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