Jakes Journey to France

Tahitian Tidal Wave

Bonjour!

This week was interesting but pretty sweet.. I'm down to less than a month left now, and I'm kind of stressed out about that. Elder Richmond (who's going home with me) and I were talking about and thinking about our homes. It felt superrrr weird to think about our actual house! Like thinking about my room is weird... hahah anyways.

Last Monday we just spent the day shopping cause it was Elder Tehahe's birthday.. but that evening we went to a Tahitian sisters house (his sister haha) for his birthday. We ate really well and we got to meet some people. 

Tuesday we had an interesting rdv with a guy who's a practicing Jew but accepts Jesus as his savior and redeemer... I don't even understand how you can be both.. He's a nice guy and he wants to see us, but he doesn't really let us teach anything. So we'll see if we continue with him. He has a neighbor who's Tahitian, so we'll probably go knock his door :)

Wednesday we had an exchange! I actually got to go with Elder Kahn, who is my bleu. So that was pretty chill being with him again! We just contacted for a bit and taught some people and got their phone numbers. After we made two trios, and I went with Elder Kahn and Elder McKee to go teach a lesson to a woman. It turns out that the woman's husband was super interested too. So we somewhat taught about the restoration with an emphasis as God the eternal father, and we got a return appointment with them! So we're super stoked and we hope to be able to make some good progress with them. 

That evening we all went to Steak 'n Shake... Super good stuff.

Thursday we just had district meeting and stuff. We have three people in the district that are native French speakers and don't speak fluent English, so we did the meeting completely in French. That was a first for me doing the district meeting in French but it went well. We ate supreme nachos for lunch. Afterwards I was feeling pretty sick, so we took some time at the chapel to look for apartment stuff (I've kind of taken charge of the whole apartment search) and we went in for the night to do area book stuff... I'm not sure if I mentioned last week, but we finally got the area book and planner app! After a year and a half of having an iPad, we now have the app. Honestly it's pretty tedious trying to transition everything over to it, and it's also hard to be motivated to work on it cause I won't even use it for long.. hahah

Friday we took a bus to a place called the Rivest to meet one of our friends named Henri. Henri is a philosopher. Henri thinks a lot about everything. Henri has a lot of questions. Henri talks a lot. Henri is also a really nice guy. He lives in Toulon but wanted to have our rdv in the rivest because he lived there for fifteen years. It's a beautiful little village in the mountains behind Toulon. I wasn't able to grab any photos but maybe the next time. 

That evening we went with a member to visit a member woman. She doesn't really have the capability to come to church in Toulon, but she still has a lot of faith and is doing a lot to grow it. I actually met this woman back in Bordeaux because she came to church with her daughter, who lives in Bordeaux with her husband.. so I met that woman over there and I see her again here! She made us some chocolate chip cookies and wow! those made me so trunky. Hahah 

Saturday was pretty crazy.

So as you know, my comp is Tahitian, and so naturally if we see Tahitians on the street we easily start talking to him. We've been invited by multiple tahitian families to activities with  their friends. So we've been meeting lots of really cool tahitian people that are open to the gospel. Elder Tehahe's sister has been a lot of help as well. Specifically there's this one couple that we've been thinking about. The subject line comes from this. 

For Saturday afternoon, we had about two hours open. In my mind i was just like "okay we'll go contact" but my comp was like "No let's not do that. Let's go find miracles." So I was like okay, that's a better Idea! So we started to find some miracles.. we found one in the first five minutes. We taught a guy sitting on a bench; he was interested and we got his number. Later on, we were walking around, finding miracles, but at the same time looking for an apartment.. so we see these three huge towers, and decided to go take a look at it, to see if there's anything there that we could check out for an apartment. We're walking in between two of the towers in a small park, and I hear something from one of the towers.. I look at my comp and I said "do you hear that? That's a Tahitian ukulele!" Now Tahitian ukuleles aren't just normal ukuleles. They have 8 strings, they sound higher than a normal ukulele, and they have a different body shape. So I was just thinking that there are for sure Tahitians in the area. We walk to the other side of the building, and the doors are wide open. So we just go in and start looking at the mailboxes. We find three names that are potentially Tahitian families. We started to make our way through this maze of a building and get to the sixth floor. We go to a door and we hear a lot of people talking... so we're just like, dang it's a party and we wouldn't want to interrupt them. But I was also thinking "dang it's a party let's go join them." So we decided to knock the door..

A Tahitian guy opens up, and his wife is behind him and she's like "hey come in and eat!" We met the wife last Monday at a family home evening! and there was that couple that we've been thinking and praying about, plus a few other people we know, and like 15 Tahitians we don't know! Literally it was insane that we found ourselves there! They invited us in to come eat with them because it was their babies birthday. I found myself again surrounded by Tahitians and being the only American haha. We ate well and got to talk to a lot of people! 

We had planned to find some miracles, and when we had thought the miracles were done and we moved on, we realized that we were constantly being guided toward our miracle.

We have another family home evening tonight with a few of them and we're excited for that. :)

That same night we went to our Brazilian friends' home, and they fed us pizza (Side note: yes we had second dinner because both of them were unplanned. It's a miracle that we've had these random dinners because our stove top in the apartment broke and so all we have is an oven and a microwave, and it's kind of difficult to make stuff without the stove top.. so the fact that we're just getting food randomly has been great!)

Sunday was pretty normal. Last week there were a lot of members that were gone on vacation, so I got to see some more members again so that was nice. My comp and I got to give a blessing to a woman in our ward with our bishop and one of his counselor.. she's going to get surgery this week and it's running a lot of risks because it could mess with her nerves. 

We're seeing miracles and trying our best to help people come unto Christ :) 

Love you all! See you soon!