Home - SLC

Please Join Us In Welcoming Josh Home!

Our grateful thanks to all of you who have supported Josh these past two years.  We are so grateful for your positive impact on his life, and for helping him become who he is today.
Please plan to join us  Saturday evening, May 27 at our home to celebrate his return.  We also would like to invite you to join us the next day, Sunday, May 28 for his return address.  1:00 PM 3103 Craig Drive.
With Love and Appreciation-
The Garff Family

Please plan to join us!

Te Rata Hopea, La Dernière Lettre - The Last Letter

Great split with Elder Packer at Mahina!  Loved it!

Ia ora na tout le monde!

Sorry for the delay... Normally we do emails on Monday, but, we had a timing issue and were able to write on Wednesday!

First of all, Happy Mothers Day to Grandma Anderson, Gam, all the other Mothers, the future mothers, and especially to my Mom :) And at the same time, Happy Birthday Grandpa Jay!

This is the last email as a missionary that I will be able to send to all of you! It has been a great ride and I am grateful for all of your support! I am sorry if I am not able to respond to some of your letters for this last week or even over the course of my mission, but I hope you know that I love you all and can't wait to talk to you in person! 

I would love to invite those who can to a little open house on Saturday May 27 from 6-9 PM! My address is 3501 South 2700 East, SLC, UT 84109 and I would love to see you! I will be speaking in Sacrament Meeting the next day, Sunday May 28 from 1-2 PM at 3103 East Craig Drive SLC, UT. If you have any questions, you can shoot me an email at this email address, joshg@kengarff.com, message by Facebook "Josh Garff", or by calling 801-463-1078 (home phone) or my cell phone 801-558-9893 (which I hope my parents haven't given away ;) )!

Got to love cleaning a mysterious water leak with sponges...
We don't know why it is brown, but honestly, we did not want to know.

Funny Moment of this week: Got to love when there is a water leak in the house and you have to clean up mysterious brown water in the house... I guess this is parent preparation? Ha ha ha!

Culture Shock: Not that I am trunky at all, but it is pretty shocking to believe that at this time next week I'll be in America! I honestly have missed America and especially have missed my friends and family even more! I can't wait to see you all!

A great breakfast burrito day with Elder Piazza, Elder Smith, and Elder Fawson!

Spiritual Thought: For the last spiritual thought, I would love to talk about the greatest lesson that I have learned as a missionary. I have learned a lot, but the most important thing that I have learned is: Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I will speak more about this next Sunday, but, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the most important thing we can aquire in this life. Faith in general is weak. Faith without actions is dead. But, Faith centered on Jesus Christ leads us to do and accept His ordinances and trust in His promises for us. Faith does not justify us for eternal life or exaltation. Faith centered on Jesus Christ which is followed by righteous actions does. It doesn't matter what words you have spoken, what promises and convenants you have failed to keep, what actions you wish you could take back, what chances you have missed or think you have missed; all of these things can be taken away thanks to Jesus Christ and His Atonement. To accept His Atonement He only asks for us to do three things:

1. Have Faith and Believe on Him. Meaning: Have confidence in His promises and ability to help us.

2. Repent. Meaning: change the desires of our hearts and change our bad actions into good ones.

3. Accomplish and Keep to the best of our ability His Ordinances. Meaning: Repenting and renewing our convenants every time we fall short, and having faith in and believing in the Redeeming Power of The Atonement of Jesus Christ and its promise to purify, sanctify, and justify us at the last day.

Have Faith in Christ! Act according to your Faith in Him! And you will be able to sing the song of redeeming love forever! I have seen it in the lives of many converts and inactives. I have seen it in my own life. And I know you can all see it in your lives. 

Of the many testimonies I have given of Christ, the last testimony that I would like to share with you all as a missionary is that HE LIVES!

I love you all, hope to see you soon!

Elder Garff

Ia ora na tout le monde!

Conseil des Dirigean

Hey Everyone!

Happy May! I hope that everyone is doing well and that no one is dying over tests and exams at school! It is insane to think that in 2 weeks I'll be able to see you all!

This week was a great week! We had Leadership Council and in it, we learned a lot about purity. See more on the bottom as I have attached a photo and put it in my spiritual thought :) It was a week full of meetings, but, they were spiritually inspiring. 

Zone Conference fin avril 2017 - Faaa Punaauia

For the rest of the week, me and Elder Piazza have fought to stay upright! With crazy hours here and there all week, we were grateful for the chance to have P-Day :) Our investigators are doing well and all of the converts here are super strong! 

Zone Conference fin avril 2017 - Mahina Arue Papeete

Funny Moment: This week we taught a 7 year old named Urahere. We taught the Word of Wisdom then went into the law of chastity. Chastity in French is pronounced "Chass te tai" and Urahere refused the commandment. The way that we pronounced it to her sounded like "Chass de té" meaning: A tea hunt! We were actually thrilled because it showed that Urahere understood the word of wisdom and knew that it was forbidden to drink tea :)

Culture Shock: Got to love when a plane gets delayed that you wait for. The thing you don't really love is the hours...

Zone Conference fin avril 2017 - Paea Papeari Taravao

Spiritual Thought: I loved the thought that was shared by Sister Bize on purity at Leadership Council. A lot of us look at the mistakes in our lives and we don't think that we can ever become pure. Sister Bize said: "The only moment when you have lost the ability to become pure is the moment when you have lost hope". Thanks to repentance we all have the ability to be pure. It doesn't matter who we are, what situation we are in, or even where we are. If we have hope we can repent. If we have hope, we can be purified, even as the Christ is pure.

Love you all, in a Christlike way :) 

Elder Garff

The Miracle of the Week: Heimata!

Heimata at her baptism! Heimata and Rauhere (little girl on the left) were both baptized!!!

Hey Everyone!

It is crazy to see that the end is near! In a few short three weeks I'll be with you all in Utah :) But, just beacause there are three weeks left that doesn't mean that there is time to be trunky! And a quick congratulations to Rachel! She just won the election for SBO President at Skyline! I'm pumped for you Rachel! Congrats!

Marriage Blessing of Heimata and Manu at the Chapel!  Such a great experience!

This week was crazy! The craziest thing that happened was that we had a marraige and a baptism! It was the marraige of Manu and Heimata and the baptism of Heimata and Rauhere (her daughter). Manu was an inactive member but, after 5 months, he is married and should be receiving the Melchezidek Priesthood in 2 months! Heimata should be having a baby next week, but still got baptized! Also, cool to know that Heimata finished the Book of Mormon before her baptism! She is the only investigator that finished the Book of Mormon before her baptism and she is super strong!

Other things that have started, we have started practices for the missionary concert and because of that, 5 hours of our P-Day are used practicing (we practice in 2 different places for 2 hours in each location). Because of that, we are a little rushed today, so I will not be able to respond to a lot of emails unfortunately :(

I found out today that Benjamin just won a motorbike!!!!!!!!!! I honestly didn't know what to say :)

Funny Moment: I died when I saw Benjamin (an old convert) with his motorcycle that he won! It was too much for me!

Culture Shock: Just the fact that it is May 2017 should be good for this one...

Spiritual Thought: I have thought a lot this week about how to be successful in life.  Elder Piazza and I did a training in the Multi-Zone Conferences this week and our focus was on how to be a successful missionary. Here are the 4 points that we had:

1. Give your will to God

2. Don't compare yourself to others

3. Have high expectations

4. Have the Spirit present in your work.

In our lives it is the same! If you want to succeed, put God first! He can make a lot more out of our lives than we can!

Love you all!

Elder Garff

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