Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Goodbye Tahiti, hello real Island life



      So. I'm not on Tahiti anymore! I got a call Tuesday night from the assistants. 'Elder Clements, There's an emergency transfer. You're going to Takaroa. The Elder there got injured and has to come  back to Tahiti. You'll take the next plane but your things have to be packed tonight so they can be on the boat tomorrow." So there you have it. I'm finally in the little ring islands that Dad wanted me to go to. After waiting for the plane for the next few days (an AWESOME little plane by the way) I headed to the airport and took off. It was about an hour and a half flight to get here and I arrived in a orange alert for a hurricane which I think has passed.



    Life is definitely a lot different here. Tahiti is basically like living in orem or provo. Here is like living in hideaway valley with no access to orem or provo or even fairview. I just went to the biggest store here and it's the size of our living room. I asked If I could just find a baguette here but they said no because the baker left (note the singular use of baker). Also you really actually have to be careful here I've already found out. Saturday night we went to cross the bridge that goes between a couple of the biggest islands and just before we crossed, a giant surge of water completely submerged the bridge for about thirty seconds and did that randomly a few times while we sat and tried to figure out what to do. We saw this old guy a ways away watching us and then he signals "go!" to us. We took a leap of faith and hauled it across the bridge and got there just as another wave hit the bridge. wow. So it's a little harder core than I'm used but I'm diggin it. Also I got made district leader over, I think, the largest district, by sqaure footage, in the world. It covers the four areas here, Ahe, Manihi, Takapoto, and Apataki which is roughly 1000 square miles of ocean and little Islands.

Elder Nelson  my new companion
      And also I'm "whitewashing" which means that my new companion got here the same time so he doesn't know what's going on either. All that combined with plenty of other things have made for a very different couple of days and I'm sure it's just starting. However with the Lord it's all gonna work out. So ya, not that much happened this week, a little plane ride, some water and Walmart Takaroa went broke. K, ke hoki vau i taku fare i roto i toku kaigna, my new language I'll be learning. -Elder Clements