Salama daholo! I hope you all are doing good and had a great week! Much like Bingham Football, the work of the Lord just can't be stopped. Today I received an email from the Branch President in the branch I served in down in Fort Dauphin before the evacuation. He told me that there is a baptism today for some of the people we taught! Wow! I cant even describe my excitement from that news! What a great example of member missionary work. I asked for them to send pictures so next week I may have some baptismal pictures that have no missionaries in it. What a great day! This week was good too! I'm not getting laughed at as much for my French so that's good haha. We had some great lessons and we are working hard with the members here to get this branch going. It has definitely been a transition getting used to Reunion, which seems like a whole new world. As different and crazy as it is here, the Gospel is the same, no matter where you go! This week I did a little study about virtue. President Foote did a zone conference in Fort Dauphin about virtue and I had been wanting to study that more and this week I was able to. Virtue to me is one of the most important Christ-like attributes that we can obtain. Virtue is mainly in our thoughts and what we truly desire. To me virtue is our focus; what we focus our thoughts, words, and actions on. Focus is a huge part in anything you do. In sports, you need to be focused to be able to perform at the best of your abilities and in living the Gospel it is no different. I read a talk that related the story of Peter walking out on the water with Christ, to our focus. Peter was able to walk on the water because he was focused on Christ. But maybe he looked down or back at the boat and lost his focus, then he began to sink. As we keep our focus on Christ, meaning that as we are virtuous and center our lives on Christ and His gospel, we can do amazing things in our life such as Peter walking on the water. While I was in the MTC, Chad and Michelle Lewis came and gave talks. Michelle talked about when she was first dating Chad. She said all he talked about was hurdling a guy in a game. She said that's literally all he wanted to talk about, they'd be walking down the street and he would jump over a garbage can just as he would a guy in a game. Back then, not too many people jumped over defenders in a football game. But Michelle said one day, she saw Chad do it in a game. She used that as an example that as we think and focus our lives on certain things, we become those things. What if we constantly thought and focused on the Savior? I know that would change our lives in ways we can't even imagine. I love the example one of the General Authorities talked about last General Conference. I don't remember who told the story of the young boy who died and then his parents found an alert on his phone that said "Remember to put Jesus Christ at the center of your life today." That should be all of our goal. Each day as we strive to put the Savior first, I know that we can become the people He wants us to be and there is no greater joy than that in this life. I hope you all have a great week! Mazotoa ary aza maditra!! Veloma.
A pic of Josette and her kids and some other kids at her stand where she sells eggs and bageda (kind of like a sweet potato sorta thing). Miss these people. Josette's son emailed me this week and that made me way happy!
A pic of a sweet waterfall our first counselor here in Reunion took us to.
And he took us to a nice beach also.
Our dinner with the Jeankatt Family last Wednesday.
A pic of our group at the picnic last Saturday (Schy said the 1st Counselor in their Branch Presidency invited a less-active family on a picnic in the mountain and wanted the Elders to come along)
