eldergoodwintahiti.blogspot.com: ...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