Iaorana tatou!

Formal apologies again for last week. P-days at busy busy busy sometimes. Like this morning! Six sister missionaries showered, dressed, and out the door in 30 minutes flat, that's an achievement. The H's, a senior couple, did an activity with our district this morning for our exercise, so we got back to the house at the time when we were supposed to be leaving for our choir practice downtown. 6 sweaty missionaries, 2 showers, half an hour, and only 15 minutes late (thats below average for the Soeur D and Ladd standard), that's what I call teamwork. In other news today, I saw a pig the size of a cow!! If any of you know me and my affinity for pigs, you'll understand that that pretty much made my day. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, but if I see him again, I'll be sure to let y'all know. Anyway, back to this week. Tuesday we had exchanges with our Sister Training Leaders, so Soeur Daniels spent the day in the car with Soeur A while Soeur R and I got slightly drenched on our bikes. C'est pas grave. It was a lot of fun, and apparently I won't be totally lost in our secteur if Soeur D gets transferred.

Other things that happened this week:

We had interviews with President Bize, during which immediately after the prayer he said "Teach me the first lesson in five minutes. Go." So that was fun.

Also during my interview he suggested that I practice French by reading the Book of Mormon out loud with a pencil in my mouth. He told this to my companion afterwards (the other sisters were present too) and so guess what Soeur D does in the middle of district meeting the next day? When Elder B, our Zone leader, asked me to read a scripture, she taps me on the shoulder and puts her pen in her mouth. So I start laughing in the middle of the scripture and all of the elders just look at me like I'm crazy. Ça faisait honte.

We found some really cool new investigators! Well, actually he found us. We were at the beach looking for someone we'd fixed a lesson with but wasn't at home. A man came up to us and said he had a question for us. I'm still not quite sure what his question was, something about marriage and divorce, but we talked for a while (he did most of the talking) and were able to fix another lesson with him. Anyway, point being, I think he and his daughter, possibly his son, are a miracle just waiting to happen. T and C are two awesome investigators that were on track for marriage and baptism, but then they were gone working at a festival downtown for three weeks. We finally had lessons again with them last week, and while we had to push back their date indefinitely, I know that they'll be ready soon. It's interesting because they told us that when they came back, they weren't sure if they even wanted to get married anymore. They also told us that they hadn't read their scriptures very much while they were gone. Even just in one week, they've realized what a difference regular habits like that can be. I often share a scripture in 3 Nephi 18, verse 18:"Behold, verily, verily, I say unto you, ye must watch and pray always lest ye enter into temptation; for Satan desireth to have you, that he may sift you as wheat." It's so important to realize that the simple things like prayer, scriptures, and church attendance make all the difference.

I don't think I ever got a chance to share a quote from General Conference that especially touched me. It comes from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, the last talk of conference:

"If we give our heart to God, if we love the Lord Jesus Christ, if we do the best we can to live the gospel, then tomorrow—and every other day—is ultimately going to be magnificent, even if we don’t always recognize it as such. Why? Because our Heavenly Father wants it to be! He wants to bless us. A rewarding, abundant, and eternal life is the very object of His merciful plan for His children! It is a plan predicated on the truth “that all things work together for good to them that love God.” So keep loving. Keep trying. Keep trusting. Keep believing. Keep growing. Heaven is cheering you on today, tomorrow, and forever." How great is it to remember that Heavenly Father is always cheering us on! He just wants us to be happy! He wants us to have success in keeping the commandments and progressing, so certainly He will help us every step of the way.

Je vous aime trop! Faaitoito!

Tuahine Ladd

In case any of you still thought that a missionary's p-day (preparation day) was supposed to be relaxing or something, that's a myth. In other words, I've got about 5 minutes to write this.

Felicitations to Kylie and Joe for their engagement! I suppose they just couldn't wait until August 2nd of 2017. Oh well ;)

As far as numbers go, it was a bit of a rough week, but I'm not too worried about it. I have a feeling that we have a lot of promising work ahead of us, once we can get out of this little rut we've been stuck in. Also, I was a little bit sick last week, which may have been part of it, but I'm feeling better now. Just a sore throat and fever, which went away with medicine. So no worries ;)  [editor's note: that 'no worries' is for mom, the worrier]

Friday night may have been one of the craziest nights of my mission. Sorry, I feel like even if I did have more time I wouldn't be able to accurately describe it. That might be an after I get home story. Let's just say we may or may not have helped save a family from falling apart. #missionarywork

Sorry. That was really vague. I mean everyone is safe and let's be honest it was Heavenly Father who did any saving, right? So that's all you need to know. Mwahaha.

Other note from this week: it is really, really hard to hide stuff from a companion that you are with for pretty much 24/7, unless you have to go on a split or exchange. It's even harder when you're not at all a good liar and she is a walking polygraph (note to mom: i can't for the life of my English remember what that word is for the lie detector test thing is so please edit that out and put the right word in thank you. Or else that is that right word in which case leave it) [editor's note: she got the word right, but I thought her note was cute so I left it in]. But despite all that and the commandment to not bear false witness, we succeeding in throwing a surprise party for Soeur D's birthday last night. The other sisters we share a house with did most of the planning, but it was my job to make sure we were there at the right time. She loved it!

Speaking of the right time, I'm really really late so I've got to go. So so sorry! Love you all!

Faaitoito!

Soeur Ladd

Soeur K returned to visit Soeur D and Soeur Ladd (thanks for sharing!)

Happy Conference Weekend!

General Conference is the best, it's basically like Christmas for us missionaries. more on that later though.

Tuesday started off strong, we'd decided to make a new goal that we'd leave everyone we talked to, ami de l'église, nouveau converti, peu importe, with at least scripture and a prayer. Et voilà, one of the first investigators we talked to on Tuesday said she didn't have time for a lesson right then, but we begged her for like 2 minutes to share a little scripture and after a few minutes she finally said yes. And we had an awesome hour long lesson with her! Soeur D shared a scripture she had read that morning, and it was exactly what she needed. Funny how that works, huh? The Church is true!

The other main news for this week is the son of our ward mission leader (DMP, or Papa). He's been kinda sickly and not himself for about a month, and they took him to the doctor several time, but the doctor said it wasn't a big deal, he'd get better soon, and gave them some medicine that didn't work. Finally last Tuesday they took him to the hospital and it turns out he has RAA, a heart problem. He and Maman (DMP's wife) flew to New Zealand last friday for surgery. They'll be gone for about three months so he can recover. We just got the news about an hour ago that the operation went well! But it will still be hard over the next few months as he recovers. And for us too, without Maman around! I'm not even kidding, Maman and Papa are our adopted parents here. So just send some prayers this way for Tauaroa! Conference was awesome, comme d'hab! It was also very early, 6am. But better early than days later for the translation. I especially liked a talk from Elder Hallstrom of the seventy, who talked about God as our loving Heavenly Father. That's actually the first principle of the first lesson we teach. And for a good reason! That knowledge can guide us in our life if we let it.

As usual, the members are going to kick me out soon because I've spent too long writing. Je vous aime! Continue to study General Conference! I know if you listen with a question in mind, you will receive the personal revelation that you've been looking for.

Avec amour,
Soeur Ladd

Today is transfers which means I've been here for one whole transfer, and les bleus will be coming in tonight which means I will no longer be the baby district! I know several of les bleus, those that will be coming from Provo. Transfer calls came in last Friday night - the big sporting event of the Tahiti Papeete mission. Apparently some sisters had a whole March Madness transfer bracket going or something. As for me and Soeur D, President had actually confirmed a few days before, via our Ward Mission Leader, that we will be staying together to finish my training. Phew! These next weeks will be awesome, another chance to make our companionship even better.

So last P-day after I finished my mail, we went shopping in Papeete with Soeur D's MTC companion, Soeur K, which was a lot of fun and I can now say that I have drunk out of a coconut (spoilers: it's not all that great). Afterward, our housemates had planned for a hike with one of the members in their ward. Soeur D and I said we'd probably stay home, since she was just barely getting over her cold and I was pretty tired too. But soeur ma said that don't worry, it'll only be half an hour, more of a walk than a hike really, and besides, the Elders want us all to be there. (Tahitian lesson for today: ma loosely translates to "and the people/thing with it" so like Soeur D ma means Soeur D and her companion, elder ma or soeur ma means "that group of elders/sisters over there." I hope that makes sense somewhat. It's really convenient and I wish we had it in English!) Anyway, we somewhat begrudgingly go along, calculating that we'd still have about an hour afterwards for a nap. QUELLE BLAGUE. We drive up the mountain and find our guide and his daughter, get to the cute little trail, I'm thinking, well this is nice and pretty, not too hard, just walking down a nice path in the mountains. A while passes and I start wondering when we're going to start hiking back up, because all we're doing is walking down, and our cars were still at the top. But we just keep walking, and the trail isn't so much of a trail at some points, but this papi seems to know where he's going. And then after what felt like at least an hour or more, he looks at us and says, "are you ready to go back up?" and proceeds to lead us straight up through the bushes on the forty five degree mountain side! Needless to say, we were late to our family home evening and we didn't get a nap. We did get some nice pictures though, so there's that.

Another funny moment of the week... actually no, i think it was two weeks ago but oh well. We were watching the movie about Joseph Smith with all our investigators, and there's one part where Joseph Smith is talking to Brigham Young. Soeur D leans over to me suddenly and says "Hey look it's our ancestors!" Soeur D is the great grand something niece of Joseph Smith and I'm the great something niece of Brigham Young, so it was a nice little moment that we shared.

I hope everyone had a happy Easter! President Bize asked us to read 2 Nephi 2:5-8 last week, so I add that to what I already said about Easter last week. I'm out of time but just know that I hope that you remember the true purpose of Easter - to celebrate the Atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This season we celebrate our very salvation! "Wherefore, how great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the earth!"

Avec amour,

Soeur Ladd

This week we've been packed; lots and lots of lessons. About a third of them were actually with inactives and recent converts, they seem to really need our help right now. Enduring to the end is tough! Especially because, some parts of our secteur, well... Let's just say it's hard to be a Saint in Babylon. But the Gospel and the Book of Mormon are powerful! In the strength of the Lord we can do all things.

Dad pointed out that I haven't said much about the food here. It's really good! Lots of rice and bread as promised, and poisson cru is as good as promised. I've only had poisson cru chinois as far as I know, it's like raw fish and carrots and cucumbers in some sort of yummy sauce. You know that cucumber and tomato salad that mom makes? It tastes kinda like that I think. I haven't yet tried poisson cru au lait coco (coconut milk) but apparently it's even better. I also have not tried fafaru, the infamous terrible smelling but supposedly good tasting fish dish, but I've been promised that we're eating it this week... tune in next Monday to see if I survived ;) I haven't eaten anything too crazy. Soeur D has eaten poison shark, before I was here, so that's cool. She's great friends with the local ambulance driver.

I don't think I said either how much Tahiti reminds me of my years in Morocco. That was one of my first impressions when I got here. There are obvious differences as far as culture and religion of course, but as far as French occupation making it's mark, and the presence of the French bread and chocolate I missed, it reminds me of Morocco in lots of little ways.

Well apparently it's Pâques already! I feel like it was just Christmas. Mom asked me an interesting question: If you had 30 minutes on Easter Sunday with a congregation of 7,000, what would you base your talk on?

As President Uchtdorf said, "On Easter Sunday we celebrate the most long-awaited and glorious event in the history of the world. It is the day that changed everything. On that day, my life changed. Your life changed. The destiny of all God’s children changed." Parau mau, tera. You remember those scriptures I shared a few weeks ago, in my discourse on hope? I think that's the message of Easter for me this year "And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise." Many people wonder why Mormons don't use crosses. The answer is, simply, His Atonement is about more than His death on the cross, it's about the fact that He lives again, He lives still, and He lives to "succor his people according to their infirmities."

If we don't feel like we're good enough, if we don't think we're worthy of His Atonement, then we don't truly understand what the Atonement is, much less have faith in it. We're inevitably gong to make mistakes, often the same ones over and over again, but the Lord cares much more about the direction we're headed than the time it takes to get there. (I think that's a quote from someone but I don't know who)

"He lives to silence all my fears.
He lives to wipe away my tears.
He lives to calm my troubled heart.
He lives all blessings to impart...
Oh sweet the joy this sentence gives:
I know that my Redeemer lives!"

Joyeuses Pâques!
Tuahine Ladd



#hallelujah