Last Week of Training - "Let Them Eat Cake" -(Thanks Marie)

Shark Feeding - Something fun for a P-Day

Well, it is finally here! The last week of my training! It is a crazy week too because my trainer is finishing his mission! So, I am really hoping that everyone will bake us cakes ha ha ha! If I have not said this before, I have kind of thrown my diet out the door and have invited all of the cake! Marie Antoinette said, "Let them eat cake", and I am starting to see the wisdom in that statement.

Things here are going well! We are continuing to work with all of the members in our ward and it is great because we have a lot of support! One of our main member integraters is named Tania (I'll send a picture later), but Tania had to go to Tahiti to be there for his wife (she is giving birth). It has been a struggle without him, but he is coming back this week! So we should still be doing well in the quartier!

I don't have a ton of time to write today, but I hope that everyone is doing well and that you all have a great Halloween!

Yes - living next to a car dealership!

Spiritual Thought:

This week I have really been pondering about a talk that my Gam gave me given by Elder Bednar about the Atonement of Christ. Not only the Atonement of Christ, but the enabling power that we can receive from the Atonement. Many times on the mission, I have thought to myself how lucky I am to have the Atonement. Not only to be cleansed from my sins, but to receive strength. Several times I have felt too tired to continue, to comprehend, and to speak French/Tahitian. But, every time I pray for strength, I receive it. And you all can receive the same power. It is not the power to change your circumstances, but the power to receive strength from God to overcome them.

That's my ponsé!

Elder Garff

Guitar and Ukulele - Sounding like a Tahitian :)

Hey all, this week was a crazy week! The craziness was due to the fact that we had a multi zone conference and we had to travel by boat to Raitea, another island in French Polynesia! It was really awesome to see all of the missionaries that I knew like Sister Morrill and Elder Toame, and it was especially cool to hear from President Bize, our mission president, his wife, and Elder and Sister Haleck (Elder Haleck is a seventy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). During the conference, we learned about the importance of baptism, so, this week we engaged all of our investigators to baptism! It was a cool experience and there was a visable change during these lessons from the others that were not focused on baptism! So, stay tuned for the baptisms!

Bora is doing great and everything is crazy great here! Just a few awesome things! So, first, make sure to have a snowcone with condensed milk on the top!!!! It makes the snow cone taste like ice cream!!! I'll send a picture in a week or two! Soooo good! Another great thing, shout out to my Grandma Anderson! We have taken classes lately for the guitar, and the ukelele! And it has been awesome to play and actually be able to know all the chords! By the time I get back, at this rate I can sound like a Tahitian!

Spiritual Thought:

This week I have really been pondering about whether or not I am in the place that I need to be in my progression as a missionary. I finish my training in 2 weeks and I feel like I still have to learn a ton of things. But, my Grandpa Garff and my Dad have shared with me that the spot that we are all in right now is where the Lord needs us to be. That spot can be in Tahiti not understanding anything, or in school being fed up with midterms, or any other spot. The thing to know is that wherever we are, the Lord needs us to be there for a reason and it is our responsibility to do all in our power to make the most of it, learn, and continue to progress in the way that we think the Lord needs us to progress.

Hope you are all doing as well as the Utes' football team!

Elder Garff

Enjoy Every Moment - Raw Fish, Utah Football and Everything In-between

Raw Fish - 5 times a week or so.  Pretty Good!

 

Ia Ora Na!

 

Well, this week was another crazy week! This week, we taught 28+ lessons and the Spirit was extremely powerful in many of them! Right now, we have a lot of investigators who are really close to baptism and after marriages and other lessons, they will all be ready! We are hoping for a lot of baptisms on the 30th, the day that my trainer leaves, and hopefully those will all work out!

 

Speaking of my companion, he is really awesome! He finishes his mission in 3 weeks but still is continuing to work hard every day! And, he is crazy fluent in French! So every time that I mess up, he is always there to cover for me! Definitely blessed to have someone to fall back on when I need help (sort of rings a bell with the Savior for all of us huh?!) I definitely like working with him and hope that we can continue to work hard! We are both very similar in that we both like to be doing something all the time and want to be doing the right things too, which I am very grateful to have in my first companion in the field!

 

Other than that, everything is going well! We are going to visit another island for a mission conference this week, so we'll actually get to see the other missionaries here! There are only 6 missionaries on Bora, so it will be interesting to actually see everyone that has been called here!

The Primary Room in the Ward - We requested this from Josh so that we could show the kids in the 12th ward here.

 

Spiritual Thought of the Week:

So, definitely with the language there are a lot of ups and downs. Throughout my life, I have really been known for doing things until they are done and then moving on without really stopping to appreciate what I am doing. So, the spiritual thought of the week goes to my mom who told me to enjoy every moment, even the ones that you can't understand! So, my advice for myself and all of you is to enjoy everything that you do! Through joy, we are better motivated to do things and through this motivation, there comes a better sense of why we are doing what we are doing and a desire to do it perfectly.

I hope that everyone is doing well and of course enjoying Utah Football!

Elder Garff

"Hey!" from Bora

Hey everyone!

Another great week in Bora Bora! This week, it was a little weird because we had 2 new elders come to Bora Bora! So, I am still new, but not the newest ha ha ha! It's nice because I'm not the newest, but it's also kind of scary, because I still need a lot of work with everything before my training is done in 4 weeks ha ha ha! The new Elders are Elder Stewart and Elder Sovern. They are doing great and have great trainers, Elder Loamano and Elder Schwartz. Because of the new elders, Elder Borgholthaus and I gave one of our 2 sectors to the others. We lost Faanui, but we kept the sector of Vaitape which is doing really well! We have a lot of investigators right now that are working towards marraige dates and have a lot more that will be baptized once they know more about the church!

 

On another front, this week was a great week for General Conference! Here, they didn't have Conference in English, so we watched it in French. Because of that, I didn't understand a whole lot... But, the Spirit was definitely there and contributed to my Spiritual thought of the week!

Other than that, this week was a good week with a lot of lessons and with an increased purpose to the mission life for me.

Vahineura and Kohai - Two cool kids in Bora

Spiritual Thought:

This week I have thought a lot about the why to many things. As missionaries, our purpose, our "why" is to bring others unto Christ by helping them receive the restored Gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End. This is our why and the reason why we do everything. This week, I discovered the "why" for investigators. Every investigator we meet and everyone who is not a part of the church needs to receive baptism and needs to be a member of the church to know where they came from, why they are here, and where they will go after this life. This is the Plan of Salvation. Without the Plan of Salvation, our lives have no purpose and nothing else matters. Investigators and everyone in the world needs to hear this message and the reason why everyone needs to be baptized in the church is because that baptism washes away sins and thus allows us to obtain the greatest gift of all: Eternal life, a life forever living in the presence of God.

Hope you are all doing well!

Elder Garff

The Minions Arrive

Hey everyone!

This week was a great week! My companion, Elder Borgholthaus, and I had a lot of success and we are doing well! We currently have a lot of people that are close to receiving a baptism date and who could definitely progress fast! So, keep your hopes and prayers up for our investigators!

This week, we had an open house, where we shared the Gospel with the mayor of Bora, a Protestant Deacon, a Catholic leader, and several others! It was a great experience and I will send a picture of our booth below! During the open house, we invited people of other faiths to come and see what our church is all about! In addition to the open house, we have had several activities like weddings, movie nights, and other things that are great places to talk to people about the Gospel! For the next week, we are excited, and hope you all are too, for General Conference! It starts at 6 in the morning here, so no complaining for those who get to sleep in until 9!

The big news here is that there is a transfer and I will not be the newest missionary anymore! Definitely still don't know the language or the culture entirely yet, but hey, I'm not the newest anymore! We have 30+ missionaries coming in, including 2 who will come to Bora!

 

Spiritual Thought:

In all things, we need to have faith. We need to have faith that through Jesus Christ all things are possible. And after we have taken that step of faith and have started a journey, whether it is a mission, school, or something else, we need to continue in hope. Faith is a belief in something not seen and which is true, and hope is the act of holding onto that faith, believing that the promised blessings will come in the Lord's time. If we doubt and lose our faith, we lose our hope also. In all things, keep the faith, continue in hope, and endure to the end.

I hope that all is going well at home, know I miss you all!

Elder Garff

Mangos - Awesome!

Fifiri (donuts) with Peanut Butter and Nutella - likely not on the P90X diet guide




The Minions Have Arrived!

* The language of the Minions consists of bits and phrases of many different languages.  This is about how Josh feels now.  The languages are coming, it just takes a bit of patience.  We thought it was only appropriate to send a few his way.



                                                                                                                                                                                           

"Pass the Raw Fish...?"

Hey All!

 

This week was a great week! This week, we had two baptisms! Hitiarii (9) and Lohem (8) and it was a great experience at both baptisms! They both are coming from part-member families and both showed great examples of faith, and both showed a tremendous desire to be baptized! Also, in addition to baptism, there is an ordinance where you can receive the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God. And, in my broken French, I was able to give the Holy Ghost to Lohem! It was really special because it was the same day (September 20th) that I myself was baptized and received the Holy Ghost! So, definitely a great experience with the 2 baptisms this week!

So, about the title of this email, I found myself saying at one of our dinner appointments "Pass the Raw Fish", and right after I said that (in French of course), I had to take a minute and wonder "Did I really just say that?" All good though! In addition to that, we had some crazy food this week like turtle (pretty good stuff!) and mangoes picked from our backyard! Just a tip on the mangoes, you can't catch them with your head (If you know what I mean...)

 Things are definitely getting better language-wise, and definitely my trainer, Elder Borgothous is helping me tremendously with that! I am hoping to get it before the end of my training, which is in 6 more weeks... Hopefully it'll happen!

And to explain the last picture... On Saturday, it rained all day, and we are on bikes. So, it got to the point where our socks were too wet to wear into peoples' houses! So, we went barefoot for a majority of the day and were drenched all day! Definitely one of the crazy days for sure!



Baptism Refreshments - Met with Josh's Approval

Spiritual thought of the week:

With every baptism, there are a multitude of sins that can be prevented. A scripture that is in the front of every planner I have in the field has James 5:20. Until recently, I didn't really know why baptism was so important. But now, I have the approach that with every baptism, we are preventing a multitude of sins, meaning that in a sense, we now alleviated some of the pain that Christ suffered during the Atonement for us. Every time we decide not to sin and invite others to do the same, we are eliminating some of the "drops of blood that [could have been] were spilled for [us]" ("This is the Christ", Song). So, everything I do is to help others to come to Christ, and in a way, do all that I can to eliminate the burdens of the Savior, even if they are small alleviations.

Hope all is well, it is in Bora!

Elder Garff

Be Comforted - and Learn How to Rotate the Pictures Mom

Bonjour toutes les monde!

I don't know if that is spelled right, but hey, I tried ha ha ha!

This week was another good week! This was probably one of the busiest weeks that we had, and next week might be even more packed! For next week, we have 3 possible baptisms lined up and we hope that all of them will be ready to go! I'll be sure to send some pictures next week about that! Also, we have a lot of investigators that are starting to get deeper into the lessons and many that are very interested in the Gospel! Vaitape and Faanui (our areas) are awesome and have a lot of potential!

As for the language, there are times that I feel like I can say anything, and then I get some humble pie and BOOM, it's gone! So, definitely I have to remember to be humble ha ha ha! But, in all humility here, the language is definitely better than it was Week 1. It is still a struggle to completely understand people and say things with clarity, but, if there is hard work and the Spirit, all things are possible!

Spiritual Thought:

This week we taught tons of lessons and a great thing that happened this week was that every lesson that we taught had a greater influence of the Spirit! There were many lessons this week that I felt like I lost all of my French and had no clue what was going on. But, I felt a prompting in several of our lessons to share a certain scripture (Joshua 1:9 , 1 Nephi 3:7 , etc...) and my companion said after the lessons that the things I shared were exactly what the investigators needed to hear! So, definitely the thought this week is that through the Spirit, we can overcome anything whether it is a language barrier, an understanding barrier (like school), or anything else. I know that during the hard times of my mission, I have had to pray for the Lord's help more than I ever have before. And every time I feel lost or discouraged, the Spirit always comes and I feel like the sons of Mosiah who were in need of comfort and the Lord said simply: "Be comforted". So, for comfort, understanding, and everything else, I know that the Spirit will help and comfort you all!

Elder Garff