Merry Christmas from Bora Bora

Hey guys,

The Skype call was really nice. I really enjoyed the chat. It honestly seems like you guys have a changed a lot in a good direction. It was also so cool for me to see that you guys are taking care of the missionaries in the ward. 

I fear that I dont have a lot to talk about. I kinda got it all out yesterday on the Skype call. I got to show some of the members some pictures of the snow behind the house, they thought that was pretty cool.

I haven’t decided yet if I want keep the islander accent or if, after my mission I want to go back to speaking the French way. I feel like I might just change the way I speak depending on who I talk to. Oh and just a heads up... I made a couple mistakes in my Tahitian in my testimony. Just little mistakes. But what ever. 

Well. I love you guys. it was super nice to talk to you guys. It recharged my batteries a little bit. Thank the Young Men and Young women for the very cool package. We opened it at our multi-island Christmas party and the missionaries all looked up the scripture clues and tried to guess what was in the packages. The only problem is that the number references in the French Bible are slightly different in some places to the King James Bible… which resulting in some very funny moments. Thanks for everything and an awesome tie from the Young Men.

Well. I love you guys! keep on being the best family ever. 

--

Elder Goodwin

Hello from Bora Bora... Christmas morning

My testimony

Owens, Blater and I walked several kilometers on Ra'iatea to go teach a bunch of lessons. Super fun time.

Tahitian dance crown thingy with custom designed Christmas tie from the Calgary 2nd Ward Young Men...  classic.

Christmas Eve Faatamaaraa... Elder Frazer front left

Whew.... we made it to Ra'iatea

Well we managed to get a boat to take us to Ra'iatea so I am right now on freaking Ra’iatea! The boat ride was a lot better because the boat was way bigger and faster. The set up is a lot like the last time... sleeping in the chapel with the elders of Huahine. 

We don’t really have a lot of time to do emails today, but it kinda works out because I need to leave a little bit of material for the Skype call on Christmas day.

8 o’clock (Tahiti time) works for me. I may try and be on around 7:30 so anyways we will see each other on Sunday! wooohoooooooooooo.

Well I gotta roll, we will have a bunch of news about 'ma lyfe' during the Skype call.

I’ve got about 20 minutes then we have to go plan a skit for the Christmas Party.

Stay tuned!

Elder Goodwin

Oh and Merry Christmas is something like "Ia maita'i teie nei noela.” Keep in mind the L is pronounced like an R. there are no L's in Tahitian.

I still love ya!

Elders Fraser and Goodwin

Ring ring, hey is your Fa'atoetoera'a-ma'a running?

... better go catch it then!

Hey Guys! 

Seems we don’t have a boat to take us to Ra’iatea for a joint missionary party. Normally the party is on the 19th. but we can’t go. So we will probably just sit in a small room together and sing Christmas carols while crying over 6 packets of Ritz Crackers. Joking. But honestly we will probably do very little for Christmas now... although our Ward is doing their Ward Christmas party at the St-regis Motu. That is gonna be AWESOME! 

Sooooooooo, this week was pretty dang rough, with Christmas just around the corner, the partying will be going through the roof. If it is anything like last Christmas, these next couple weeks will be full of parties and loud music. Honestly, this week I felt like we were really busy but kind of unproductive. We just ran around all week. We did hours of contacting to fill the void of cancelled lessons, but still ended up giving president a truly crappy report this week. 

Well, there really isn’t much news this week, and there really aren’t any photos to send over. But this next week we will be doing a lot of Christmas party stuff, so there should be a good old bunch of photos for you guys to drool over. 

Tahitian word of the day is . Fa'atoetoera'a-ma'a which means fridge.

Fa'a when added to the beginning of a word makes it a verb. Toetoe means cold. So Fa'atoetoe means "make cold" or " to cool". Ra’a, when added to the end of a word makes it a noun. So Fa'atoetoera'a means "the make cold thing" or "the make cold object" and ma'a means food. So the word literally means "the make food cold thing"

I love you guys. have a good week!

Elder Goodwin

Roromatai (on Raiatea) Missionary Conference with  Elder Cardon of the Pacific Area Presidency.

New comp... and more work to do here in Bora Bora

Dear family and friends,

We are trying to get a trip worked out so that we can go to Ra'iatea for a Christmas party, we are still working that out good ol Pres Bize. It would be really nice to get out and stretch the sea legs again. 

The Weather report here in Bora was actually pretty bad this week. It rained a whole bunch. It kinda sucked because most of the lessons we do are outside---it is rare that we are in peoples' houses. So lots of lessons get cancelled when it is raining. 

It is also more difficult to find teaching appointments when the population is spread out. In Taapuna my most densely populated area (300 plus people on a 500 meter strip of road) it is very easy to find lessons. But here I find we do a lot more running around than actually teaching. But we do find about 16 plus lessons a week… even with the rain. And yes I think over all, here is more rural that Mataie'a. 

Yes there are a lot of tourists here compared to other islands, but there are a lot of locals and most of them speak very good Tahitian. More than Tahiti I would say. But also in Tahiti one quartier changes from the next when it comes to the amount of Tahitian spoken. This is probably the area I’ve served in with the most Tahitian. But at the same time it is also my area with the most English. 

SOoooooooo my companion got a transfer wall on Friday. He is going to Papeno'o on the northern part of Tahiti. I really like serving with him, he is a young missionary but he picks things up super quick, teaches really well and has a good sense of humour. All in all one of my favorite companions. We did a lot of work together and had a lot of fun doing it. 

Now my new comp is Elder Frazer from Vanuatu. He has been on his mission for about 1 year and his native language is the wonderful Bishlama, a pigeon of English.I think I’ve spoken a little bit about this language, it is basically sounds like a young person heard English and then wrote it down. So now I will be doing a section of my email called VANUATU TIME, where I will tell you stories maybe even a little insight into the wonderful language of Bishlama. Be sure in your free time to look up the "Buk Blong Momon." 

📣VANUATU TIME📣

Olsem wanem=how are you.

Mi likem yu=i love you.

ae blong yu i naes=you have beautiful eyes. 

(pronounced=eye blong you ee nice)

Thats what's up in my world. Just keepin it real on the flip side home slices.  

mi likem yu!

Elder Goodwin

p.s. Talking about the weather at home… I am so scared for the cold when I get home, I may just die the moment I step out of the airport. 

The last walk of an awesome companionship!

Kinda corny

Taking Elder Larson to the Airport for his flight to Tahiti

Yay... my new companion, Elder Frazer

Little miracles...

Hey guys!

I actually have the Christmas package in my room right now. I picked it up off the HavaikiNui last Wednesday. Mail is actually pretty quick to get here. 

There is a transfer on the 5th of December, I will most likely not move (but you never know) and there is about a 50/50 chance that my companion will move. It is pretty crazy that there has already been one transfer that flew by during my time on this tiny little rock. For Christmas we might meet up with the missionaries of RaroMata'i in Ra'iatea. That would be really fun. I think the boat won’t be as bad a second time. Next time I’m going in P-day clothes for the trip instead of dress clothing. 

I got a couple cool pictures from Claire this week. I’ve asked her to send me a couple pictures every once and a while. It’s cool for me to see how much people change--and how much some people seem to not change at all.    

Oh and talking about airplane stuff. Mom, do you know WestJet is friends with AirTahiti, not TahitiNui. Air Tahiti is the company that goes from Tahiti out to the other French Polynesian islands, but does go international (except the Cook Islands). 

Miracle of the week:

We needed to go to a Member ladies house to go give her a heads up for her Faatamaaraa. She lives just a couple houses over, so we walked over there at about 7 o’clock. She was out on here porch talking with a lady that we have never met and her kids were just chilling beside her. We got up close and we realized that she was completely in tears, she seemed to be going through a really, really tough time. She came up and started kind of yelling at us telling us that she doesn’t believe in the Lord any more. We talked to her for a bit and ended up offering her a priesthood blessing. We came up and invited the non-member lady to come and watch. We explained to her briefly what we were going to do and what the Priesthood blessing is. We then did the blessing and after, the member lady was all smiling and saying sorry for what she said. She changed 100% from 5 minutes before. We then started chatting and laughing. 

All the while the non-member lady was looking at us with awe. We then talked to her a bit more and realized that we had contacted her daughter two days before and fixed a lesson with her. This lady asked if after her daughters lesson the next day, if she could get a blessing. The next day we had a great first lesson with her daughter and the lady arrived with her husband. They both wanted blessings. The lady more specifically needed a blessing because she had an accident and couldn't sleep because of back pain. We did the blessings and the lady and her husband cried the whole time. 

On Sunday we did the first lesson with the lady and her husband and she shared that she doesn't feel her back pain as she did before... and she has been sleeping really well since we did the blessing. Our lesson was really powerful with them. They already have a testimony of the power of the priesthood. They have a lot of potential and they were found in a very miraculous way. 

This week was great. we got tons of work done and have been seeing tiny little miracles left, right and center. 

Oh and you guys should go and watch the Moana movie. It has a bunch of Tahitian stuff in it. A lot of the names in the movie are Tahitian, Hawaiian, Fijian and other polynesian cultural mythology. Moana itself means ‘ocean' or ‘deep' in Tahitian. 

Thats my email.

Luv you guys!

Elder Goodwin

The resort you are looking at is the intercontinental Moana beach resort.

Typical day in the mission field!

...for a "three hour tour, a three hour tour!"

Hello fam jam!

This week proved to be the most tiring of my mission, but it was very enriching.

Tuesday morning we met up with a rather grumpy old man and hopped on his boat and set off for Ra'iatea. His boat is a reasonable size, but still pretty small when it comes to the open ocean. We all got kinda worried when we realized that some people can actually jog faster than this boat can move through the water. It was clear pretty early in the trip that this was gonna be a fun 3 and a half hours. The open ocean was pretty calm on the way there, but what you have to realize is that we were going head on with the waves going to Ra'iatea, so even though it wasn’t storming, it felt like an airplane flying through heavy turbulence, while a one armed pilot was trying to change a baby's diaper. 

After 3 hours we, in fact, arrived in at Uturoa in Ra'iatea. We were all soaking wet because of the salt spray. I could feel my skin stinging because of the salt. We then grabbed all our stuff and walked through downtown Uturoa looking like homeless people... until we arrived at our home... the Uturoa chapel. 

We showered there and hung up all our stuff to dry while we waited to join the Ward there for their Reactivation activity. The next day we had our Missionary Conference with all the missionaries of Raromata'i, (the islands of Ra'iatea, Huahine, Tahaa and Bora Bora). Elder Craig E. Cardon (who is currently serving as a member of the Pacific Area Presidency) was present with his lovely wife. They did a conference that lasted pretty much all day. It was a great experience. They taught us a lot of things we can do with our investigators to help them progress, and we have been applying the things he taught us all week. I honestly learned so much. it was one of the more spiritual meetings I’ve been present in. The good ol Pres Bize (Mission President) and Sister Bize were there as per usual. they are really great.

Overall a great Conference. 

The Return trip was a bit scary at first because it was very windy and very stormy. The waves were massive sometimes, but thankfully we were going with the waves. The Grumpy old man was taking advantage of the waves by surfing the boat on the waves to gain considerable speed. The most scary thing was that sometimes the waves started to turn to boat on its side---we were so close to swimming back to Bora at least 5 times. My comp didn’t take the return trip very well. He may have fed the fish a little bit. 

After getting home, all 6 of us were so tired. The rest of the week was super hard, so in order to recover this P-day we are taking things slowly. 

love you,   

-- 

Elder Goodwin

The unsuspecting passengers still fresh and excited.

Bora Bora, outside the reef.

Elder Owens (a former companion) keeping it real.

Searing heat, salt spray and sea sickness, oh my!

The little boat we took to Ra'iatea and back

What it is like when missionaries sleep in the gym at the church!

The Raromata'i or the Leeward Islands.

Great week and a really nice p-day adventure today

Family and friends,

These pictures are why I am late to emailing. It is hard to see from the pictures but the boat is moving at a rather fast pace and I am in fact balancing out on the outrigger. We went to a small Island (motu) that the family who took us owns. They took all 6 missionaries out to the motu and made us some food out there. Oh yeah and he said that after the mish, if I want to stay there, I can stay for free… hmmm. Oh and the name of the motu is "motu tane iti" it is really close to the airport and is supper duper tiny.

You asked about bugs… Sometimes we have bug problems, but I’ve gotten to the point were not much can wake me from my slumber. Oh and the beauty shots from last week are from a little place called Paoaoa point. If you can find that on google maps, you're golden. 

We sometimes use sunscreen. I don’t really get burned anymore from regular every day stuff. but BTW the back of my calves got absolutely destroyed at our motu visit we just did. I went to scratch my leg and I started to tear up  a little bit. 

My quality of life has been staying at a reasonably high level lately. The work has been progressing a lot... and my companion awesome.

Just a heads up. We have a multi-zone conference on Wednesday on Ra'iatea. All of the islands of Raromata'i will be attending. We are taking a tiny little boat all the way to Ra’iatea tomorrow morning and will be returning on Thursday. I will have tons of pictures. 

Well. Sorry for the short email. I feel like I am really bad at sharing my experiences. Just know that missionary work isn’t easy but it is really fun sometimes. Peace and love!

Elder Goodwin

Elder Owens making some members laugh by doing the mermaid pose.

Elder Tepuhiarii playing the kamaka.