Iaorana tatou,

We had a great week as always!

Tuesday we had multi zone conference. President taught about the importance of the Book of Mormon in our teaching, and he shared a talk from President Ezra Taft Benson. President Benson repeated several times in his talk "I have a vision," which reminded me of the famous "I have a dream" speech. Only coming from a prophet of God, it's not just a wish or a hope, but an actual vision of what must come forth - "I have a vision of the Book of Mormon filling the earth." Soeur Bize gave a training about recognizing the Holy Ghost. She talked about how the Holy Ghost is like one of our senses, and if we turn off one sense, such as closing our eyes, we are more attuned to our other senses, such as hearing. She showed us a music video - Piano Guys Indiana Jones. The first time we were impressed by the images and the newness (I don't even know if it's a new video, but it was new for us in any case) but then we closed our eyes and just listened to the music. Of course, we noticed a lot more. Sometimes we need to tune out the distractions and tune in to the Spirit.

Wednesday I went on exchanges with Sister B-. She's a new missionary from Idaho, speaks great French, is diligent and all around wonderful. We saw several inactives and some investigators as well. We ate dinner with the Be- family, who like many Tahitian families, did not pay attention to our full stomachs and served us second helpings of everything. Thursday we had some great lessons. First we helped our Seventh Day Adventist friend M- write a talk that the Protestants asked her to give at their church next Sunday. No idea why. She will quite possibly be using scriptures from the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants without citing where they are from... Perhaps that will prepare the hearts of the Protestant congregation to hear our message.

Then we taught the Restoration to E-. E- teaches Sunday school at a Protestant church, in other words she is very active in her religion but accepts talking with us anyway. At the beginning the lesson was a little rough, it seemed she wasn't understanding what we were teaching about prophets and everything, but by the time we got to Joseph Smith, the Spirit filled the lesson, and she was touched when we gave her a Book of Mormon. Definitely one of our best lessons this week. I may have mentioned that this month we're really focusing on working with members to find new investigators. Halfway through the week, despite our efforts to ask lots of reference-finding questions during our visits and dinners at members houses, we had only found a few almost references (people that members had talked about but weren't yet ready to give us more information about.) But then one awesome member sent us a reference by text message and another member from another ward called us to say that they met someone from our secteur who read the whole Book of Mormon and asked what she needs to do to be baptized! Miracles happen. However I think the mission is training me to join the family business, haha, because all the member knew was a name and a neighborhood. A very large neighborhood. This happens surprisingly often - someone tells us that there's a person looking for us, and they live somewhere in this one valley. A valley which is larger than some secteurs. So we end up going around asking "have you seen this investigator?" like we're the police or something. Fortunately we found a member who told us where mysterious Book of Mormon reader lives, but every time we pass by there's nobody home. We're seriously considering a stake out. We're also considering "Lost Ami" signs for our ami C-. She is one of my favorite investigators but she moved out of the blue and her phone is broken. So we've been looking everywhere for her. Anyway that's pretty much our week. Saturday Soeur J- had a bad stomach bug so we took it easy but she's doing better now.

I loved the lesson in Relief Society yesterday, about optimism. The lesson mentioned the story of Caleb and Joshua. Basically God told Moses to send twelve spies, one from each tribe, to check out the land of Canaan. Ten of the spies came back with the report that the land was great but the people were too numerous and strong and big that there was no way little Israel could win. But the last two, Caleb and Joshua, said that the land was truly a fruitful land and if they were faithful, God would surely deliver it too them despite the physical odds. They were after all, the people of God! But the people chose to follow the pessimistic ten, and as a result they wandered for forty years until all of the pessimistic generation was gone and only Caleb and Joshua were left with the new generation. In short, God chooses optimists! He needs optimists to fulfill his works! He uses those who have faith and trust in Him.

Je vous aime,
Soeur Ladd

H- (the founder of our first Primary) and her fluffy white "Quigley"

another temple picture

a bridge that was broken by the flooding. I once taught a lesson on that bridge.

the view from M-'s house