Banana Splits

Split with Elder Toame!  He is an Elder from my MTC promotion

Hey Everyone!

Unfortunately, we did not eat any Banana splits this week, but we were often on splits with missionaries :) One of the responsibilities for me and Elder Piazza is to do a split with all of the zone leaders. I had the priviledge of being with Elder Thorpe and Elder Toame. It doesn't matter where I have been time-wise with my mission, I have always learned a lot from the splits that we have done. I think that these splits were more to help me than them! Both Elders are great and they taught me a lot this week! 

In other news, the missionary concert practices have started up, and though I don't think I will be able to sing in the performances, I am excited for them anyways :) There are a lot of great songs and I am pumped! 

Other than that, there is not much to report. There are a lot of great things happening and I think the only other thing that you would like to hear is the progression of our converts in Papeete 2! Tony is the Young Mens Sectretary, Vainui is the Relief Society Sectretary, Alexis will be the Secretary of the Elders Quorem, and Romina will receive a call soon! So great to see their progression!

Split with Elder Thorpe!  Great to do a split with him!

Funny Moment: We started up the game again "Where's Rick". Elder Piazza found Rick who was found in his cereal :) Because Elder Smith hid it there :)

Culture Shock: Got to love when you receive the question "Where is the mission violin?" and you have to find out which island the violin was sent to... There are only 100+ options there!

Spiritual Thought: One of the greatest lessons I learned this week was the importance of humility. You can have all the talents, contacts, experience, etc... in the world but you can still learn something from someone who is humble. I was touched this week by a man who was extremely humble and thanks to his example, I learned a lot of things that weren't said, but were shown.

Love you all :)

Elder Garff

P.S. Totally forgot when Mother's Day is... Sorry

Alexis' Baptism and Happy Easter!

Everyone, 

I would also like to announce the birthdays of my brother JJ, my aunt Carrie, and my cousin Lily Grace :)

So, if you happen to see them, make sure to crack an egg on their heads :)

Love you all!

Elder Garff

The baptism of Alexis!

Josh also sent the following email this week:

Hey Everyone!

Sorry that the past 2 weeks I was unable to send anything! Things over here in Papeete 2 have been crazy! But, everything is going great!

In our last moments together, I taught Elder Drugeon how to make a balloon dog :)  It was pretty good!

Since the last email, I have changed missionary companions and I am now with Elder Piazza! I already served with Elder Piazza and we served at Raiatea together for 4.5 months! Now, we will have spent 6 months (a fourth of our mission) together! I loved my time with Elder Drugeon! He went to a sector in Mahina, so, we still get to see each other often!

Congratulations to Alexis who was baptized Wednesday!  So great to see him baptized!

Also, the biggest news was that Alexis got baptized! Alexis is a huge fan of weight lifting and it was difficult to baptize him ha ha ha! When his daughter was baptized in January, he said no for the lessons. But, he came to the "lessons after baptism" for his daughter. We gave him a Book of Mormon and invited him to come to church. His family is super Protestant, but, he was converted by the Spirit that he felt. As he told his Protestant Mother that he was going to be baptized, she said "Well, I know that your wife is a good woman, if you want to follow her, I am in support of that". Alexis responded "I am not following my wife. I am following the Christ. This is His Church." Puissant!

We also had the marriage of one of our investigators!  Super fun :)

Other things that have happened, Easter! I hope that everyone had a great Easter! Here it was great :) We had an Easter Egg hunt with a bunch of Tahitian kids, and they found all the eggs we hid in seconds! So fun! 

Easter Egg Hunt with three families!  It was quite fun hiding the eggs!  They found them fast - even in the dark!

Easter Egg hunt.  These kids looked everywhere!  Even in the back of our car!

Funny Moment: Elder Piazza and I went to President Bize's house one night with a ton of keys. Keys to the car, house, church, etc... And we had a pretty good sized ring. President Bize saw all of the keys on Elder Piazza's ring and he said "Elder Piazza, do you think that you are important because you have a lot of keys? Usually, the people the most important have one key for everything!" We all got a laugh out of it and 2 minutes later, President came and showed us a ring of 400 keys! Saying "I guess I am important now!" It was hilarious! Got to love President Bize!

I heard that Elder Caraes saw my mother! (Many thanks to Tiffany Smith!)
In honor of Elder Caraes, I will send this picture of him sleeping outside when our power went out!

Culture Shock: I just received word from my mother that she saw Elder Caraes, a Tahitian Elder that is in the MTC right now! I loved living in the same house as him and he is going to be a great Elder! I hope that I get to see him when he comes back in a few weeks to sign the last couple of papers for his visa!

Spiritual Thought: For Easter, I won't overdo the holiday, but, the theme for the Church this Easter season is #ThePrinceofPeace. Something that I have taught my investigators often is that when receiving impressions from God, you must feel peace. It is true that the Spirit can speak to us in our minds, but the devil can as well. The important thing is that the Spirit speaks to us in our minds AND in our hearts. If you have a thought that is accompanied by bad feelings, it doesn't come from the Spirit!!! If you can feel peace, joy, and love with your thoughts, 100% of the time it is inspiration from God. Why? Because the devil can't give what he doesn't have. He can't give feelings of peace, joy, and love because he has none of these things. In solving problems, search for peace. You will then find the answer.

Love you all x3!

Elder Garff

Sorry - 52 Words

The following 52 words is all that we heard from Josh this week:

Sorry, today is the transfers and I am in charge ha ha ha! We'll see if I get an exception to email Wednesday.

But, I am the AP Senior and my missionary companion is Elder Piazza! He was my companion when we were Zone Leaders together at Raromatai!

Love you

Elder Garff

Running

We did not receive much more than the following from Josh this week:

Hey!

Thanks for the emails!

Sorry that we have to run, the transferts are close and we are kind of all over the place!