Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Jour de l'indépendance


#vivrelafrance

     Today is the 4th of July! Have a good celebration y'all. I'm the only american in the house and one of two in the district so...life goes on. We did however spend all of wednesday celebrating Tahiti's "jour de l'autonomie" (independence day kind of) which is slightly strange because Tahiti isn't independent in any form:/ We went to Pape'ete and marched in the parade with a bunch of other missionaries and members, in front of the governor and all. That was quite the deal. Président Bize showed up too.


 
Arue

     Funny story of the week: Our secteur is the one with the hospital in it so we often get calls to go down to the hospital and give blessings. We got one such call on Thursday at about 10:30 and decided to go in a couple hours because we were busy. All we had was a name. We went over, found the room and went in. It was an old lady and I noticed she didn't look well, and was asleep. We told the family (protestants and Catholics) about what we were going to do and got ready. While doing so, my companion asks "so, what's wrong with her?". The lady turns to me and says "Oh, elle est morte." (Oh, she's dead.) My head immediately snaps over to look and realize why she didn't look so great. I felt so stupid I had to keep my self from laughing. But because we had already said we were going to give her a blessing, we...um just gave old Sonia a blessing, well her body anyway. Of course we couldn't just bring her back from the dead so I just layed my hands on her icy head and basically said "welcome to the spirit world" but in nicer terms. That was quite a unique experience. Kind of like Nacho Libre but opposite.

The hospital of Taaone, cool huh?
     On a slightly more sober note we got yet another call to go give a blessing to a 25 year old woman that had fallen into a coma. She had had a heart attack and didn't get to the hospital in time and was alive only thanks to the machine. We met her dad there, who is and inactive member, and he told us that the doctors just didn't know if she would come back or not. After getting authorization and all suited up, we went back into the IC unit (or whatever that locked down area of the hospital is) to give her a blessing. Again He chose me for the second prayer and I have never been that nervous for a blessing! I've never given a blessing that could mean life or death. During the blessing, to my surprise and terror, the Holy Ghost strongly told me to say that she would be healed according to the will of God. With her inactive father watching that was one of the last things I wanted to say because that could either bring him a stronger testimony or the opposite. I took a leap of faith and said it anyway. I still haven't called to do a follow up of what happened after, but whatever happens, I know that I said the right thing because it was the Holy Ghost that said so. I acted on my faith. Anyway that was my week. My companion had bronchitis like I had that one time so we didn't do as much this week but I hope it'll be better this next week. Also he's going to have a hernia operation next week, so I'm going to get really familiar with the hospital. fun stuff. Ok, have a good week in the land of the free!
-Elder Clements