31 January 2016 - Week 13: Le zoo et beaucoup de bonne nourriture :)

This is a mural en centre ville-- Noumea is very cool!

Bonjour tout le monde!!

First of all, the last four missionaires from my MTC district arrived this week! Elder Rhodes is in my district and I got to see Elder Watkins and Sister Vogel last night at a stake fireside!! 

We went to Le parc zoologique et forestier last P-day as well. There were peacocks roaming around all over the place! That was fun :) And we were making peacock sounds that whole time. There were a lot of cool tropical birds, like parrots (in French it's perroquet) and cockatiels and things that looked a little bit like toucans but with bigger beaks. There were cool lizards, too, like iguanas and giant geckos. There were two ostriches, which was kinda random, but cool. Elder Tauotah (pronounced t-ow-ta) walked up to it, and it just kneeled down and fluffed out its wings and flung its head around to defend himself, haha :) 

We also got to see the national bird of New Caledonia, the Cagou. It's a flightless, gray bird with a mullet, hahaha. They stand really still and then all of a sudden start moving and then stand still again. 

The Cagous!

How the parrots climb on their cage.

We ate dinner at the Tuahivaatetonohiti's again this Monday and she made perroquet. It's not parrot, haha, but it's the parrot fish. The kind of fish that's blue and pretty and it has a beak. Y'all can Google pictures because I didn't get a chance to take a picture before we ate. But it was so good! Honestly fish is really good here! :) On Wednesday, we got to eat lunch en ville because we had time between our lessons downtown. We ended up finding this small restaurant of an ex-member. He loves the missionaries, though, and he gave us free food :) He and his wife are super nice and we definitely thanked them a ton. We had poisson cru chinois (raw fish salad) and Ma'a Tinito, which had pork and beans and pasta and cabbage and lots of other stuff. It was all really good!! :) 

Poisson cru chinois (raw fish salad) and Ma'a Tinito

As for the missionary work, it was a little bit of a rough week. It's been really hot and it's just going to get hotter, so sometimes it's hard to be motivated to do anything, especially after things fall through. One of our amis just kept not showing up for our lessons, and we'd reschedule and then she'd not be there again... But we got to see her on Saturday, so it's okay.

We had lessons with the Draytons this week and we've been inviting them to church, but they say they're too old and that they're Catholic so they can't go. It's a little frustrating, especially because you can tell that the wife wants to go, but the husband doesn't, and she's not going to do anything without him. But we'll keep trying!

The highlights were that our two amis with baptismal dates both had their baptismal interviews and things are good! I'm really excited for them and I can see that change of heart in both of them just over the past few weeks! Also, we had another ami and an inactif who live together come to church again this week. We had a lesson with them yesterday, and they're really noticing the spirit and change in their attitudes during the week after going to church on Sunday.

There's a lot of work to do here and honestly, I feel like I don't do anything except pray and bear my testimony when I can, and then Heavenly Father takes care of the rest! I'm excited for this week--we have a lot of good things planned! :)

In other random news, I got a new pillow and it's the best :) 

I hope all of you have a wonderful week! It's already February! Time is flying by!!

Je vous aime!

Soeur Matheson