Salama e! I hope you all are doing great! I am doing better than great. Sure is hard to complain when you get to go out everyday and be a missionary. This week was tsara be. We found a lot of cool new investigators. We found some great families to teach. That always makes it an exciting and fun week. We got to teach a lot and find a lot and man it feels good. I don't know but something about knocking doors in the hot sun and saving souls just makes ya happy! This week I started a new study. I think it was Elder Bednar who suggested reading the whole Book of Mormon while focusing on one question you want answered or something you need help with. I started doing that this week and it is like I am reading the Book of Mormon for the first time all over again. It's awesome! Lots of new things and ideas come into my head and I sometimes find myself just sitting and thinking for awhile. This week I thought a lot about the word remember. In our companion study a few weeks ago, my comp mentioned that someone had told him that one of the most important words in the church is remember. I thought that was cool and thought about it a lot. Then this last week, I read a talk by Elder Rasband from October 2016. It is titled, "Lest Thou Forget." I highlighted a handful of quotes from this talk and one of them was something along the lines of this, "Remember, especially in the times of problems and trials, the time you felt the Spirit and had a strong testimony." I really liked this quote and then it all came alive as I read the Book of Mormon. In first Nephi, Chapter 4, it's the part where Nephi goes back to Laban and finds him passed out drunk. Nephi talks about how he feels the spirit tell him to kill Laban and that is what he should do. But he worries a little bit. He thinks, man I have never killed anyone how am I supposed to do this? Is this really what the Lord wants me to do? And then in verse 14 he says, "I remembered the words which the Lord spake unto me.." He remembers the Lord telling him that if they keep the commandments they will prosper in the land and that if his people do not have those plates they will not be able to keep the commandments. So he gains the courage to do what the Lord wants him to do. And it all started with "remember." So many times in the scriptures, we see examples of people that don't quite remember the things they experienced. The children of Israel pass through the Red Sea on dry ground and a few chapters later they worship idols. Will we always remember the times we have felt the Spirit? Will we always remember the covenants we have made? Will we remember those times where you just sit back and think to yourself, 'man there's no way this isn't true?' I know that as we strive to remember all the small little experiences we have had, we won't feel like we need some huge and giant miracle or experience to confirm our testimony. We will fall back on that foundation that started at baptism, the first time we felt the spirit, the first time we prayed to know if it was true, the first time we felt Heavenly Fathers hand in our life, and so on. I know this is true. I have felt the Spirit witness it unto me. And I hope that no matter what happens in my life that I will never forget that. I hope we can all strive to strengthen our faith as we remember. I hope you all have a great week! Mazotoa!
Pics of car crash that I talk about in my voice recording. Don't worry this wasn't me :)
(Schyler told us that the young man who washes the cars for the mission, decided to take their truck on a joyride after he washed it, and ended up rolling the truck. He's preparing to serve a mission right now so this isn't the best timing. :( )
Pic of Dina. He is 13 and a stud. We were just walking one day and he came and grabbed us and told us he is a member although we didn't know him. Turns out his family and him are active though (that was back in my first week in area). But then this week he came and found us again and told us to come teach this one guy and then we went and taught a family with him. We made a return appt with them for Saturday and sure enough we show up to their house on Saturday and Dina is already waiting at their gate for us with his book of Mormon. He kept telling me he only has 5 more years til he can go on a mission. He is a stud.
Then pics of the "Christian Leadership Conference" that our church was invited to. I describe it in my voice recording. Basically stepped over into Twilight Zone and were with the richest of the rich in Mada. (Schyler said he felt like he had stepped into the Great and Spacious Building even though it was meant to be a Christian/Religious conference).
Some pics of some of our Bishops kid's and their friend haha. Love these Malagasy kids.
