Week 9: Bye Bye MTC

Hello!!!!

Happy belated Thanksgiving to all (Canadians)! Canadian Thanksgiving is not the biggest deal here, but it's not like Thanksgiving really was at home either. We had a turkey lunch but no one knew it was for Thanksgiving. It wasn't even important enough to make it to a dinner lol. 

Nothing really that interesting happened this week honestly. As far as language goes, I'm getting better and am learning more grammar rules! I can now say two things are different, two things are the same, and one thing is better than the other. I told my teacher my mom was better than hers and she didn't find it very fun. Oh well. I can make my own sentences, but need lots of practice since the order is messed. 

We also had our last practice lessons of the mission! From now on it's real people only. So scary jeez. I'm not ready, especially for Tahitian. We had a few lessons with members out of the MTC, and then a few practice lessons with our teachers who pretend to be people from their mission that they taught. All in only Tahitian of course. I had my worst lesson play of my life this week too. I started a sentence I don't have the knowledge to finish, then literally sat in silence thinking for 55 seconds. That feels long when you are mid thought, making eye contact with the person you are talking to. I just quickly and quietly said it in french, hoping he wouldn't notice. 

 I got a Book of Mormon from lost and found and am reading through highlighting every time it says Christ, God, the Holy Ghost, or repentance. I'm only highlighting those words so it looks so cool. It's incredible how often I'm highlighting still. It's a super fun activity! I've been doing a lot of reading lately as I'm reading the Book of Mormon in that fashion, reading it in french, and reading the New Testament!

My finesse of the week is trading my lost and found tie for a quality floral one. Best exchange ever. I am a bit sad to see my tie go though :(

We had some banger devotionals this week. On sunday we had Shari Dew come! I had heard the name so I knew she was a big deal. She was amazing and talked a lot about the importance of questions which I loved. They truly are essential to revelation and growth! On tuesday, we had Quintin L Cook, from the quorum of the 12 apostles. In other words, A big Boy. We sang for him too! To make things even better, I was sitting next to sister Clement! It was also the day we got our travel plans to Tahiti. What a day it was!

Elder Cook talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and brought some artifact type things! I had been praying before that to know and have deeper knowledge that the Book of Momron is true, and got my answer from him. I felt the spirit so strongly in the meeting and just felt so so happy. The smiling kind of happy. The Book of Momron brings me joy and comfort each time I read it. Na roto i te Buka a Moromona, e farii tatou i te oaoa e i te hau e i te tamahanahana! (If you didnt understand that sentence, dw. It just means you don't understand Tahitian!).

 Elder Cook impacted me through feelings, but also dropped some facts about how it was translated and stuff. Feelings are of course the most important thing to having a strong testimony, but some of the facts help me reinforce my testimony and build off my foundation. No way could an uneducated man write that Book in 60 days! There are so many little things like that that reinforce my feelings!

Hope everyone has a fantastic week, and my P day ( day off when I email) is gonna be Mondays from now on I believe. Next email ill be in TAHITI!!!!!!! Im excited.

Love,

Elder Fiore

Somehow I was able to fit many pictures today! Lucky you guys!

1. Donuts from Uncle Jamie and Aunt Judy!

2. Thanksgiving Picture With Sister Clement

3.Thanksgiving meal

4. Thanksgiving meal, but with others now! Not their thansgiving tho :(

5. Selfie w clement, but also french sisters!

6. My study area. Very beautiful wow!

7.The district at choir! 

8. Half of the Tahiti group! 

9. Me and Swenson in front of  a beautiful lit up tree thats new. Like the tree of life one might say 

10. the tie trade. Which is nicer. Respond with your take!

11. Last temple trip in Utah!

Mom's Note:

This was Zach’s last week at the MTC. 

Unfortunately earlier in the week my aunt passed away suddenly. The funeral was scheduled for Friday so I wasn’t sure when we’d get to talk to Zach , but I knew I’d be finding time as this was our last chat before Tahiti! We were able to attend the funeral service, then during the reception we were able to slip out and talk to him from the car. The  fun part was near the end of our talk, my Mom (Gran) and sister were ready to move on to the family reception so came out to the car and were able to talk with Zach! He was able to speak Tahitian to them! 

Zach said his Tahitian is coming along. He spoke a lot in Tahitian for us too - so good! He’s certainly ready to go to Tahiti and start his journey there. He’s been learning a lot about what it’s like in Tahiti from returned Tahitian missionaries who come in to practice teaching with them. It sounds so different and so cool. 

Here's the "extra photos" from this week:

He asked me what my Dad's nickname was in Tahiti - and I said it was "Timi". He texted back: "I understand his nickname now"... "Jim (my dad's name) - j in Tahitian is a t sound. No word or name in Tahitian can end with a consonant, so they add vowels (the I)." How cool is that to understand that!!

However, I'm not gonna lie, he has to hand his phone in on Sunday - the day before he leaves - and I'm feeling very anxious about it. Even if we can't communicate during the week, it was reassuring to know he was at the other end and could text back and forth on his p-day. Some missions are "technology missions" where they get to use technology for the purpose of teaching in their mission field - and then use their phone to contact home on P day.  Zach's mission is not a technology one, so he doesn't have a phone. He will have to go to a church, an Internet cafe or a church member's house to access email and video chat - if the wifi is good enough. So it will be an adjustment.

He leaves Monday morning - leaves Salt Lake 11:49am to LA (12:50)pm. Then he leaves LA at 4:40pm and arrives Papeete 9:45pm (Tahiti is 6 hours behind Toronto time  - so it will be 3:45 am Toronto time). I'll be tracking those flights you can be sure!!

Week 8 : I was involved in TWO fights at the MTC. You won't believe the first

***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


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.

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:)

***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

Week 7 :Ia ora na i teie poipoi!

Hello!

Or should I say Ia ora na now that we're learning Tahitian.

Thats kind of the big news for this week. After 6 weeks of french, we have finally started Tahitian! 

With the language change, came personnel change as well though, as 4 elders in our district are going french speaking Africa and headed out this week. We had some reminiscent and great last french classes and ended with a super powerful testimony meeting.  We said goodbye to our two amazing french teachers who were so inspiring for me.After, wesang the classic leaving song of God be with you till we meet again.We then chanted our district chant of "nous nous confions, nous croyons, nous baptisons" (we trust, we believe, we baptize) so loudly and then finished with a cheeky "Fear no man". I yelled so loudly my voice and back hurt. Those were our district mottos, and yelling it was powerful. Fear no man is a lesson I will live my mission and life by. Its simple but powerful. 

  Perkins and young left to the Ivory Coast, Cortes to the Congo, and Taylor to Madagascar ( visa waiting in Michigan lol). It was sad to see them go. And disruptive. Cortes left at 3 am, and perkins+Young at 5. Both turned full lights on so I was woken. taylor then 4 am, same deal. Some rough sleeps. 

With them leaving thought, we got two new sisters going to tahiti! They are both from France and only speak french which has been great. They are so cool. I cant tell if they compliment my french genuinely or sarcastically though. 

With french we got over 10 days to learn the basic core, which is a bunch of units, phrases and vocab. For tahitian we got 3 days so ive been grinding and am way behind. We also taught our first two lessons on day 2 less than 24 hours after starting. It was so awkward as I understood literally nothing and could only (kind of) confidently say where im from and my name.  Tahitian is so cool but so hard. Ive been stressing. After 4 days of Tahitian I know how to do a basic intro, prayer, testimony and invitation to do certain things which is cool. I also have a scripture memorized! 

We've learned one sentence structure form where you start with E and then say two equal things its wack. E Paurau Mau Te buka a mormona. So that means "the book of mormon is true!" How you ask? Well, Paurau= word and mau after a word= true (not to be confused with mau before a word which means plural).  Te buka a mormomona= book of mormon (Pronounced te puta a moromona). So due to the E, True=Book of mormon. So book of mormon is true. All because they have no verb to be. Its fun though

I also realized today that instead of asking to go to the bathroom, ive simply been saying "Can i urinate?" all week to my teachers. oops.

To conclude, me and Davis are also zone leaders, which means we "look over" around 40 missionaries in our zone. That means We got to do orientation on first night and a tour which was fun. I made them all stop and make a wish on a star. i also started a new tradition of tucking new missionaries into bed and tucked them all in nice and tight. It may sound like im kidding but im not. 

This week has been a grind learning tahitian but ive come far considering its been a matter of days. I have really seen Gods hand in my life and with the language. Its been so crazy. I know I couldnt have even gotten this far alone for certain. I should not be able to pray, and be teaching lessons already. Bad lessons, but still. Its been crazy. I struggled more to see Gods help with french, but when thrown into tahitian and taken fully out of my comfort zone, being made humble, I can really see it. 

Hope all have a fantastic week!

Elder Fiore

1. District with frere Brenchley (middle) our teacher!

2. District with Seour vogel (Only girl) our other teacher. We cant put our arms around her lol

3. Last night as a room!

4.Taylor and Cortes, departing missionaries

5. Young and Perkins, even more missionaries heading out :( but :)

6. Class sign changed to Tahitian! its official!

Mom notes:

Have I mentioned how much I love Fridays? I love first thing in the morning having a text exchange with Zach - just catching up on a few things before we talk. Then having some back and forth during the day as we remember different things to say or ask. 

Today I almost told him to FaceTime earlier than usual bcs Rob was away, and being Friday the little boys often don't come home from school.. but I decided just in case to wait. And right as it was time to talk, Sam, Josh and Rob walked in! Then Zandra texted me to FaceTime, and we quickly texted Gabe and he happened to be around! It was awesome to have the whole fam together and catch up a bit! We did a family photo! lol

Zach shared with us his amazing Tahitian. Wow! He is able to say so much in one week! Of course he is stressed and down on himself for not being good enough. We reminded him to be patient. We loved hearing all about his experiences here and got to share with him more about his every day life - the ups and downs - the good and bad. Overall, he's doing awesome. Has a bit of a cold this week and a cough and is tired,  but it's going well. Two more weeks before he leaves for Tahiti! I already sent his Christmas gift as Canada Post said it could take a couple of months!! 

I love in his letter he talked about how he stopped and made every one wish on a star. Ever since he was a tiny boy we would go out to the stars and recite: "Starlight, Starbright, first star I see tonight, wish I may, wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight". We talked about no matter how far away we are, we are always under the same sky and can look at the same stars and moon. 

Our call:

Here are some more photos too that he didn't include in his email:

Ok so he might not have wanted to send this first one! lol. He gets a bleeding nose frequently so I guess he still gets them (interesting note - for me, but maybe not for you - I used to get bleeding noses all the time when I was pregnant with him!)

He sent these photos to the little boys bcs he had encouraged them to read the story about the Brother of Jared:

Their crazy snack bin!

And we had a quick call when he was in the caf and guess who walked by! It was nice to chat with her for a few seconds!

***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