Iaorana tatou!

So this transfer was a little complicated, but it made for an interesting week!

Last weekend I packed all of my things and sent my big suitcase and my bike to the mission office to be sent by boat to Raiatea. On Monday, there was a big group of missionaries that finished their missions, including my former STLs Soeur A and Soeur R. They're both amazing and I miss them already.

On Tuesday we headed to Papeete to pick up Soeur T's "daughter"! She will be training Soeur A from New Caledonia, who is waiting for her visa for the Provo, Utah mission. The APs had told be I would probably be leaving Tuesday or Wednesday, so I was all ready to go... come to find out my flight wasn't until Saturday morning!

So, since Soeur A had left and her replacement, Soeur P, had to wait for her replacement, Soeur L, to arrive from Raiatea on Saturday, long story short Soeur G, Soeur A's companion, was left companionless. And Soeur T had her new companion so I was too! Confusing? Yes. But it meant that I got to work with Soeur G for a few days in the secteur of Mahina! Mahina is Matavai's classy big sister; it covers all of Mahina, à côté montagne (the mountain side) (whereas Matavai is the beach side). But as for missionary work it's a little bit tough at the moment. On Thursday, every lesson we had planned cancelled, so we ended up contacting pretty much all day. While it was tiring, we had some good experiences and met some cool people. Like A., who is from the Marquises where he lives in the mountains, hunts to support his family, and avoids people. That's what I understood at least. Now he's in Mahina though because he met a girl. He said he doesn't know much about God (as a result of living in the mountains) but he's interested in learning. He didn't want to take a Book of Mormon then, because he would have to hide it from his girlfriend, but he said that next time he would bring a backpack so that he could take it and read it in secret. Anyway... he as cool.

On Friday I started the trek to Raiatea. Soeur G dropped me off with the sisters of Erima in the morning, where Soeur S had been waiting since Tuesday. Then they dropped us off at the mission office at Papeete, and my mom picked us up! Haha by mom I mean Soeur D, my trainer. She's an STL in Faaa, so she lives near the airport. We decided that it would be best for us to stay with them since we had to be at the airport early in the morning. "Us" includes me, Soeur S, as well as Soeur M and Soeur T who would be on our same flight. That means that Soeur D and Soeur S had four extra missionaries to babysit that they didn't know what to do with! So they let us loose and we went tracting in their secteur for a few hours. I was a mini-trainer for Soeur M, who arrived from the MTC last week. We spent the night with eight sisters in an apartment meant for four, and finally, Saturday morning we headed to the airport and caught a flight to Raiatea!

So I've only been here two days, but as promised it's really beautiful here. It's a relatively large island, the second largest after Tahiti. But 10 missionaries here compared to over a hundred on Tahiti means that my secteur, Uturoa, is pretty huge. Soeur K and I have a lot of work ahead of us! Big secteur, big potential, right? I'm grateful for this past week where I did more contacting than I'd ever done, because I think that prepared me for Uturoa. We're going to have to be pretty creative to find new investigators and gain the trust of the ward and the community. It's a relatively new secteur for sisters, it used to be elders until they opened it for sisters in January.

This week my favorite scripture has been Helaman 10:4. The prophet and missionary Nephi as feeling discouraged because of the wickedness of the people, but as he was pondering, the Lord told him this: 

 "Blessed art thou, Nephi, for those things which thou hast done; for I have beheld how thou hast with unwearyingness declared the word, which I have given unto thee, unto this people. And thou hast not feared them, and hast not sought thine own life, but hast sought my will, and to keep my commandments."