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
