Crazy Times... Gendarmes

Ia ora na ia tatou!!

Sorry it's been a little while since I've written an email, these past couple weeks have been quite crazy for us, hopefully I can fit everything in a simple email haha!

We had transfers this last week and I am now training Elder Avaeoru! He's an amazing missionary and it's only been a week!! We are taking care of three wards: Vaiari, Taharuu, and Mahaiatea. We are whitewashing all three, which has proven to be a little difficult to figure it all out in my limited french and Tahitian knowledge haha. Elder Avaeoru has helped us out a lot and I really hope I can get better at french and understand the people here more.

We are now able to go out more! I went to church for the second time since arriving here in Tahiti and it was amazing. Going to church here is my favorite thing, the singing gets me every time.

We went to quite a few places to take pictures and explore our area a little more, it's so beautiful. The Tahitians say it isn't because there's too many people and everything's been modernized. They say the islands around Tahiti are where it's really pretty, maybe someday I'll get to go :)

A week before transfers I had an interesting experience. We received a call from the Elders late at night, who told us that someone was maybe trying to break into the sisters home... Immediately we all left in our tiny Toyota Avanza and we pretty much flew down to Taravao. Family is everything here, so if a member of family is in trouble, the whole family responds. We were so close to their house until we spotted a group of three militarized police men (les gendarmes) stop us at a roundabout (keep in mind this is near 10 PM, when the countries curfew is at 9 PM).

We hurried to try to explain the situation that was happening and after some back and forth they told us to lead the way. So here we are, leading the police to the house and we arrive with pretty much our whole zone of missionaries in the parking lot with the sisters. The police talked with them and tried to figure out what was going on. Some dude was apparently lurking around their house and trying the fence and walking around, so the police went out for a search in the neighborhood. We all talked together to release some adrenaline and we all went home around 11 PM, while the sisters went to sleep at the senior missionaries home for the night. Quite an adventure!

Otherwise, we are doing pretty well here. We now have an Elder Ward from Texas in the mission which is awesome, hopefully more foreign missionaries are able to come soon! (Possibly 8 more by the end of this month!)

Thank you all for reading, hopefully I'll be better at writing in the coming weeks. Hopefully there's lots of good photos for ya!

Nana!

Elder Hansen