Akory aby ianareo! What's up everyone? I hope you all had a great week. I have had a crazy week but good to say the least. I have no idea where to even start. I am sure many of you have thought this whole transition has been hard and it will be hard to learn a new language, etc. If you thought that, you are right. And just wait what I have to say this week hahaha. This week we had a zone conference and we found out our areas of service here in La Reunion and our companions. The night before the zone conference, I realized what was going to have to happen. There are 6 elders that were originally called to this island to speak French and then me along with 11 other elders came from being evacuated in Madagascar. So that makes 12 of the 18 are "Malagasy" missionaries. Also 3 of those 6 elders that learned French in the MTC are still in training so they are brand new missionaries. I realized that we were gonna have some companionships that are two Malagasy elders that don't know French. And I bet you have guessed it by now. I am in one of those companionships haha. Not only that, but I am serving in St. Pierre, which is the bottom of the island and we have four missionaries in our branch and all four came from Madagascar and we are not good at French haha. So we are whitewashing an area that we don't even know the native language. It has been crazy to say the least. My comp is Elder Juchau and he has been on his mission 6 weeks. He is a good guy and I am happy to be working with him. This whole situation is crazy, man. In church they announced us as the new missionaries that don't speak French. (At least I think that is what they said). I wish I could just video our daily struggle with communicating with people and stuff. It is pretty funny actually. We always thank people for being patient as we are probably very frustrating to talk to. In our branch and house it is me, Juchau, Stromberg, and Alvarez. They are all good guys and good missionaries and it has been great to work with them. We were talking about how we feel as the early first missionaries of the church may have felt as they traveled to an area they had never been and didn't speak the language. It is an experience to say the least. In our zone conference, President Foote referenced Elder Ellis' talk from the last General Conference. His talk was about how "hard is good." I have thought about that a lot. I wont lie, I am so sad that we had to leave Madagascar but I am grateful for this hard and difficult situation as I feel I am learning a lot. I read in Alma 40 and verses 3 and 5 really stood out to me. In this chapter, Alma is talking to his son, Corianton. In verse 3 Alma says that there are many mysteries of God that we don't know and that we will never know. But that he had inquired diligently to know of the resurrection of the dead and that God revealed truth unto him. Then in verse 5 he basically says that God told him a little but he still doesn't know everything and that's fine and it "suffices him" to know that God knows all. It made me think a lot and I thought a lot about that in relation to "hard is good." During this whole evacuation, I just wondered how this could be happening. I didn't understand why God just let us all leave and (in my mind) abandon all the great people we had come to love. I felt as though I was being forced to forsake these great people and it was hard on me. As I thought about "hard is good" and how Alma had faith and could just say well I don't really know too much why that happened or why its like this but hey its God. He knows more than us and He will take care of it. Hard is good because it forces us to have faith. It forces us to rely on God. We see it all the time in The Book of Mormon. The people lose their faith when times are good and things are going well. Then a famine or "plague" comes and they are strengthened spiritually and reminded that they must always remember God and rely on him. I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father that knows our limits and knows how to make us stronger through making us face trials and hardships. As we have faith in him, as Alma did, we will learn to recognize how much we have been given and how important it is to follow Him. I hope you all have a great week! Mazotoa! Veloma!
A sunset in our area here in St. Pierre.
The church building.
The view from the member's house. It is so weird being in a first world, I hate it to be honest. We are spoiled way more than we deserve and it has been frustrating and just lots of emotions for me seeing so many things I never even noticed or thought about before I went to Madagascar.
We have a car, again not a fan of using a car but things are way too far and public transportation isn't effective here. This is me and Elder Juchau posing with the car by the beach ha.
The view from our DMB meeting yesterday.
Us with our DMB Brother Ivaha.
We went to the top of this mountain this morning for P-day but it was surrounded in clouds ha. Still cool.
Last goodbye pics from Madagascar. Another Elder sent me these as we took them with his camera so I didn't have them last week. This mom and her family are awesome. She is a single mother and always made us each a big bottle of juice for the week. I miss them!!
