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