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