RAIN!!!!

Hey everyone! Wassup?! So I again have not seen the sun in a week! Its rained every day this week, a lot, everywhere! Its raining right now and it'll still be raining by the time you read this cause it never stops!!!! We are also under a cyclone warning, which is slightly scary after what just happened to Figi.  I'm not exaggerating but I'm pretty sure all the water of the Pacific ocean has been dropped on Tahiti, twice! But life is good! 

So the work has been picking up lately. We are still working with David et Heimiti! They came to church on sunday and they really liked it. The marriage and baptism is the 12th. We are looking to make it a big group baptism for the ward. We already have two other people who will get baptized the 12th.

We are working with the Marura'i family. The mom is inactive and her two kids are Maeva, her daughter, and Tuihani, her son. Maeva is 9 and Tuihani is 7. Maevas' parents said yes to her getting baptized on the 12th; she's really excited because she's been coming to church for a long time and now she's ready to be baptized.

We are also teaching Nohau. He's 12 years old. He's friends with a young man in the ward. He comes to church and the ward activities and he really likes it. We just have to get his grandmothers permission this week.

So, we are working with Tamatoa. He's a 19 year old university student. He's protestant and very active in the youth group. We've been trying to help him accept a baptismal date. He understands the importance of baptism but he doesn't feel the urgency of it yet. He feels it's something that can wait.  We had a good lesson last night and he's going to continue to pray and read. 

We are also teaching a papi named Morris. He's the father of Anoun, our recent convert. He only speaks Tahitian. Its usually only me that speaks during our lessons because Elder Barlow has only been out 6 months and is still learning Tahitian. I've been out 18 months and I'M still learning it to. Learning two completely different languages on your mission is pretty hard! Haha. Anyway,  He's progressing very slowly, but he is progressing. He's also very diligent in his studies of the Book of Mormon. 

On Friday, I had an interesting experience. It was like 4 in the afternoon and it was raining! Ha! We had scheduled a lesson at 5 with the Marura'i family that I mentioned above, but we weren't sure if they were going to be there. We also had to walk and it takes about 35 min walking up a mountain to get to their house. As we were walking I just wasn't feeling good and I wanted to turn around and go see someone else. We stopped and I just thought for a moment. I had an idea. Normally there's a sister in the ward who goes with us to teach this family. I decided I was going to call her and if she said she was going to come, then we would keep walking; If she said no, we would go back down and visit another family. She said she'd come so we kept walking. We saw the family at a store and confirmed the lesson and told them we'd meet them at their home. We got to the house and did the lesson with the whole family and we were able to fix their baptisms. I know its kind of small, but I was glad for this little experience because it shows that the Lord guides us in our decisions if we ask. 

I know the church is true and I know god loves us. 

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

Elder Cole Porter

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