Okay. Hi family!
Happy Easter! They don't celebrate Easter so much here. Instead they celebrate the Friday before and the Monday after (today). As far as celebrations, mostly it's just a day off work from what I can tell. I actually forgot it was Easter until at church yesterday someone gave us chocolate.
It's been a good week overall. I was sick from Wednesday until yesterday with a pretty bad cold. I slept a lot. We didn't have any lessons anyways so it worked out okay. Our sector has really slowed down. We don't really have any progressing investigators. The good news is R got baptized this week! She actually went to Bora Bora to get baptized in the ward where her family is (she is at Tahiti for school), but the baptism still counted for us, so that was cool. Also the assistants had 3 baptisms in our ward on Saturday, so the work is going good.
Friday we had no lessons planned, so at our zone meeting we were talking to Elder Caldwell and asked him to register me for driving. Since all the cars here are stick shift in the mission, to be a driver you have to be "registered" by Elder Caldwell. That involves going for drives and learning to drive stick. So for about an hour or two Friday afternoon, I learned to drive stick and drove all over Tahiti! I picked it up pretty quick, driving stick is so fun! Elder Caldwell passed me off as good to go for driving after just one drive, which is pretty quick I guess. The cars here are either little Avenza Toyota vans or Toyota hilux trucks. I learned in a little avenza van.
Okay, Friday night we got transfer calls! Elder Porter is getting transferred to Paea, the zone on the other end of the island. He is super pumped, and I am a little sad that he is leaving haha. We got along really well. Also Elder Thia is leaving the house (he's been assistant forever, he's going to go finish his mission training a new missionary in the zone of Paea also!), so I am sad. Our house was so much fun because we all got along really well. The new assistant will be Elder R (from France) and my new companion will be...... drumroll.... Elder L! He's a Tahitian, which means he speaks French and hopefully Tahitian too. He is out on the island of Tahaa right now, so he won't get here until this Wednesday. He is a slightly newer missionary, which means I am the senior companion now. That means I am in charge of what we do everyday, all day. Wow! There is so much time in one day too, I am going to have to pray a lot to know what to do everyday! Apparently I am the district leader, too. But our district is my companionship, the assistants, and a senior couple, so I don't have too much to worry about there. I might have to do an occasional training or something. Also I am in charge of all the paperwork for baptisms, signatures from everyone, etc, and working with the mission office for all that kind of stuff. I will learn a lot! So Elder L and I will probably go tracting a lot a lot a lot a lot this week. We also have a good member reference to follow up on on Wednesday.
That's all the big news! I gotta go, we are starting rehearsals for a missionary choir concert thing with all the missionaries here on Tahiti. Funstuff! Overall this week, I have felt a lot of stress relief. I feel so relaxed! I don't know why, maybe because I was sick. But I realized, even though I'm a little nervous to be the senior, and sad that Elder Porter and Elder T are leaving the house, I realized that good things keep on coming. I think it was in a recent Ensign or conference talk. Good things keep on coming. Even though this good thing is coming to the end, more good things are in the future. I have to carry on until I get to them.
Love you all tons, I gotta go!
Elder Barlow
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