Elder Schyler Shoemaker: Week 10 - Its a Great Day to be Alive :)

Salama everyone!!! How are you all? I hope you all had a great week like I did! It was a great week like always here in Madagascar!! There is so much to talk about but I am a slow typer but I will do my best :) This week had lots of ups and a few downs. Hondre, my first person I invited to be baptized, told us he would be moving to Diego which is a part of Madagascar where there are no missionaries. It was sad and I was surprised how sad it made me. I can barely understand Hondre but have grown to care about him and hope one day he will be able to be baptized. On the other hand though, we were able to watch General Conference this week! Wow that was great! With Conference being here we took the opportunity to invite all we could to come watch. We were so pumped to see how many investigators we had come!! It was so awesome! We even had a lot of new investigators who have never been to church come and attend! It was awesome to see people actually come, as Friday night we felt it was important to let all our investigators know so we were sprinting all around Tamatave to get to these peoples houses before it was too late. Conference was great for me also! We were able to watch all the sessions as a zone and I loved all the messages I heard! I want to talk about a few in this email :) One of the talks I really loved was Dallin H. Oaks talk in the Saturday Afternoon session. He talked about how today we have many resources to be able to share the gospel. But do we take advantage of these many resources? He also said, "How we feel about the Gospel is shown through our willingness to share it." I loved that!! If we really believe this gospel and really love it wouldn't we want to shout it from the rooftops and tell all that come in our path that this is the restored gospel of Jesus Christ? With that I have a challenge for all of you this week :) share the gospel at least one time. For many of you that can be as easy as posting on social media. Sometimes we may feel it awkward to post spiritual things on social media but if you are too shy to do it and need an excuse, I give you permission to post a pic of me and comment my favorite scripture which is Helaman 5:12. I would recommend you think of your own though as I am sure social media has loved getting a break from seeing my face the last little while :) If you accept and do the challenge I want you to email me and let me know how you shared the gospel this week. I also loved Russell M. Nelson's talk the Sunday morning session. I loved his quote that went something like this, "Our joy has very little to do with our circumstances in life but it has a lot to do with our focus in life." Focus on the joy! Focus on the gospel! And focus on the Savior. I hope you all have a great day and a great week! I love you and pray for you all!!! Veloma!