" and then she just walked back to her pew.  That night at the Missionary concert, she asked to come with the family again and she took a picture with us at the end.  The next night we get a call from the family who asks if we can have dinner over there and maybe answer some of her questions about the church.  Haha gladly!! So we get over there and start teaching the Plan of Salvation.  In the middle of the lesson she asks about her 4 year old daughter who died in March (she is 41).  And of course we have the best answer for that with the Gospel of Christ.  After I got to share a couple scriptures in Moroni 8, she looks up and says "so my daughter doesn't need to be baptized just adults like me!" .  We were so excited to hear that and promised to come back the next day for another lesson.

  

Tuesday night we started the lesson, and she told us she had been studying Moroni 8 and asked if we would accept her desire to be baptized!! Ah, we both just kind of sat there and then we were like, well do you smoke, drink, or are living with anyone??? She said she could stop smoking if she wanted to.  She doesn't drink, and that she is not living with anyone because the scriptures now are her boyfriend.  LOL.  So we said OF course!!!!!!  We agreed to try and teach her all the lessons this week and then she would return the next Thursday for her island.  Sadly her island doesn't have any members of the church on it, let alone missionaries.  So she would have to return another time to get baptized.  We headed back to the house so excited to continue lessons with her.  On Friday we had a district meeting and talked about our situation with this brand new ami, Marie Jo.  Elder Claflin read Acts 8:36-40 and said, why don't you try to get her baptized BEFORE she goes back home.   We thought we would give it our best try.  So at the lesson with her that night she tells us she decided to stay home all day and study the scriptures and the brochures we gave her.  And she had given up smoking.  Then we show her Acts 8 and say, "so you have sufficient faith in Jesus Christ, why not get baptized next week?" and then just held our breath!! She thought about it and the family who was with us said it wasn't possible for them the next week and they couldn't get her the gift of the Holy Ghost in time.  But then she looks up and asks, "can we do my baptism tomorrow?"  Haha, wait. WHAT.  After talking about the logistics, we decided it was possible!!!

So Saturday, the next morning we come over at 7 am and teach the rest of the lessons until 12.  Then we got to a Faatamaaraa with the zone.  Afterwards we planned to have her baptismal interview, but while we were eating a crazy man decided to deflate the tires on our car, the Ward Missionary's car, and the other missionaries' car.  So we couldn't leave.  We decided to figure out a way to get Marie Jo to us and do the interview in the parking lot. 

  

The good news is when you have the desire to God's will, he will provide a way.  So that's another loss for Satan.

Before the interview she asked for a blessing.  The Elders with us, one is a native Tahitian and the other is Claflin from Wyoming who has been out 8 months.  She looked straight at the white Elder and says I want a blessing from you in Tahitian.  I gained such a powerful testimony during that blessing of Christ's love for this woman.  A Marie Jo who lives on an obscure island in the middle of French Polynesian.  As well as a confirmation of why we are here serving missions.  God needs a conductor of his spirit.   Us, missionaries are like the cable.  If we work to be obedient and worthy, we allow God's spirit to be better conducted into the lives of the people we are serving.  This Elder showed his willingness and faith to give a Tahitian blessing to a woman he barely knew, in a language we all hardly know, and he brought the power of the spirit and priesthood there.  

The interview went well too ;)

Afterwards we found someone to pump up our car tires and headed straight to the baptism.  Got to give the talk about baptism, and hopefully didn't butcher too much of my Tahitian haha.  She got baptized and bore a powerful testimony after.  

So there is Marie Jo's story.  Met her Sunday.  Taught her the first lesson Monday. Baptized on Saturday. 

The more I become a part of the process of conversion on a mission.  The more I realize how little I actually do.  And how much it really is just between God and the person.   He prepares them, puts them in situations to hear our message, and then it is the person's decision to believe and to act.  We missionaries are just there to love, teach, and support.  I saw the Lord's hand more clearly through this woman's life.  She was prepared years ago, not having a boyfriend, having her heart softened by her daughter's passing, her coming to Tahiti and being free the whole while she was here.  

Hopefully that's not all either.   We are trying to take her to the temple tomorrow morning.  

Ether 12: 14  I love this gospel and am ready for a more regular week.  We still only get 2 Thirds of our lessons to actually show up for the lesson.  And my companion is beautiful so we get a lot of big 40 year old men who ask for lessons then just hit on her the whole time.  But the good news is the fridge and washing machine work now!! Sr. Andrus headed out to another house, but the rest of us stayed for this transfer.  

Alright, until next week!!!!

All my love,

Sr. Spencer

 

It's the little things

... We’re walking down the mountain in the evening, when a man on the other side of the road walks directly over to us and stops us and asks if we can come over and teach him the missionary lessons.  Haha, heck yes! We can little man!  So we set up a time for the next day.  Next day comes and we go to where he told us he lived annnnd… it wasn’t the right house, and nobody in that neighborhood recognized his name.  So we leave the Quartier and Sr Durrant turns to me and asks, “Do you have the faith to find this man?” And of course, I have all the enthusiasm and faith of a newbie, so we say a prayer and ask to find this man with no idea where he could live.  We started walking up the hill and walk into another street and yell lorana at a gate (the equivalent of knocking doors) and that man just walks right out of that house.  So there you have it.  Rockin the Faith☺

….Had this delicious breakfast Faatamaaraa.

….Got to do an endowment session and thought about my crew out in Barbados and Madagascar who are without a temple for 2 years.  I love how much I feel like my ability to love is growing out here.  There's a big part of my head and heart thinking about our amis, and sitting in the temple, thinking about our lessons in the streets with these people, trying to get them here, was powerful!

Here often the genealogy is near impossible to do because there are rarely written records and a ton of people just live with random family etc.  But this woman we know has thousands of names that she is working on.  And she has them all meticulously written out in a big notebook (granted the names are like 50 letters long each haha Tahitians).  There were families from Ukraine, Morroco, and Egypt in there.  It was incredible!!! The people here have a lot of faith and also sometimes are really spiritually in tune.  Not to mention she lives in two tiny rooms on the second floor of someone else's home… a kitchen and a mattress on the floor…that barely fits.  I get lots of perspective everyday, seeing what these people do with what they have. 


….Got straight thrown out of a house this week.  We have this adorable mommy, named Mami Tiare.  She is brillant and has a firm testimony of the Book of Mormon now, but her husband won’t let her get baptized.  So we were having a lesson with her on her porch with a member, Moana, and all the sudden we hear a man yell from a car and peel into the drive way.  He starts screaming and slams the door and runs over to where we are.  I didn’t pick up much of what he said in fact because it was mostly cussing in French and Tahitian.  But he was pretty clear when he punched the member that was with us.  We got out quick and our member had enough cool not to fight him, because he does actually love boxing, but then we walked really carefully and quickly around the man and got out.  It was the son of the Mami and guess he doesn't like us   Whatever happens to us is fine, we know what we are getting into out here; normally people are super respectful, but I really hope that Mami is ok!!  So frustrating to have family members hold people back like that!

….We have two investigators that I am so pumped for!! When we have lessons with Deborah she always is so ready the hear the message and works mostly to do the engagements (side note: I already feel like I have heard every excuse on the planet for why people didn’t have time to say a two minute prayer or read for five minutes.  You have to be SOO busy to not be able to do that, and having a kid to babysit or having one day of work between the 4 days that we see you, doesn't count as being too busy hahaha my favorite is just the, I was tired excuse.) But, Deborah, is a super down-to-earth person and she thinks she would like to bring her husband, daughter, and friend to church for the first time.  Hahah, not going to say no to that!!
The other investigator is named Vaetua Rooino. He’s 29, has two kids and he really wants to get married.  He has everything to gain by joining the church and he is so sincere and has this huge heart.  He has one pair of shoes, they are tennis shoes that don’t have tops anymore and when my companion showed him the inch hole in the heel of her sandal, he felt so bad.  The next lesson he pulled out a pair of girl’s sandals that someone had given him and gave them to my companion.  That is the epitome of who these people are.  These people are much less concerned about physical possessions, it's incredible.

….Got to teach a lesson to a Mami while her son was giving someone a full calf tatoo 5 feet away.  Yes, both of those punks are members. 

This week there are lots of pictures with our favorite 15 kids.  Hopefully we can start separating them out in families and teach them the lessons.  Also some temple pictures.  And a video of mundane things haha, sorry my emails aren't instagram status.  There's no boomerang apps out here lol 

I love you all and I am so excited for another week out there in Oremu. 
If you need some more things to pray about in your life, you can add Antonella, Vaetua, Deborah, and Chico to your list :)

"You can often gauge a man's ambition by whether he hates his alarm clock or considers it his best friend" -Me (en fait, Thomas Edison)

Love Sister Spencer