Akory aby?! Inona vaovao aminareo? Mbola tsara aty any Paradisa Gasy. This week was crackalackin', in the words of the zebra from the Madagascar movie..I'm forgetting his name right now but oh well. But for real it was a great week! The work is going awesome! We have tons of awesome families and people we are teaching and we experience these awesome miracles everyday. Man it's so cool. Rodeo will be getting baptized this Saturday! We visited him Friday and talked about baptism. He asked tons of questions and said he feels that it's true but he wants to know more. He actually came across anti-Mormon stuff (those guys need to take a pay check and take a vacation man, like seriously). But that made him ask tons of questions and kind of hesitate a little. But he said he wanted to fast and pray and he would call us the next morning and give us an answer. We said ok. And I told him to think of just one question, that is "is the Book of Mormon the word of God? Or is it a book and lie written by Joseph Smith?" All the other questions depend on that. Well Saturday morning Rodeo called and he simply said I'm ready! It will be a great day Saturday! I'm so pumped for him. Also this last week, we were walking on the street at like 8:00 to go to our last time. There was a mom walking with her little son and I kinda just started poking the kid on the head and messing with him and stuff haha. Then I started talking with the mom and I asked if she went to church. She said yeah and then pointed at her husband a few steps ahead of us and said he's a member of your church. So we talked with them for awhile and got their phone number. Turns out her husband, JeanGee, was baptized like 10 years ago or so and is in-active now. But they said they wanted to learn with us. So we ended up calling them last week and the guys phone is what they would call a foza here to say the least haha. That basically means its a phone from Madagascar and it sounds like you're talking to a darth vader with no teeth walking through a tunnel in New York on the other end. Anyways hard to hear what is being said haha. So the first couple tries we couldn't get the phone to work. Then this last week, our last time fell through and we decided to call JeanGee again. It was about 7:30 at night and he answered and told us the name of the area he lived. We asked a guy where that was and he said it was far away and the road going there was very dangerous with lots of thieves and stuff. He told us to not go there and got the opinions of those sitting around him to convince us not to go. Then we said ok and started walking in the direction he pointed. He said "Hey! Where you going?" We told him, "The place you just told us about." haha. Anyways he didn't know what he was talking about as it was very safe (don't worry mom). How grateful I am we went. We found JeanGee and lo and behold we found four families. JeanGee and his siblings and their spouses and kids. Ends up being about 15-20 people not including little kids. And their grandparents are married in the temple. Wow. They said they will be coming to church next week. I can't even wait. There's nothing better than being a missionary! Life is great. This week I read an awesome talk from last conference. It is "Take The Holy Spirit As Your Guide" by Elder Larry Y. Wilson. He talks about a lot of great things but my favorite part is his example about Lehi's dream in The Book of Mormon. He first shares a scripture from 1 Nephi 15 saying, "And I said unto them that it was the word of God; and whoso would hearken unto the word of God, and would hold fast unto it, they would never perish; neither could the temptations and the fiery darts of the adversary overpower them unto blindness, and lead them away to destruction." He talks about how those in Lehi's dream that walked along the path either held firmly to the iron rod or simply followed the footsteps of those ahead of them. I really like that example. There's two kind of members in this church. Those that listen to the word of God and those that listen and also hold fast unto it. We must make sure we are doing all we can to hold fast unto the iron rod by doing all the small and simple things each day. Prayer, scripture study, church attendance and partaking the sacrament each week and temple attendance. If we do those things with pure heart and true intent than we can be sure we are holding fast to the rod. Sadly those that simply walk along the path following the footsteps of those ahead or simply grazing the iron rod will fall away when mists of darkness come. We cannot be casual on the path back to Heavenly Father when life is good and there are no challenges. Because when hardships come and temptations appear if we are not already holding fast to the rod we will likely slip away. What can we do to better hold fast unto the word of God? I am so grateful for this Gospel. There is no other way that we can receive true and pure happiness. I hope you all have a great week! Mazotoa!
Some Malagasies working hard. Pulling these huge carts up huge hills.
And idk how the heck they can carry that many bricks on their head and walk to the house they are building like that. Dang.
A pic of us at dinner with Mirado and his family!
Pics of the view of a new apartment for missionaries.
That big white steeple and church is our church. It's huge
That other big building is the famous Carlton hotel here... its a 5 star hotel.
A pic of a little kid asking me for a dona (fist bump) haha.
