Hey family! Hey friends! Thanks for the love and the packages mom. Haha, except I kind of got in trouble for you sending me berries because apparently they leaked and you are not allowed to send fruit to me, but they let the other fruit slip by. I ate the peaches within like 2 hours and I was so happy to get normal apples because apples here are scary. Really, I bit into one last week and it had an alien inside of it. I almost died. It has happened to another girl here too, so real fruit makes me so happy. I basically ate the whole bag of grapes as well. Oh yum.
So, I have lots to say, and so short time. Truly this week was awesome. We had the coolest devotional with someone from the seventy. I forgot his name already, but it was awesome. I guess that is a perk for being here for 12 weeks, we get so many devotionals. Two apostles already have visited us, and we are just always being spiritually fed. Anyway, this speaker was telling us how in Jacob chapter 5 (you know the olive tree allegory)?, it talks about missionaries now. If you notice the last servant of the Master of the vineyard (President Monson), for the last dispensation goes to call more servants to gather the house of Israel in the last dispensation. Apparently the missionary age change was that prophecy being fulfilled, of asking for more servants. I just thought that was so cool. So you should totally read over Jacob 5 sometime and pay attention to our dispensation in the last part of the chapter. It is really neat to see that prophecies are starting to be fulfilled.
This week was also great because guess what...? I am totally probably going to sing in general conference. We leave the day after general conference, and the girls MTC choir got invited to sing, and I am in the choir. I don't know what session it is yet, it might even be the relief society session, but look for me on TV!! We have to "try out" for it, with telling how much choir experience we have taken, but I took like 4 years, so it should be good.
So language wise, this week was a little difficult. We totally switched to Tahitian, so my French has been suffering, and Tahitian is so hard. I absolutely love it, but it is so confusing, and we are not allowed to say "um..." when we are thinking of what to say, because in Tahitian if you say filler noises like " um.. or aaaa", you are saying words in Tahitian and changing the meaning of your sentences. Also Tahitians say yes by grunting and moving their eyebrows. Yes! my kind of people. I seriously sound like a man when I speak Tahitian. It is quite entertaining. I can't actually say much yet though.
Sentence structure is totally flipped around. And yes, dad, it is just like Tongan where there are actually only a few letters they use in the alphabet, so you just add "faa, or haa" at the beginning or ending of words to make them different words. It is crazy. We also taught our first Tahitian lesson in the TRC on Thursday. Basically all I know how to say was the phrases I copied out of preach my gospel and other supplements to read off of, and so I had no idea what was happening. We taught a return missionary that had served in Tahiti, Bora Bora, Moorea, Tahaa, and I think somewhere else, so his Tahitian was so good, and I had no idea what he was saying. He basically just corrected our grammar. It was bad because he was pretending to be an investigator so when we tried to commit him to pray and use the Atonement to repent, he asked us " Well how do I repent" in Tahitian. Using the 5 words I knew in Tahitian, I tried to explain you pray for forgiveness of your sins and God will forgive you through Christ's Atonement. Except I accidentally told him " God will forgive all of Jesus's sins". His face was shocked, and then I realized what I had accidentally told him and I was so embarassed, but it was so funny so it didn't even matter.
We have less than a month now, and I am counting down the days. I cannot wait to actually leave. Thanks again utuafare (family) for the packages. They were magnificent and I loved them dearly. I love you guys!
-Nana,
Tuahine Kimball
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