some Q&A's at our family blog Raising Flowers and Skids
Hello!
Another beautiful week has passed at the MTC, this one not so beautiful. Its been hitting the negatives which has been horrible cause I have no zachets (jackets), since I packed for Tahiti!
Aside from the cold this week has been great. General Conference filled our whole weekend and it was amazing. General conference is a semi annual conference where all the higher people in the church give talks and stuff. All part of the modern revelation which the church is directed with. General Conference was sooo good. Never thought i'd see the day where I LOVE it. I took over 24 pages of notes and learned so much. I shed a single tear, nodded my head in agreement plenty, and even laughed a few times. I was genuinely sad when it ended. Its all about mindset I guess. Ive had these my whole life and have never learned more and felt better than after this one. We weren't allowed bringing snacks in to watch conference though which was the only negative. I'm used to feasting. Not to worry though, Pugh and I smuggled in snacks using a scripture case.
Oh, and "fight" #1 happened at conference viewing. So the french sisters in our district needed interpretation for conference, so we sat in a row which had two seats saved for interpretation. The sisters sat on the end though, rather than in the specific seats with saved signs, so Pugh moved the sign on his seat.A guy then said "you better not be sitting there. Im not gonna lie I'm really annoyed" but he said it so aggressively we thought it was a joke. So, thinking it was a joke, Pugh got interpretation head phones, put them on, and gave him a cheeky look back. the guy then stood up and started trying to go at Pugh. He got held back by three other elders then stormed out.
Tahitian has also been progressing. Slowly, but surely. I understand sentence structure now a bit ad have been created my own phrases. Simple ones though. Ive gone away from memorizing phrases, and am now focusing on words. We've taught a few lessons, and they get better and better.
The best part of learning Tahitian, other than it being so cool, fun and allowing us to better talk and help the people there, are the SYL stickers. SYL stickers are stickers we get to put on our name tag that say the language we are learning. SYL is "Speak Your Language". For some reason, people like collecting them... I don't get why. I sold my Tahitian and french one for 10 each! Ive made 26 American selling. Its nuts.
The second fight was in a basketball game. Some guy was being super cocky and annoying. I blocked him, and then he got super aggressive. So he kept like shouldering me in the stomach and chest, and he did it a few times and i absorbed it, but then i just planted my feat and drew a charge (went down). He was not happy and like grabbed me in a bear hug and started yelling at me. I pushed him off and there was some back and forth before Pugh hit a 3 on his head and he quit.
So back to conference. There is so much I could talk about, but ill talk about president Ballards talk. President Ballard started his talk by talking about appreciating family and the time we have with them, before its too late. We have to always be in the moment. Its hard to always be in the moment with technology, but when we're old, what will we remember? What will we want to remember? That beautiful moment with family? Or your phone with family in the background. he really got me thinking to always be in the moment. Another thing he said was to SLOW IT DOWN. One of my favourite songs is "slow it down" by the Lumineers. Its about a girl and a guy who's love doesn't work out because they want different things pretty much. The chorus is the guy asking the girl to slow it down ( from the "fast life") and come back to him. I had never thought of myself from the girls perspective. In life, we get caught up in so much everyday. Sometimes we have to just slow it down, and come back to whats important, whatever that may be for you. take a break from the business of life.
Appreciate your family and friends! Create memories you will want to have and cherish forever!
Love all you people,
Elder Fiore
1.The zone
2.Sneaking food into general conference
3.Sunday nap
4 Sat with Clement at choir
5. Ontario gang
Mom's note:
Never in a million years did I think I would ever see or hear Zach say he LOVED General Conference. Miracles do happen, lol! We missed him this year at our usual General Conference lunch feast with meats and cheese and bread, chips and shrimp and a "Mix up treat" ( a treat I always made the boys when they were younger where I mixed up different treats that we had around the house!). I loved reading his insights about Pres Ballard's talk - and to Slow it Down. (I already got teary when I listened to the song as it reminds me of Zach since I knew it was his fave - so now even more so). Zach wrote the little boys this week too with some great insights about Elder Uchtdorf's talk - about the grand adventure of life and stepping out of your comfort zones. Zach and I also chatted on google hangout on Friday about some other talks. I love being able to first, chat with him on Fridays throughout the day, and second, chat with him about conference!
It was Zach's commencement ceremonies for high school on Thursday, which of course, he could not go to. All his friends were in town for commencement and Thanksgiving, so I invited them to come over and Facetime Zach with me. He was super surprised and spent some time sharing some of his experiences with them and hearing a tiny bit about their lives ( they each gave him a "fun fact" with what they were up to). He elaborated on some of the stories he had written about, talked about some of the rules, and some of the challenges (including the cultural difference he notices being Canadian living in the US (with mainly Americans). He talked to them in Tahitian and tried to explain some of the confusing grammar.
They all had to get back to their families and plans after a little bit , and then I was able to Facetime with him on my own. We talked about how hard it is to learn a new language and how was getting a bit better. He is so hard on himself though!
Earlier in the day he had asked me to tell him where my Dad had served and I was able to pull out my Dad's journals and I made a list of what I could read/understand and sent it to him. He now can reference the info if he ever goes to these areas. Here's what I sent him:
His journal says he arrived in Papeete to the Mission Home on March 17, 1955 (went to MTC (not sure it was called that) in January 1955. He was set apart as a missionary by Spencer W Kimball on January 26, 1955 and got his patriarchal blessing that same day by Eldred Smith (at that time, there was only one Patriarch in the whole church)) He was released from his mission February 10th 1957.
***If you have questions about what a mission even is - then you might want to check out
some Q&A's at our family blog Raising Flowers and Skids
1. First place : Patio Tahaa - Patio is the main village on the island of Taha'a
2. Pahure (still in Taha'a I think)
3. Pueu - 66 km south east of Papeete
4. Puna'auia (outside of Papeete) Commune in the suburbs of Papeete
5. Takaroa - an atoll ( coral reef encircling a lagoon) - but he has it written for many people - so must be some village in that area
6. Nearest land to Takaroa is Takapoto (this is where people remembered Grandpa - they brought out a box of pictures and there were pics of him it)
7. Ahe Tuamotu islands
*** I read that Takaroa is part of the King George Islands subgroup which includes Ahe, Manihi, Takapoto, Takaroa and Tikei - he must have spent a fair amount of time here as all these places are listed.
8. Patutoa, Papeete
He stops recording a bit over halfway through his mission so I don't have anymore. I do recall him talking about Raiatea and Mo'orea so I don't know if he went there after he had stopped recording in his journal. Very possible as he did talk about them. Ama said the he had talked to her about his time in Bora Bora so I don't know if he actually went to that island or Ama just interprets Tahiti as Bora Bora in general??
I'm pretty excited to see if he will serve in these same areas. We do have some names of people in the areas and perhaps some of their descendants will be around. I'm sure there will be some cool stories!
One more week left! We get to talk to him later this weekend too because it's Thanksgiving! Yay!
I also got this random text this week:
I just love getting texts like this out of the blue:)
some Q&A's at our family blog Raising Flowers and Skids
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