Iaorana tatou!

It's been a busy and blessed week!

Tuesday started out with multi-zone conference, with Elder Cardon of the Seventy visiting for a mission tour. He encouraged us to be more bold and described how we are the arms of the Lord, helping to gather Israel. I could really tell that he was following the Spirit and telling us just what we need to hear.

Wednesday morning the power was shut off for some road work or something, and we couldn't figure out how to manually open our automatic gate so we jumped over the gate. With our bikes.

Thursday we went to the temple! It's been seven months since I've been to the temple (because there's no temple on Raiatea. yet.) so it was really nice to go back.

Last night was fun. If any of you have seen the Best Two Years, you might remember the part were Elder Rogers 'follows inspiration' to go to the grocery store because he's hungry and because he 'followed the Spirit' (his stomach) they find an investigator. Well last night we stopped by a less active's house to let her know that the family home evening we'd invited her to had been cancelled. As we were leaving Soeur Lu- suggested we stop by a member's house in the same neighborhood. And whaddyaknow, half of our investigators were there for an impromptu family home evening that we didn't know about, since the usual Sunday-night family home evening was cancelled! Soeur Lu- told me later that she had suggested we stop by because she'd heard the member say that they were making chao men and she was hungry.

But the best news of the week - A- and J- were baptized on Saturday! As I mentioned last week, things were feeling suspiciously easy with J-. Well, in the middle of conference on Tuesday, we got a call from J-'s friend asking if we could send a priesthood holder to give J- a blessing to help him stop smoking. We were not aware that J- had a smoking problem, even though we'd taught him the Word of Wisdom and he passed his baptismal interview already. So that was some helpful information. But thanks to J-'s faith and the power of the priesthood, he's stopped smoking since Tuesday night! Elder T interviewed him again just to be safe and he was able to be baptized as planned.

A- also stopped drinking coffee since last Tuesday and Wednesday he passed his interview. It wasn't easy the first few days but I think he's starting to get used to it and feel more peaceful. When he gave his testimony after his baptism he shared a scripture that I had shared with him a while ago, Jean 14:27, one of my favorite verses: "Peace I leave you, my peace I give unto you." He saw that promise fulfilled as he received the gift of the Holy Ghost yesterday. He shed a few tears after his blessing, it was very sweet.

I'll just end with a verse I read the other day, in 2 Nephi 27:23 "For behold, I am God; and I am a God of miracles; and I will show unto the world that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and I work not among the children of men save it be according to their faith." As Elder Cardon taught us last week, God is in the faith business. We can try and convince ourselves that there is some other way to get our desired results, some other ways to have prayers answered and miracles come forth, but He is in the faith business. "I work not among the children of men save it be according to their faith." Our faith is manifest in multiple ways - through obedience, love, trust, patience, humility - but to see God's hand working in our lives, it comes back to faith. Faith is precious! Go find yourselves some more faith!

Love,
Soeur Ladd

P.s. check out this year's Christmas initiative #LIGHTtheWORLD