oct. 10
hey everyone,
another week, another 5 pounds gained. just kidding. but seriously. i'm getting fat. it was kind of an exaggeration before, but the rolls are starting to muliply. this week was a particularly brutal food week because EVERYONE WANTS TO FEED US UNTIL WE CRY. seriously. the past four days, we've eaten 4 dinners. please kill me. guhh it feels so wrong but it tastes so right!! haha. there's this ice cream that they have here called taro ice cream--now taro is a type of root that is kiiiiind of like a potato but not really. how they came up with the idea to make ice cream out of that, i have no idea. (like "oh hey, here's this potato thing, that'd be a good dessert, right?" ooook...)anyway, it's the color of purple playdo. not sure how that happened either. but it is seriously the most delicious thing ever. i can't even explain what flavor it is. but IT'S SO GOOD. s. harline and i made a BTS cake (or as mom calls it "better than almost anything" cake) to take to one of our dinners, and it was quite the success. everyone was very impressed with our skills, especially since we didn't mention that we used a box mix for the cake. haaaWHOOPS. anyway, long story short: i eat a lot of food, and it is starting to show.
BUT. i'm going to learn how to tahitian dance this week! they're having a cultural night this friday with dancing and singing and story telling and duh, food, and we got invited to go to the practices, because there are investigators who are participating. so it'll be a nice double-whammy--supporting investigators, and learning how to shake it. UHN. i'm way excited though--the dances are so cool! i'm sure i'll look like a handicapped wild animal, but whatever. it'll be fun. and members love laughing at americans doing stupid stuff, so it'll be a great way for me to win affection by my stupidity. maybe if i get a video and figure out how to send it via mail you all can enjoy the show too. and then you can see how fat i am! haha.
this week was an AWESOME week. we taught like a bajillion lessons and got 5 new investigators who all seem really cool and ready. it's pretty amazing how you can see how peoples' paths have been prepared for them to receive the gospel. like this one family that we just started teaching--the dad is from france, and he met the missionaries when he was 24 but it didn't really stick, but now he's married and has three kids and is living in tahiti and they've all been coming to church for a month and he's like yeah i know this is true. i mean he comes to church in a shirt and tie and looks like he's been a member his whole life! and they prayed for the first time in our lesson without us even having to prod them along. it was so great. and their kids are super cute and funny--it makes it all the more awesome because they'll all get to go to the temple together someday. we just started teaching these two brothers too--18 and 15. the 15 year old is a little reluctant, but the 18 year old is totally solid. he really surprised me the other day in our lesson, because he was like "so how long do these lessons go for?" and was like "well there's 4 lessons that we have to teach you...what are you sick of us already?" and he laughed and was like "no i just wanted to know how long it was going to be before i could get baptized." WHAt?! OK! and he told us about how he prayed to know this was the true church and he got an answer and felt really good about it. hooray! he's a cool kid. and he trains roosters. so that's cool. haha.
so one of our recent converts is an old guy who only speaks tahitian, and he doesn't know how to read or write. so we're teaching him. it's really hard, but i love it. he's really eager to learn and it's really awesome to see his face light up when he gets a letter or a word. i made up little cards with the letters (luckily there's only like 13 letters in the tahitian alphabet and everything is phonetic) on them and a picture of something that starts with that letter to help him remember the sound. so we've been working a lot with that. it's slow-going for sure, but it's really cool. it feels good to know that we're really helping him. and since we started doing that, one of his daughters (not a member) has been sitting in on his lessons and she seems to like us a lot. i invited her to come to the cultural night, so hopefully she'll take up that invitation. our other investigators are doing pretty good. hahaha, we have one who's a 9 year old girl and she seriously has the memory of a goldfish. i'm not kidding. we'll tell her something, and 30 seconds later she can't remember what it was. for example, we were teaching about the spirit world and how the body stays in the earth and the spirit goes to paradise or prison, and every time we asked her "so where does the body go after you die?" and EVERY TIME she was like "...to paradise?" NO! GAH! seriously. at least 10 times. hahahaha. sometimes it makes me want to punch myself in the face. but she's really really cute and is starting to be less shy with us, so patience is just an attribute i'm going to have to work on. haha.
anyway, things are rolling along here. it's really fun to get new investigators, and it's definitely thanks to our ward mission leader who works hard. i'm learning more and more that ward members are really crucial to missionary work--without their references, we wouldn't have any of these new investigators. so this is my missionary pitch for this letter--help the missionaries! give them references! be brave! you don't need a tag to be a missionary. you will make the missionaries in your ward SO happy if you help them with references. it helps us to be more effective for sure. anyway, just remember that. other than that, things are good. transfers are coming up and we think that s. harline is probably going to get moved since she's done being trained and there are a few sisters going home in other areas that need to be replaced. it'll be weird to just be in a two-some like it should be normally. but s. taie is way cool--she is really funny and laughs so easily, so it brings a happy and optimistic spirit into our work. and she laughs at my jokes, which obviously makes me love her. we have private dance parties in the car driving from lesson to lesson, listening to church music. oh, did i ever tell you how contemporary church music makes me want to set myself on fire?! but i'm getting used to it.
ANYWAY. this is long, and harline is waiting for the computer. i love you all, and think you're great. OH BY THE WAY. written letters would be lovely, if you get the chance. i haven't gotten any since i've been here (a month, weee!), and i'm starting to feel neglected. boo hoo. write me.
Mission Mormone, B.P. 93
Papeete, Tahiti 98714
Polynesie Francaise
much love,
soeur hansen
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
october 3, 2011
oct. 3
hey everybody,
not too much time to write because we're sharing the computer between 3 people. but i do have some exciting news: today i became a real woman. i drove for the first time in tahiti, even into the city. and it was raining. i was cool as a cucumber, zooming in and out of lanes, just like a native baby. haha not really. but in any case, i made my debut driving in the mission, and i am alive to tell the tale.
anyway, how 'bout that general conference, eh? so great! definitely just what i needed. although i will admit, it made me a little homesick to see temple square and the conference center! just thinking about going to kneaders to get french toast before heading up to the session....sigh. it was weird not to be there! but oh well. i really loved president monson's talk, but all of them were good. i was disappointed not to be able to hear elder holland's talk, but i guess i'll just read it when it comes out in the liahona. oh yeah by the way. remember how conference is at 10am in the US? oooh right remember how tahiti is 4 hours behind america? guess who watched conference at 6 in the morning? THIS GIRL. and believe it or not, this was the first conference where i didn't fall asleep in any of the sessions. i've got special missionary powers, man. but no, it was way good. and i was so excited to hear about the tabernacle being rebuilt into a temple! that's so awesome.
hmmm what else. oh, we got a new trainer. her name is soeur taie. she's way cool, and has definitely brought a little more life into the house and our companionship. this past week was pretty hard in the beginning--it's been kind of slow going with our investigators who weren't making any progress. but we just got a new ward mission leader in one of our wards that we're over and he is WAY motivated and enthusiastic about missionary work. we had a meeting with him and he was like "yeah we're in the process of preparing like 14 people for you to teach." whoa! and the other week doing contacting we found two sisters, 16 and 18 interested in receiving the lessons and we've met with them twice so far. they are really awesome! they actually participate in the lessons and share their thoughts and are excited about the message--it's a nice change of pace, haha. most of our lessons are in french, except for a few in tahitian. mostly all the old people prefer to speak tahitian so luckily s. taie speaks it and helps us, ahah. but i'm getting a little better at understanding and speaking. so little by little, as with all things. anyway, so things are picking up here, which is nice. the three wards we're over are puurai, pamatai, and oremu. they're all good wards and the members feed us very well. thank goodness for elastic waists. this week was pretty awkward with the ward members because everyone kept asking us where s. terooatea (my old trainer) went and we were like "errr...well...she's not with us anymore?" and they're like "oh did she get transferred?" and we're like "uhh...yeah but...permanently transferred...to her home." whoops! seriously. had that conversation like fifty million times. still just as awkward every time. there has been quite a bit of drama surrounding that, which is weird and makes me feel like i'm in a soap opera or something. oh well, i guess it keeps life interesting, especially when you can't watch tv. but i really like the new trainer. soeur harline has been like deathly ill this week, which sucks. she's kind of a teeny bit of a whiner, so being sick does not help that at all. i love her though.
anyway, i don't really have too much to report. things are pretty constant here (except for the whole my trainer getting sent home thing...whoops!)--still trying to work hard, still getting fat. it's funny, because i get more sleep than i've ever gotten in my life (8 hours a night! who does that?? infants??), and yet i'm still more tired than i've ever been. i guess that just means we're working, haha. we have two baptisms coming up next week--the couple that got married that i sent the pictures of. that should be exciting, my first ones since i've been here. ummmm i really can't think of anything else, hopefully next week's email will be a little more exciting and witty. sorry! but i love you, and miss you!
love,
soeur hansen
hey everybody,
not too much time to write because we're sharing the computer between 3 people. but i do have some exciting news: today i became a real woman. i drove for the first time in tahiti, even into the city. and it was raining. i was cool as a cucumber, zooming in and out of lanes, just like a native baby. haha not really. but in any case, i made my debut driving in the mission, and i am alive to tell the tale.
anyway, how 'bout that general conference, eh? so great! definitely just what i needed. although i will admit, it made me a little homesick to see temple square and the conference center! just thinking about going to kneaders to get french toast before heading up to the session....sigh. it was weird not to be there! but oh well. i really loved president monson's talk, but all of them were good. i was disappointed not to be able to hear elder holland's talk, but i guess i'll just read it when it comes out in the liahona. oh yeah by the way. remember how conference is at 10am in the US? oooh right remember how tahiti is 4 hours behind america? guess who watched conference at 6 in the morning? THIS GIRL. and believe it or not, this was the first conference where i didn't fall asleep in any of the sessions. i've got special missionary powers, man. but no, it was way good. and i was so excited to hear about the tabernacle being rebuilt into a temple! that's so awesome.
hmmm what else. oh, we got a new trainer. her name is soeur taie. she's way cool, and has definitely brought a little more life into the house and our companionship. this past week was pretty hard in the beginning--it's been kind of slow going with our investigators who weren't making any progress. but we just got a new ward mission leader in one of our wards that we're over and he is WAY motivated and enthusiastic about missionary work. we had a meeting with him and he was like "yeah we're in the process of preparing like 14 people for you to teach." whoa! and the other week doing contacting we found two sisters, 16 and 18 interested in receiving the lessons and we've met with them twice so far. they are really awesome! they actually participate in the lessons and share their thoughts and are excited about the message--it's a nice change of pace, haha. most of our lessons are in french, except for a few in tahitian. mostly all the old people prefer to speak tahitian so luckily s. taie speaks it and helps us, ahah. but i'm getting a little better at understanding and speaking. so little by little, as with all things. anyway, so things are picking up here, which is nice. the three wards we're over are puurai, pamatai, and oremu. they're all good wards and the members feed us very well. thank goodness for elastic waists. this week was pretty awkward with the ward members because everyone kept asking us where s. terooatea (my old trainer) went and we were like "errr...well...she's not with us anymore?" and they're like "oh did she get transferred?" and we're like "uhh...yeah but...permanently transferred...to her home." whoops! seriously. had that conversation like fifty million times. still just as awkward every time. there has been quite a bit of drama surrounding that, which is weird and makes me feel like i'm in a soap opera or something. oh well, i guess it keeps life interesting, especially when you can't watch tv. but i really like the new trainer. soeur harline has been like deathly ill this week, which sucks. she's kind of a teeny bit of a whiner, so being sick does not help that at all. i love her though.
anyway, i don't really have too much to report. things are pretty constant here (except for the whole my trainer getting sent home thing...whoops!)--still trying to work hard, still getting fat. it's funny, because i get more sleep than i've ever gotten in my life (8 hours a night! who does that?? infants??), and yet i'm still more tired than i've ever been. i guess that just means we're working, haha. we have two baptisms coming up next week--the couple that got married that i sent the pictures of. that should be exciting, my first ones since i've been here. ummmm i really can't think of anything else, hopefully next week's email will be a little more exciting and witty. sorry! but i love you, and miss you!
love,
soeur hansen
september 26, 2011
oh heeeey everyone,
another pday has arrived and i am still living, no longer barfing. i'm even starting to toughen up so i don't get as carsick anymore! although i have to sit in the front every time, and i don't think i've gained enough trust to be given the keys to drive yet (even after crawling up through the bathroom window to open the door!). maybe this week i'll be inaugurated into the wonderful world of tahitian driving. anyway, this was an interesting week. there were a lot of things that seemed to keep coming up that messed up our plans every day, so we didn't get to teach as many people as we wanted to, appointments kept falling through, just random stuff like that. it was pretty frustrating a lot of the time because we'd come home and be like "gaah what did we even do today??" but there were some really awesome things that happened this week. apparently a few weeks ago (before i got here), my companions were at the gas station filling up, and this guy was like "oh you're the missionaries? what do i have to do to come back to church?" (cue the drooling and panting). so they set up an appointment with him to come visit. anyway, when we went to do our tracting last week (i might have mentioned this already in my letter last week), we met some girls and one of them was like "oh yeah i'm already meeting with you with my husband next week" so we were like whoa! anyway. we went to see both of them this week, and it was honestly just incredible. it was such a testimony to how people are really being prepared to hear the message of the gospel. we started talking about the plan of salvation, and how it is a plan of happiness, and the woman just like started crying and telling us about how that's exactly what she's looking for. the spirit was really strong--it was awesome. and then we started talking about the temple and eternal families and they were both like "yeah we totally want to do that!" gah! it was so great! all three of us walked away and we were just like giddy. it was a really refreshing lesson to have, because with a lot of the people that we're teaching right now, there's just...no progression, and it gets pretty discouraging sometimes. although i did have a pretty humbling experience this past week--i was kind of griping mentally (i know, i'm a terrible person) about going to teach this one investigator, because we see her every day and have been seeing her every day for a long time even before i got here, and there's no progression. anyway, so i was kind of just thinking to myself, "guhh what's the point she doesn't care about what we're trying to teach her blah blah blah i'm a bad missionary person blah blah." but i prepared my lesson and tried my best to make it apply to her. anyway, so we're teaching her, and at the end of the lesson, she totally opens up and starts telling us about how much our visits mean to her and how much they're helping her and started telling us about some of the trials that she has in her life right now and how much our lessons and our committments have been helping her to get through them and i was just floored. i felt so ashamed for thinking that our visits were pointless. it was a very necessary reminder to me that i need to practice a little better what i'm preaching about perservering, patience, and charity. so that has helped me shift my perspective a little bit since then. admittedly, it is still hard to go to the same peoples' houses every day, see the same problems, and not see anything change despite their promises to do so. but that's life, right? all we can do is continue to try and support them and help them understand the importance of the gospel and how it can help them.
anyway, some funny stuff happened this week. our investigators are really cool, and for the most part our lessons are simple and they ask questions that we can answer with confidence. but this past week, one of our investigators, totally out of nowhere (we had been talking about nephi making two sets of plates in 1 nephi), he was like "why do i have to get married if jesus didn't get married? why didn't jesus get married?" and was just like EXCUSE ME WHILE I GO PUNCH MYSELF IN THE FACE REALLY FAST, I'LL BE RIGHT BACK. oh my gosh. i just about died. LUCKILY, during my moment of total panic, my companion s. terooatea offered a good answer (although in retrospect i'm pretty sure it wasn't doctrinally sound, but whatever, milk before meat right?) and satisfied the question. we all got back into the car afterwards and were like WHAT?!! hahaha. it was so great. we're still teaching our two people that only speak tahitian (they recently got baptized so we're just doing the follow-up lessons), which, being translated, means i sit there and smile and nod while s. terooatea teaches and then i bear my testimony in tahitian. although i have tried to do my part by preparing lessons for them, which goes over just fine while i do it and then s. terooatea reteaches the lesson after me because the people don't understand me. hahahaha. anyway, it's funny but at the same time makes me want to set myself on fire. and earlier this week i was just like WHATEVER I SPEAK FRENCH I DON'T NEED TO LEARN TAHITIAN GET OUT OF MY LIFE! but then God took out his spiritual bat and smacked me around a little bit and i realized that i was called to preach the gospel in the tahitian language. that doesn't mean that poof! i'm magically going to be fluent. but that does mean that there is someone out there that needs to hear this message from me, in tahitian. so then i was like OK FINE I'LL KEEP TRYING. it's getting better, little by little. i'm starting to understand some words that people say, but mostly it still just sounds like aaoaoooiiieeeuooowahheoooojalkjads! and i'm like yeah ok brain just turned off. it's so funny though because the people here keep telling me "oh yeah tahitian is easy, it's just like english!" and i'm like "i'm sorry, have you ever heard the english language before??" they're just so adorable sometimes, these tahitians.
other notable things of the week: i played with some puppies, ate mcdonalds for the first time here, saw a mouse in my house, got some more mosquito bites (seriously. kill me now.), went to a wedding for two of our investigators--oh yeah did i mention that NO ONE here is married? no one. unless they're members. everyone else just lives together and calls the other person their husband or wife but they're just fake married as in no marriage certificate. so i think i will be going to many marriages during my mission. at least i hope so. and i ate a lot of food this week. i think people are really surprised by the quantity of food my body can hold. at one of the investigator's houses where we were eating, they were all like whoa you can eat so much more than the other american sisters! and i'm like yeah, white girl knows how to throw it down. and that's when i tried to explain to them that i am a fat person in a skinny person's body. but i have the mild impression that by the end of my mission, i will probably be a fat person in a fat person's body. but the food is soooooo gooooooooooood. mom, you would be totally freaked out by it though. lots of raw fish. like the two most popular dishes here are all raw fish. but it's sooooo good and i want to eat it all daaaaaaaaaay.
ok ok ok. i do have one fairly big thing to report. but i wanted to save it for the end because it makes me sad. the past two days have been particularly weird because my trainer got sent home?? actually i shouldn't put that in a question mark, because it's actually a statement. on saturday night s. terooatea was crying up a storm and me and s. harline (other american) were like "aah what's wrong?!!" but tahitians don't talk about feelings ever (seriosuly, i've never felt so sensitive in my life) so she wouldn't tell us but the next morning she was like "k we're going to president's house" and we were like ooooooook....and then we went and they talked and president came out and was like "oh hey you two go do whatever you're supposed to do today and i'll let you know what's happening later." and was like ooooook....? so then s. harline and i just get in the car and we look at each other and kind of start hysterically laughing, but that kind of laughing where you have to laugh to stop yourself from hyperventilating and going into the fetal position. but really, in one sense it was kind of funny. two american greenies trying to hold down the fort in three different wards! ha! seriously. ridiculous. but, we definitely were blessed yesterday to be able to have made it through the whole day without any disaster or mishap. it was hard through because s. harline is not confident at all in her french and doesn't really take the reigns very well, so i was like welp ok let's do this. but in the end, it was ok. it was good for me i think to have to step up to the plate to get things done. trial by fire i guess. anyway, s. terooatea came back and packed up her stuff and told us she was going home. it was really sad. i have no idea what happened, all i know is that she was a great example for me and i have only good things to say about the 2 weeks i spent with her. i admire her a lot for her courage. now s. harline and i are by ourselves, and we still have no idea what's going on. hopefully we'll be clued in on that soon...in the meantime, at least it's pday! we're going to carrefour later, which is like the french walmart. actually, it's this magical and evil place that you go to with every intention of buying good groceries but end up coming out with a 12 pack of coke, chocolate, and no self-respect. hopefully i'll be able to be more of a grown up this week.
anyway, this is sooooooooooo loooooooooong. but yeah. i'm doing well, and hope everything is going well back home! you are in my thoughts and prayers. love!
love,
soeur hansen
p.s. pictures are as follows:
--at the birthday party of one of our investigator's daughters
--at our investigators' wedding
--puppies!
--i got a legit coconut from one of my investigators
--view from my apartment, that's moorea
another pday has arrived and i am still living, no longer barfing. i'm even starting to toughen up so i don't get as carsick anymore! although i have to sit in the front every time, and i don't think i've gained enough trust to be given the keys to drive yet (even after crawling up through the bathroom window to open the door!). maybe this week i'll be inaugurated into the wonderful world of tahitian driving. anyway, this was an interesting week. there were a lot of things that seemed to keep coming up that messed up our plans every day, so we didn't get to teach as many people as we wanted to, appointments kept falling through, just random stuff like that. it was pretty frustrating a lot of the time because we'd come home and be like "gaah what did we even do today??" but there were some really awesome things that happened this week. apparently a few weeks ago (before i got here), my companions were at the gas station filling up, and this guy was like "oh you're the missionaries? what do i have to do to come back to church?" (cue the drooling and panting). so they set up an appointment with him to come visit. anyway, when we went to do our tracting last week (i might have mentioned this already in my letter last week), we met some girls and one of them was like "oh yeah i'm already meeting with you with my husband next week" so we were like whoa! anyway. we went to see both of them this week, and it was honestly just incredible. it was such a testimony to how people are really being prepared to hear the message of the gospel. we started talking about the plan of salvation, and how it is a plan of happiness, and the woman just like started crying and telling us about how that's exactly what she's looking for. the spirit was really strong--it was awesome. and then we started talking about the temple and eternal families and they were both like "yeah we totally want to do that!" gah! it was so great! all three of us walked away and we were just like giddy. it was a really refreshing lesson to have, because with a lot of the people that we're teaching right now, there's just...no progression, and it gets pretty discouraging sometimes. although i did have a pretty humbling experience this past week--i was kind of griping mentally (i know, i'm a terrible person) about going to teach this one investigator, because we see her every day and have been seeing her every day for a long time even before i got here, and there's no progression. anyway, so i was kind of just thinking to myself, "guhh what's the point she doesn't care about what we're trying to teach her blah blah blah i'm a bad missionary person blah blah." but i prepared my lesson and tried my best to make it apply to her. anyway, so we're teaching her, and at the end of the lesson, she totally opens up and starts telling us about how much our visits mean to her and how much they're helping her and started telling us about some of the trials that she has in her life right now and how much our lessons and our committments have been helping her to get through them and i was just floored. i felt so ashamed for thinking that our visits were pointless. it was a very necessary reminder to me that i need to practice a little better what i'm preaching about perservering, patience, and charity. so that has helped me shift my perspective a little bit since then. admittedly, it is still hard to go to the same peoples' houses every day, see the same problems, and not see anything change despite their promises to do so. but that's life, right? all we can do is continue to try and support them and help them understand the importance of the gospel and how it can help them.
anyway, some funny stuff happened this week. our investigators are really cool, and for the most part our lessons are simple and they ask questions that we can answer with confidence. but this past week, one of our investigators, totally out of nowhere (we had been talking about nephi making two sets of plates in 1 nephi), he was like "why do i have to get married if jesus didn't get married? why didn't jesus get married?" and was just like EXCUSE ME WHILE I GO PUNCH MYSELF IN THE FACE REALLY FAST, I'LL BE RIGHT BACK. oh my gosh. i just about died. LUCKILY, during my moment of total panic, my companion s. terooatea offered a good answer (although in retrospect i'm pretty sure it wasn't doctrinally sound, but whatever, milk before meat right?) and satisfied the question. we all got back into the car afterwards and were like WHAT?!! hahaha. it was so great. we're still teaching our two people that only speak tahitian (they recently got baptized so we're just doing the follow-up lessons), which, being translated, means i sit there and smile and nod while s. terooatea teaches and then i bear my testimony in tahitian. although i have tried to do my part by preparing lessons for them, which goes over just fine while i do it and then s. terooatea reteaches the lesson after me because the people don't understand me. hahahaha. anyway, it's funny but at the same time makes me want to set myself on fire. and earlier this week i was just like WHATEVER I SPEAK FRENCH I DON'T NEED TO LEARN TAHITIAN GET OUT OF MY LIFE! but then God took out his spiritual bat and smacked me around a little bit and i realized that i was called to preach the gospel in the tahitian language. that doesn't mean that poof! i'm magically going to be fluent. but that does mean that there is someone out there that needs to hear this message from me, in tahitian. so then i was like OK FINE I'LL KEEP TRYING. it's getting better, little by little. i'm starting to understand some words that people say, but mostly it still just sounds like aaoaoooiiieeeuooowahheoooojalkjads! and i'm like yeah ok brain just turned off. it's so funny though because the people here keep telling me "oh yeah tahitian is easy, it's just like english!" and i'm like "i'm sorry, have you ever heard the english language before??" they're just so adorable sometimes, these tahitians.
other notable things of the week: i played with some puppies, ate mcdonalds for the first time here, saw a mouse in my house, got some more mosquito bites (seriously. kill me now.), went to a wedding for two of our investigators--oh yeah did i mention that NO ONE here is married? no one. unless they're members. everyone else just lives together and calls the other person their husband or wife but they're just fake married as in no marriage certificate. so i think i will be going to many marriages during my mission. at least i hope so. and i ate a lot of food this week. i think people are really surprised by the quantity of food my body can hold. at one of the investigator's houses where we were eating, they were all like whoa you can eat so much more than the other american sisters! and i'm like yeah, white girl knows how to throw it down. and that's when i tried to explain to them that i am a fat person in a skinny person's body. but i have the mild impression that by the end of my mission, i will probably be a fat person in a fat person's body. but the food is soooooo gooooooooooood. mom, you would be totally freaked out by it though. lots of raw fish. like the two most popular dishes here are all raw fish. but it's sooooo good and i want to eat it all daaaaaaaaaay.
ok ok ok. i do have one fairly big thing to report. but i wanted to save it for the end because it makes me sad. the past two days have been particularly weird because my trainer got sent home?? actually i shouldn't put that in a question mark, because it's actually a statement. on saturday night s. terooatea was crying up a storm and me and s. harline (other american) were like "aah what's wrong?!!" but tahitians don't talk about feelings ever (seriosuly, i've never felt so sensitive in my life) so she wouldn't tell us but the next morning she was like "k we're going to president's house" and we were like ooooooook....and then we went and they talked and president came out and was like "oh hey you two go do whatever you're supposed to do today and i'll let you know what's happening later." and was like ooooook....? so then s. harline and i just get in the car and we look at each other and kind of start hysterically laughing, but that kind of laughing where you have to laugh to stop yourself from hyperventilating and going into the fetal position. but really, in one sense it was kind of funny. two american greenies trying to hold down the fort in three different wards! ha! seriously. ridiculous. but, we definitely were blessed yesterday to be able to have made it through the whole day without any disaster or mishap. it was hard through because s. harline is not confident at all in her french and doesn't really take the reigns very well, so i was like welp ok let's do this. but in the end, it was ok. it was good for me i think to have to step up to the plate to get things done. trial by fire i guess. anyway, s. terooatea came back and packed up her stuff and told us she was going home. it was really sad. i have no idea what happened, all i know is that she was a great example for me and i have only good things to say about the 2 weeks i spent with her. i admire her a lot for her courage. now s. harline and i are by ourselves, and we still have no idea what's going on. hopefully we'll be clued in on that soon...in the meantime, at least it's pday! we're going to carrefour later, which is like the french walmart. actually, it's this magical and evil place that you go to with every intention of buying good groceries but end up coming out with a 12 pack of coke, chocolate, and no self-respect. hopefully i'll be able to be more of a grown up this week.
anyway, this is sooooooooooo loooooooooong. but yeah. i'm doing well, and hope everything is going well back home! you are in my thoughts and prayers. love!
love,
soeur hansen
p.s. pictures are as follows:
--at the birthday party of one of our investigator's daughters
--at our investigators' wedding
--puppies!
--i got a legit coconut from one of my investigators
--view from my apartment, that's moorea
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