The perks of being murican

hi!!! i only have what feels like 24 seconds to write like 245 details from this week. i guess ill sum it up into the most important parts

we had a really giant week planned out.. tons of lessons and contacts with references because this ward is AMAZING!! they just understand missionary work and are very unified, willing, and motivated and flipping FUNNY. i think im happy to die here.

but then transfers happened and sr durrant gets called as the stake taxi driver so tuesday our lessons had to all be cancelled. it was fun though, we got to see everyone receive their new missionaries and go walk around this cool book store in the city that ive always wanted to see. shoutout to my dad who likes book stores. too bad everything was in french dang it

during tuesday my comp and i came down with a bad sort of cold and were like dying.. then wednesday i woke up and thought i was dead, but we had tons of lessons that day also so we tried our best. my comp ended up not making it. i left her at a members house where she sat on a bed in front of a tv surrounded by children.. i left with a vain hope she wouldnt be forced to watch the tv. more on that later. we did a split after that and i took a soon to be missionary with me to do the rest of the lessons, which were only with children which requires a lot of energy haha. it was fun but since i had a cold my ears were clogged and i started to have an ear ache that got worse and worse. pretty soon i was acting like a granny trying to hear the children and then saying "ouch talk slower that hurts my ear!" when we finally finished i was really in pain so i decided to go take an advil and sit on my bed. sr meloen told me stories about how the children had watched minecraft and justin beiber videos for 3 hours. but nothing happened because of my advil, it just got worse and i wanted to cry lol. we called some of our leaders and they told us to go to the doctor but it was 8:00 at night. everything closes in tahiti at 8:00, even the doctors office. so our leaders panicked and they came all the way from papeete to INSIST to take me to the ER for my stupid ear infection and it took them like an hour to come, then an hour to get to the hospital and then an hour in the waiting room (they told me it was only an hour because im american). and then an hour for the french doctor to come see me. i just sat sadly in a blanket on the paper covered bed and wondered how the crap i got into this situation, midnight tahitian hospital jumping and i was still in a dress! never done that before.

on the bright side i got to sleep in Pirae, where both Sr. Andrus and Sr. Spencer live!!!! my two best friends that i lived with for 6 months... it was so nice to see them again. and the nice doctor told me my inner ear was very messed up and gave me some meds and ear drops. yahoo. but now it doesnt hurt anymore so yay :)

what i learned from this experience

 if youre ever at a tahitian hospital, be american because they will give you special treatment

never wake up sister andrus in the middle of the night. she gets really scared

take dolipran for pain

if you leave your companion with children and their grandma, most likely she will be forced to watch minecraft youtube

i dont like hospitals

BUT HOLD ON WE HAVE A MIRACLE IT WAS SO COOL

itaia, a 13 year old boy we teach, wanted to be baptised and said his mom wanted to see us after he told her. we were scared because we have heard a lot of stories about her, that you should never go to her house because she will throw spoons at you and scream and stuff and you will never see her child again. but we went anyway and what did we find? a lovely, humble, short woman who was sincerely happy to see us. she welcomed us onto her cement porch and proceeded to tell us her story. Her son used to wake up at 5 am, go to the road with his friends, skip school to smoke all day and street fight, and not return home until midnight the next night. she takes care of her 7 kids who all have problems and sometimes feels depressed, so she drinks and then fights with her husband and her children and neglects them. but then, in TWO WEEKS (and perhaps this is the amazing part) her son suddenly and without explanation stopped smoking altogether, started to work hard at school and treated his little brother with love, and she was so shocked that she humbly asked him why the change. he told her two white girls came to tell him smoking was bad for him and that he was better than that. and that he wanted to be baptised in their church because an old man at church had told him to and those words kept going through his head endlessly.
then she stopped drinking. and she decided she wanted to follow her son. so now shes reading scriptures instead of yelling and shes praying for us instead of throwing spoons at us.

i love what we do :) we didnt do anything really, my companion just showed some hope for a little teenage boy she had met a few months ago because she had a spiritual impression. and we started to joke around with him, encourage him and become his friend and teach him and his friends. in reality all we did was become his friends who prayed for him and who believed that he could do it. and he did!!! whoah. the scriptures are true and im proud of Itaia.

well thats all folks. ill try and send photos some day. nanaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

ps GENERAL CONFERENCE WAS SO GOOD ALSO!!!!! probably my favorite ever. when elder zwick talked about the lion king.

look beyond what you see. 🦁