eldergoodwintahiti.blogspot.com: Heiva, zone leader stuff and a wonderful baptism...

I love the pictures you send. It's really interesting for me to see the evolution of Dad’s beard over time. I feel like it suits you really well. You should be Santa Claus for the next Ward Christmas party. (editor’s note: not comfortable with that reference in any way)

When you made the Poisson Cru or "i'a ota" na roto te Reo Tahiti (in Tahitian)… did you do it with coconut milk? (yes, Elder Manari’i--a Tahitian Elder serving his last weeks in our Calgary Ward--squeezed it out of a freshly grated coconut). Where did you see how to make it? Did Elder Manari'i tell you how to do it. (yes). The couple times I’ve made it, it was pretty complicated. When I get home we will try it again. One thing I’ve noticed is that lemons here are totally different than back home. They taste way different. You guys have no idea what you are missing out on. That would probably make the poisson cru taste different.

Overall this week was really good. We had a Baptism on Wednesday. It went really well. Our little branch was there friendshipping every step of the way with this investigator. She's been waiting to be baptised for a really long time now, and now she finally took the step.

In other news this week we ended up going to a Heiva. It was the group of Vaiaau dancing and they apparently have won the Heiva in Ra’iatea for the last five years. Oh and we know literally half of the people in the group. Our branch president and a couple of other members play the To'ere (large wooden thing that you hit) and the drums and stuff for the group. And we know a large portion of the dancers because they are either members or because they take lessons with us.

They all wanted us to come watch. so we did. IT WAS RIDICULOUSLY wonderful. I’ve never seen anything so cool in my life. I have a couple pictures, but I decided that no picture could do it justice because of the speed of the dancing and the massive coordination they had. I took a couple videos but it would take about six hours for it to load onto the computer, so you may have to wait four months to see the videos.

Tomorrow—good ol' Pres Fox (our new Mission President) is coming down to Ra’iatea for a little conference and a tour of the island. He will be hoping in the truck with us and we are going to show him all the sites, all six chapels on the island and the four bishops and two branch president and the 1st Councilor in the Stake Presidency (our stake president lives on Tahiti). It’s kind of crazy, and stressful organizing with all the Bishops for visits, but thankfully we have been doing our tour training tour of all the Bishops and Ward Mission Leaders in the Stake and have been able to work it out in person rather than over the phone with people that I’ve never met.

The training sessions are going really well. We did two this week. and we noticed that they received it very well. We were able to fix another training meeting for all the Ward Council for one of the Wards. The other Ward went really smoothly, hopefully it helps bring up motivation.

Oh and In our Ward is a guy who knows Elder Manari'i, His name is Yannik Vero. We will be eating at his house this week so I'll take some pictures with him and his wife.

Thanks for the email. love you guys!

Elder Goodwin