Day 172 - Tahaa

Hello my fellow brothers and sisters.  How go you this fine day?

We are having a nice emailing/ pianoing session rn, and will then return to the house to clean, because there a millions of lizards (who eat all the spiders(who eat all the mosquitoes(who eat us))) that poop on everything. I have successfully ant prooffed our house tho, using a large can of OFF! spray.  Somehow it works hahaha.

Abandoned fashion this week haha.  It's too hard to try to look fancy when there's always dirt and sweat everywhere.  

I'll never get over how insanely gorgeous this island is.  Sometimes we're biking and I just have to pull over to take in the view.  I'm very blessed.

People are way too generous.  The Lord is just throwing us blessings out of the sky.  Free haircuts, free food all the time, one woman brought us two huge bags of groceries one morning for no reason. I LOVE PEOPLE.

The new goal is to make people cry during lessons.  We're getting pretty good.  (Meaning the spirit is really good) #gottastayhumble

Found an old guy jamming some jazz guitar the other day, so we had a nice chat about music and religion and such.  The mission is the greatest thing ever.

SO turns out you can get fat while biking like 2 hours a day.  Just eat insane amounts of calories! Haha we might die from how much food we eat honestly.  And the fact that people keep giving it to us free doesn't help.  We were hungry for lunch one day, and thought "should we go get lunch or just trust that someone's gonna give us food again?" and I'm like "nah let's just get lunch".  And so we ate.  And then after our next lesson, the investigator's like "Oh ya I made you food", and pulls out: a huge chocolate cake, a banana pie, 2 big bottles of soda, and a bowl of chips.  I almost died.  It was so hard to eat hahaha.  I think I need to stop praying for energy.  

Gave a talk in church yesterday! I think my French is good enough now for everyone to understand completely.  I hope.  T'was about faith.  Maybe I'lll talk about it next week.

Song of the day #172 that I can't listen to is "silhouettes" by colony house. Go give a listen and dance around for me.

Spiritual thought!

I've decided that the spirit is like magic.  Does anyone remember in the 6th harry potter, Harry drinks some fancy "luck" potion, and he immediatly has some crazy idea to visit Hagrid even though that has nothing to do with their quest.  But somehow visiting Hagrid put them in exactly the right place at the right time to keep moving on with the quest.  That's like the spirit and missionary work/life.  So many times we have little thoughts to do things that make no sense, but if it's the spirit we'd better listen.  Cause God's the only one who knows how it's all gonna play out in the end. And everytime we follow it, miracles happen. That's why it's so important to keep the commandments/ take the sacrament etc.  So we will always have the spirit to tell us what we need to do.  It's awesome to know that God's there for us to help us out in this crazy little thing called life.

atl

Elder Jenkins

Wowzers!! - Tahaa

This island is crazy!!  It rains like nobody's buisness!! Quite nuts.  We've gotten completely drenched quite a bit, but it's all good!! :D  Better than the hot sun for me.

We found a local bakery and they make pastery's and baguettes and cocobread which is amazing and my new obsession.  

We are going nuts with our diet cause we've decided we want to get huge.  Hahaha we've started eating as much as possible to try to counter how much biking we do. I ate three steaks yesterday among my other meals.  Oh dear. We'll see how that goes.

We eat everything in our house, and sometimes we experiment.  Tried some nice hot koolaid and hot limeaid the other day.  Not too bad!

We taught this woman a really powerful lesson, and turns out she's a masseus! She offered to give us free massages cause she felt the spirit so much hahaha!  But unfortunately we had to turn her down. After the mission for sure!!

The Gospel is amazing.  And very important.  It's awesome to teach people the answers to life's questions, like what's the purpose of life? Where will we go after we die? Cause IT"S IMPORTANT.  That determines everything we do here on earth!! Luckily we know the answers and we have the comfort of knowing we have a plan to be happy for ever and ever.  I LOVE THE GOSPEL

Have a great week, atl,

Elder Jenkins

HAAMENE TAHAA

It has been a WEEK!

I took two small planes and a boat ride just after emailing you all last week.  All the way to Tahaa.  My lovely new island.  

Tahaa is crazy.  So pretty.  We can always see the ocean.  There is a single road that goes around the entire shoreline, and it is so so fun to bike on.  

I feel like I'm living in a mix of Utah mountains and California.  It's amazing.  We live in a bay that reminds me so much of lake Jordanelle if ya'lls know where that is.  I just wanna go boating so bad!!

It rains here.  A lot haha like everynight is a hurricane it's so cool.  

We bike here.  A LOT.  Haha my companion and I live alone in a nice little house, although we don't have hot water (bummer).  And our sector is literally over HALF THE ILSAND.  And sometimes we just go seashore biking to get to our investigators houses, but sometimes we have to cut through the mountains, and that means HILLS.  So much for getting fat on the mission.  Sport tout les jours!

My new comp is awesome! Elder Barlow, from Washington state.  American, speaks english haha.  So weird to have normal english conversations.  And he's taller than me!! So we are two oddballs here in Tahiti, two tall white guys with shirts and ties.  It's awesome and everyone loves us. 

We eat at little roulottes a lot (food trucks) cause a member owns one and gives us free food. I love people.  

We were awoken a few days ago by a large pig walking into our house.  (we leave all the doors open cause no AC) And it took a while to make it leave hahaha.

There are millions of tupas.  Little crabs.  They're so odd. 

Super stoked, French is coming!  This week I've started realizing moments where I'm thinking or speaking in French without realizing it.  LE DON DES LANGUES EST VRAI.  

Slip a lot in mud cause so much rain, and one lady kept making comments about how I'm Michael Jackson now lol.  I don't know if me sliding in mud is comparable to the moonwalk, but I'll take it.

Second day here walked for 10 miles around a large part of our sector and got some nice 2nd degree sunburns.  

I'm so excited to do the work here.  We are pretty much starting from 0, we don't have anyone to teach yet really.  But we've made so much progress in one week.  This island has so much to offer.  It's rough, but so worth it.  Everyday is a new adventure and harder/ more fufilling than the previous.  

The church is so true.  It's insane how many blessings/ miracles we see.  

Jesus once explained, that we should first and foremost search the kingdom of God, and all our other needs will be placed before us.  (food, money, etc)  And that is unreasonably true here on the mission.  We don't even need to worry about our food cause we can always count on some random person giving us food every day. Everything just works out so nicely.  We are God's children.  He loves us and won't let us go hungry/ without our needs if we are doing His will.

SO make sure you are all keeping your priorities in line and first serving God! Cause He has the power to give you everything else you need!!

All the loves, 

Elder Jenkins

I'm leaving Tahiti. :(

Bad news and good news.

Bad news, I'm leaving Tahiti.

Good news, I'M HEADED TO THE ISLANDS BABY!!

Haha got the news a few days ago.  I'll be heading to an island called Tahaa, and it. sounds. amazing.  It's right next to Bora Bora, like you can see Bora from Tahaa.  So I'm expecting paradise lol.  Should be a nice switch up from Papeete, cause I was, in fact, hoping to see beaches and such during my two years as a Tahitian.  Oh, speaking of, they speak mostly Tahitian over there apparently, so that'll be great.  5 months and I'm finally starting to feel good with French, and now I gotta start all over again hahaha.  But I'll get it eventually.  My new companion is an American who is taller than I am, and I feel like we'll get along.  Haha I'm really excited.  This island is apparently really tough, both with the work, and with how much biking uphill we will do.  But I'm determined to get the Lord's work DONE!  If we get 100 baptisms with Bora Bora we will form a STAKE on Bora Bora!! SO COOL.

IT WAS SO HARD TO SAY GOODBYE TO EVERYONE.  Goodness it was like leaving home all over again!  Our amazing amis who have made such awesome progress in changing and improving their lives.  I love them all so much ahhhhhh. It was difficult to say goodbye.  Probs the hardest was an ami named Jean, who is just such a stud.  He's a crazy good boxer and just a quality guy.  When we said goodbye he offered to give me his ukulele haha!  I was tempted, but I love him too much and he does enjoy his ukulele.  The people here are amazing.  So stoked to meet more in Tahaa.

In other news, saw the literal biggest spider of my life the other day.  Unreasonable.

I'll send lots of pics soon, ya'll are the greatest.

All the loves,

Elder Jenkins

HAPPY NEW YEARS - Papeete

Not too much this week, and little time, but the mission is toujour top!!

We went to the temple this week!! so so cool.  I love the temple, so grateful for one here in Tahiti.

My companions bike broke, so we take turns dragging each other on  my bike that works haha.  We get a lot of strange looks. And good exercise!! :D

We made crepes this week and I eat them everyday.

My trainer is a brat lol. Cool experience, we were trying to figure out what to teach one of our amis, Jean, and we were praying/ thinking hard.  My companion was like, lets teach him about Noah's ark and Ether in the Book of Mormon to get him interested in the scriptures.  And I'm like what the heck are you talking about that doesn't make any sense.  After a while the thought popped into my head- temple sealing.  And I knew it was right.  And my companion was like Finally!!!! ANd I said what do you mean?  He explained that he was thinking the same thing the whole time, he just wanted to see if I would listen to the spirit, which was saying "temple sealing", and trying to test me by leading me off track.  Haha I wanted to punch him but it was pretty cool.  THE SPIRIT OF GOD LIKE A FIRE IS BURNING.

Atl

 Elder Jenkins