Bonjour!

We're doing well here in little Matavai! I'm feeling better about planning and leading the secteur and the amis are doing lovely!

Once again I haven't got much time to write, and nothing too exciting happened, but I'll leave you with a little thought. I've been thinking about grace and works. We talked to those Christian missionaries again and the main difference between our beliefs and theirs have to do with the age-old question "Have you been saved by grace?" In the end I keep thinking about a scripture and a quote: Moroni 10:32-33*, and from Brad Wilcox, "We aren't earning heaven, we're learning heaven."

I love you all! Sorry for the short e-mail but thanks for all of your news! Selfishly I prefer reading e-mails to writing them.

Mwah!
Sœur Ladd

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Iaorana tatou!

First of all, sorry about last week, it was our last choir practice before the concert last night, so it went long, and plus it was transfers! So by the time I got to my mail, p-day was almost over. Speaking of transfers, I have a lovely new companion, Soeur T! She's Tahitian and awesome, but more on that later.

As for the other week, nothing too big and exciting. We knew that transfers were coming up and Soeur D would soon be leaving since she spent six months in Matavai. We got the official call on Friday night, and she is now Sister Training Leader of Faaa! (not far from Papeete)

Talking to my family on Mother's Day was obviously a main highlight! It's a blessing to see that they're doing well, and plus I got to meet Joe, my future brother-in-law! And I got to say hi to Quigley, even if he didn't say hi to me ;)

As I said Monday we had our last choir practice, at which I met my new companion! Sister T is from Faaa, and she served the beginning of her mission at the St. George Temple Visitor's Center in Utah. She came back after a few months because of health issues, namely her knee, but last September she re-entered the mission field here in Tahiti. As of last week, she was pretty sure she would just finish her mission here in Tahiti, but last Tuesday President Bize called and said that Church Headquarters had approved her to return, but it was up to her to make the final decision. And she had about 6 hours to do it. Finally she called him back that night and said she would return. But she told me later that all of Wednesday she felt confused and worried if she'd made the right choice. Finally, she called President to say that she would stay, and she felt immediately better; that, my friends, is the Holy Ghost. As it explains in the Doctrine and Covenants, "But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right. But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought..."

So Soeur T will be staying with me until further notice! (i.e. one of us is transferred) She still has her knee problem, so we've had to make some adjustments since she can't ride the bike too much. That along with it being my first time leading the secteur made for a stressful week! It's a good thing I'm surrounded by very patient people, because most of the time I have no idea what I'm doing. I learned a lot though. For example, it's often best to just go out and do something rather than staying home and worrying about how you're going to do it. I'm not saying you don't do your best to plan before hand, but there's a difference between planning and worrying. Personally, I unfortunately do a lot more of the second. I'm working on that.

Take for example last Thursday. We only had two lessons fixed, when on others days we often have lessons almost every hour. So I honestly had no idea what we should do. We did our first lesson that morning, and on our way home to finish our studies, I saw T and C, two of our investigators. I asked if we could meet them later and they seemed a little hesitant, but said that I should call that afternoon. We did our studies, ate, even helped some neighbors rake leaves, and afterwards I tried calling them and some others to fix a lesson but nobody was answering. Finally we decided on my last resort, street contacting. We got ready to go and said a prayer, and as we were saying the prayer, T called back and said that we could meet them at the church for a lesson! For me, it wasn't unlike that one scene in The Best Two Years when the investigator finally calls back in the middle of their prayer.

Last Saturday we ran into the missionaries! Haha we met some non-denominational Christian missionaries on the street, one from New York, one from Atlanta, and one from Switzerland. Apparently there's a whole group of them here for a few weeks for a program. We had a good talk with them, and it was interesting to preach the gospel in English for once! We might talk to them again later this week.

Yesterday we had our first concert! All the missionaries on the island have been practicing for the past few weeks, and now we're doing the island tour of all the stake centers. It's a lot of fun and a great missionary opportunity. The theme of the concert is the Light of Christ. I've got to go now, so all I'll say is that it's pretty fun to hear 60 Elders singing "J'irai, je ferai la volonté du Père!" with all their heart. Go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded!

Love love love you all!

Soeur Ladd

Iaorana tatou!

We had another rainy week last week, and it will continue this week apparently. It's nice in some ways: it's not as hot, and everyone stays home so it's harder for them to avoid us. However, there are a million moustiques when it rains and someone had the brilliant idea to make a solar powered hot water heater, so that we have hot water when it's hot, but cold water when it's cold. ;)

As I was looking back through my planner over what we did this week, I remembered a few times where I've thought about the light in our eyes. The first two times were with investigators that were very close to baptism, but things came into their life, we don't see them for a while or they make certain choices, and when we contact them again it like we don't recognize them. There is something that gets lost between the time when they were sincerely learning about the gospel, studying scriptures, praying, attending church, etc., and the time after they've consciously or unconsciously pushed those things away. The best way to describe it is that the light is gone from their eyes. The third time this idea was mentioned, however, was last Saturday. We were explaining the importance of the Book of Mormon, and after Soeur D had finished explaining and bore her testimony, the investigator smiled and said, "you know, your eyes shine when you talk about these things, like you're about to cry!" She also pointed out that all the Mormon missionaries she sees are always so happy and friendly, rain or shine we're on our bikes just riding along and saying "Iaorana" to everyone we pass. It reminds me of that old story about the BYU Center in Jerusalem. When the Church was getting permission to build the center, they had to promise that the students wouldn't proselyte their religion. One of the city leaders said something like "oh, we know they'll obey the law and won't preach, but what will we do about the light in their eyes?"

Other highlight of this week was our awesome Zone Conference with President Bize. I haven't got much time left to talk about it, but it was awesome and I learned so much! Soeur Bize is very much like our mom out here, throughout the conference, she made comments like, "find something to laugh about every day", "always keep chocolate at the house," and "take your medicine!"

Have a great Mothers Day everyone, especially all you missionaries and families of missionaries!

Ua here au ai outou,
Soeur Ladd