Salama! Hope you all are doing good!! I hope it was a great week!! I had a great week! We had a baptism this week for Malaza who comes to church every week with her Grandma and Uncle (who is a returned missionary). She is a 12 year old girl and has a strong desire to live the Gospel. It was great to see her Uncle, Firazana, baptize her this last Saturday. We had a great week! Working hard to try and get investigators to take the long walk from our area to the church that we are sharing with the other branch until the new building is finished. Many times we will have investigators find out about where the church is and tell us that is too far away...disappointing and hard sometimes but we are looking for the ones that will swim to America if they have to! One of my favorite investigators right now is a guy named Dorgivier. He is in his late 20s and has a limp leg. His one leg doesn't look like it just didn't grow as it is shorter and skinnier than the other one. He is the happiest guy though and has made a big impact on me. I truly love that guy. He is at church every week and he lives farther away than anyone else we teach. He has such strong faith and wants to follow Christ and do what is right and it is amazing. He has a baptismal date for July right now! My spiritual thought today is from a talk by Elder Bednar from November 2016 Conference. I don't know the title, I just remembered reading it and I thought about it a lot this week. He talks about the story in Mark of a father who brings his son to Christ to be healed. He asks Christ to heal him and Christ asks him if he believes his son can be healed. The Father replies. "Yea Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief." I have always been a little confused when I read that verse before. I always thought so does he believe or does he not? I love Elder Bednar's talk about this. He talks about how sometimes we have faith in Christ and the Gospel but we lack faith that it can help us personally. I am sure the father knew Christ could heal his son. He had seen Christ do miracles before probably. But maybe the father doubted a little if that miracle could be for him and his son personally. Many of us believe in miracles and believe we can receive blessings from our Heavenly Father. But at the same time we doubt that those will ever appear in our own personal lives. We need to know and have faith that Christ and our Heavenly Father can personally help us. We need to know that they know us personally and they want to help us. All we need to do is have faith and ask. And if we don't feel we have enough faith, I am sure they are willing to help our unbelief just like Christ helped that humble father's. I know that we can see miracles and blessings in our own personal lives when we strive to follow the Savior. I know they are always there for us and loves us. They are just waiting for us to be ready and to ask! I love this Gospel and know it is true. I hope you all have a great week! You are in my prayers!
P.S. I guess the talk wasn't November conference as there is no conference in November. It was 2016 though hahaha.
These two kids and this family have made a lasting impact on me...I talked about them in voice recording. They are homeless and live on this bench in the second picture. I see the two girls and their little brother who is not in the pic, walking around town by themselves. I see them asleep on the sidewalk and catching bugs to eat for dinner that night...it had been a week or so since I last saw them and I heard the one to my left in the pic yell and I turned and they came running and gave me a hug...I always joke around and tease with them and it breaks my heart to see such happy kids have such hard life...we need to always be grateful for what we have.
Me with another cute little girl whos mom is a member and the little girl is usually all smiles except for when the camera comes out dangit haha.
A canoe race, doesnt get bigger than this here in Mada haha tons of people were watching this.
A selfie with the crowd watching the wrestlers that I talk about in recording.
Some pictures of the cultural wrestling tournament that happened this week. And all the people that came to watch it. First ones back to touch the ground loses it was cool haha.
The baptism! The font #legit
The two little girls that I did interviews for, the other Elders taught them.
Malaza and her family and a couple of her member friends! It was a great day!
A picture at dinner at the house of the two little girls who were baptized.
Some kids that live by Dorgivier. They freak out and go crazy when we come to teach him haha.
