Akory ziora! I hope you all had a great week this week. This week was good for us here. I sometimes wonder if I am in a different world. This place could not be more different than Madagascar. The French is coming a long and we are gonna get it rolling soon. Did some more tracting this week and trying to find people to teach. Found a few people. Found a family from Fort Dauphin. Man that was like catching up with family you haven't seen for a long time. They were so shocked I could speak Malagasy and when I spoke the dialect from the South of Madagascar they freaked out haha. They were very surprised I lived in Fort Dauphin and they asked me a billion questions and it was fun. Definitely fun when we find Malagasies here. They are just the best people in the world! Well this week I had a study that really helped me and I would like to share it! I read a talk from Whitney L. Clayton from the May 2017 conference. It was great. It talked about trusting God first and receiving blessings second. Or at least that's what I got out of it. It used two examples I really liked. The first one from John 2 verses 5 through 9. This is when Christ turns the water to wine. Mary says to the servants in verse 5, "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." So Christ says fill up this water pot with water. And they fill it up to the brim. And then Christ turns the water to wine. The words Mary says to the servants are very powerful for me. It's that easy! Whatever he asks, just do it. Sometimes in our life we want the water to be turned to wine before we fill up the pot. We want to see the blessings and miracles before we obey. That's not how God or even the world works though. We don't get money before we work and we don't get smart before we study. We must always show our faith by our actions and then God has already promised blessings and we will always receive them. God doesn't go back on His word. Whether that is tithing, repentance, keeping the Sabbath day holy, or whatever it may be. Every commandment has promised blessings. So if we do our best to keep all of them, there will be countless blessings. If we keep some, we will miss out on all the blessings God has already promised us if we stay obedient. In the Pearl of Great Price, there is another example. In chapter 5 verses 5 through 9. Adam is commanded to worship God and offer up the firstlings of his flock for an offering unto the Lord. Then after awhile an angel appears to Adam and asks him why he offers sacrifices unto the Lord. Adam says, "I know not, save the Lord commanded me." Then Adam receives an explanation for the reason and need of the sacrifices. I love Adam's response. Sometimes we don't understand why we need to do this or why that isn't okay to do. As we first exercise faith in the Lord, our understanding and knowledge will be broadened. We will see the great importance of obedience. God loves us and He will never do anything to harm us or lead us astray. So if it is something He's asked us to do, just do it and we will understand why later. We will see blessings later. I love these examples. It has helped me a lot. I hope you all have a great week! Mazotoa!!
Some views of the island.
This painting is on the side of an apartment building and the kid reminds me of Madagascar.
Sometimes when you drive up in the mountains you just get in a cloud haha.
We were visiting a family when I took that pic of us in a cloud. This famly is way cool! The wife is a Malagasy and the husband was Mr. Reunion back in the day haha. He is way buff. They had us over for dinner last night and it was great!
Throwback to Madagascar! Got this pic from Elder Bowen. This is what we call a taxi be haha.
