First Bapteme!!

Bonjour Tout le Monde! J’espère que vous alliez bien! Cette semaine était carrément top pour nous. I actually just realized I was writing in French, sorry, my bad. Anyways, How are all you doin?! This week was awesome for Elder Heno and I. This week I performed my first baptism. His name is Angelo and we've been teaching him for awhile now. The service was awesome except that I almost messed up with hand positioning and apparently I body slammed him into the water. I was so nervous that I must have not taken care to be gentle. Everyone "oohed" as he went in because there was a big splash. oops! I was told at least five times, "Haere maru elder", which means take it easy in Tahitian. But other than that, it was a very beautiful service. One of the hardest things about this mission is that most of the people we teach are already members. They're just inactive or excommunicated. There's a great cultural difference in Tahiti. Most Tahitians just don't see the need for marriage. As you can guess, this really makes it difficult for us to get people baptized.

We also had a really special experience this last Tuesday. We were trying to find an inactive member but we couldn't find his house. There were only two or three houses on his street and all of them had giant gates in front. We were about to leave when I looked in the window of one of the houses and I saw a picture of the Tahiti temple. We decided that that had to be his house. As we were walking up to the gate, there was a man that walked out of the house. We started talking to him and he told us his name was Tamatoa. It wasn't the member we were looking for but as we were talking we learned that his mom was a member in our ward and that he was excommunicated 10 years ago. We asked him if he had 20 minutes for us to do a little lesson with him. He said yes and he invited us in. We talked alot about forgiveness and the importance of the temple and the church. His wife is French and she doesn't have a religion and his son just turned eight. At the end, he gave the prayer. It was such an amazing prayer. He thanked God for having led us to him and he asked God to help him forgive because he's still bitter about being excommunicated. He then told us that we were the first missionaries he's let in his house since he was a member. He told us we were different and that's why he let us in. Elder Heno and I were so happy after the lesson! We are going to continue to teach him. 

I'm very grateful for the Spirit this week. Through His guidance, we were guided to someone who had been prepared to hear our message. 

I love you all!! Have a good week!!!  

Elder Porter

     Elder Heno, Angelo and me.

    Two of our investigators, Thierry and Dornella.