We visited the Australes a few weeks ago. This is the southern archipelago in our mission. It is also the place where the first LDS missionaries arrived in French Polynesia back in April 1844...the island of Tubuai (Too-poo-I) to be exact. This was the first foreign language mission of the LDS Church.
We were able to visit three of the five islands...Raivavae, Tubuai, and Rurutu.
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Addison Pratt, first missionary in French Polynesia
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Here are some pictures of our visit to Tubuai.
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| An early church building...see the lettering at the top. |
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| This brother attended church in this building when he was young. |
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| A monument to the early missionaries |
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| An area referred to as "The Sacred Grove" on Tubuai. Prayers were given here by the early saints. |
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| The early saints on Tubuai built this bridge to help them get to church. |
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| Our lunch spot. |
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| Gotta love those missionaries! |
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| Exploring |
Often times we end up with extra time on the isles due to the limited flights on and off the islands. So despite the fight we had with mosquitoes we were able to enjoy some of the beauty of the islands...
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| Just below our pension on Raivavae |
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| Raivavae...a baptism had taken place here just two weeks before |
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| On Rurutu |
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| Exploring Rurutu |
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| A grotte (cave) on Rurutu |
The trip was almost a week long and it is always hard to be away from Tahiti for that long, mainly because of the lack of internet connection with our missionaries and all. But it was good to be in this rich area of church history and meet the people here.
Sorry for the long delay between posts...I'll try to be better at updating this blog.
Love you all
Steven and Debbie, this is so great to see the parts of your mission that even you haven't seen before. Amazing! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking to tell you that we had an acquaintance in our old stake downtown (SL Park Stake) sometime during the late 1980s-early 1990s who was called to be the President of the Tahiti/French Polynesia mission. He and his wife were natives, wonderful humble folks. He was a stake clerk and Jon had to turn reports into him. I know his name but could never spell it correctly. Maybe you have him in your mission history: Takehu Munanui. I just remember him as a sweet, gentle and kind man. He even had a weekly program on the local community radio station KRCL playing Tahitian music!
Hi my name is Hector Marquez and I currently reside in Draper, UT. I will likely be taking a group of young men to Tahiti in April and we are interested in some sort of service project. We would like some ideas to help the community in anyway we can. Please reach out to me so that we can start planning something to help my young men reach a different experience as they visit this beautiful island. heckmarquez@gmail.com
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