Hey

I'm dyin out here. I'm tired. I'm sick. But there is lots of exciting news! TRANSFERS. Yeah you betcha I can't believe that I wasn't able to see this coming because once again I have come into an area with 0 investigators and after 2 months I am told to leave after we have built everything up and have 10 investigators. The nice thing is that if those 10 people fall through I can say, "What did those morons who followed me do?" haha No but really transfers were nuts. So Elder Chong-Mook is going to go die in Mada and I'm taking over here. I'll be training Elder Temarohirani to be the next AP but we will be in the St. Marie branch and not St. Denis. I started in St. Marie and that place is a mess. Members are crazy and it's just tough. There are currently 0 investigators there and nothing else really happening there for that matter. The stats that came in from that area last week were straight 0's except for 5 lessons taught to less actives. Yowzers fellas, what are you doing? What was really nice about this last week was seeing people be absolutely crushed that we were leaving their branch. I could have sworn that no one even realized we were there half the time, but now that we're leaving they are all sweating bullets. The elders quorum president was like, "Sweet, now I have to re-do the entire home teaching list because the Elders are on every team." So yeah that was cool. We won't be eating at home for lunch or dinner for the entire next week :) yum! I'm super excited to go back to St. Marie though because a lot of those people are really cool and we'll get stuff going again. I'll stop patting myself on the back now, sorry. Well for other cool stuff... oh yeah something suuuuuuuuupppppppppeeeeeeeerrrrrrrr sick happened. Yeah, my memory card with all my Mada pics broke. Cool right? Haha yep. ummmmm.... what else.... We had a small conference here Wednesday with President and Elder Hartman and that was cool. Oh yeah Elder Bize (my trainer) finished his mission. I got to pick him up from the airport take him out to lunch and stuff and visit old friends of ours and go to a super fancy restaurant with President and him and it was a blast. It made me trunky but I'm over it. The fear of leaving is still much greater than the desire to go home. This morning to say goodbye to Chong-Mook we had a zone activity. We had a barbecue and had a sick little party at the church. that was a jolly old time as well. Yeah that's all I got for ya. Pics will be coming... when I get around to it ha. I'm still working on sending that flash drive to Mom. that should be a sweet treat for y'all. Well gotta go see ya! Love ya.

Jeff 

Well... yowzers. These last four days have been one of the greatest experiences of my life. This place isn't real. I swear I'm dreaming. I'm in Tananarive in area 67 (the nastiest poorest area apparently.) I don't know what the others are like but I've been told that I'm in the craziest place. I wouldn't doubt it. I've been running around with a guy named elder Slater and his 16 year old malagasy mini missionary named solter. They are already two of my favorite people here. I'm sorry ha but I can't even begin to explain this place. I guess to say that is third world or worse is correct. I have fleas and bowel issues after 4 days. Walking through the crammed city which has a population of 2 million and even breathing the air and just seeing how people live is nuts. The craziest part is that everybody is super nice. Everyone is smiling and having a great time for the most part. I say hi and people flip. We climb into these giant vans (buses) and you cram 30 people into and 18 seater and you have a blast smashing up against people. I'm not being sarcastic, I love it. You literally are laughing and smiling the entire time even if it hurts or super gross and filthy. I love it! I want to hug everyone I see haha The little homeless beggar kids that come up to ask for money either want money or a fist bump. I think the fist bumps make them happier than any money. we've been teaching the entire time as well. Pictures can only describe those settings. It's literally what you see in the movies. People just in huts and accepting the good word. The language is super sick as well, It sounds like russian when we speak it but when the Malagasies talk it's nuts ha. Tons of people speak french too but they struggle. The first rendezvous we went to was awesome. As we're walking in Slater looks at me and says, "When I give you the nod say, Voonavaya towatis." It was too late for questions so I went for it. He gave me the nod towards the end of the lesson and now those 3 people are getting baptized. It was sick. It's crazy how people accept it here. To be honest I'm dreading the flight back to Réunion. Sure I feel better there as far as health and comfort, but the love you feel for people here outweighs the living circumstances. It seriously is the best. We ride around in these little car/taxi things and there isn't a single traffic law. It's an adventure. We had our leadership conference on Saturday and that was nuts. We had tons of straight formal lecture training and then later on we had some task teamwork activities that were really cool. The guys here are studs. I want to work with them so bad. They get after it and are men and not punks. These are guys I want to be associating with. So maybe if I'm super lucky they'll send me back over here. We had mental health doctor (elder Hartman) and President Donnelly running the training and it was something that Businesses would pay big money to send their employees to. I can't believe how lucky we are to be able to have this type of training and instruction for free. We learned a ton about how to interact with different personalities and how we can lead them. Well sorry this email was lame and didn't make much sense, but I'm just having a tough time wrapping my mind around everything that is happening. Mada is the best. It's the craziest ha. I love it. Take it easy and if President Adams is sneaking around on my blog, forgive me for anything dumb I've said or done and feel free to bring me back to Mada when you get here ;) but seriously :) Love you all!

Jeff

Tired and just ready to crash. Time is going by faster than it ever has. Weeks feel like days. I swear I emailed you yesterday. Well Elder Chong-Mook and I have cranked up the intensity of our work and it's fun. When we're out and talking to people and it comes time to go home and work in the office it is a struggle to get back to the car because there are too many people to talk to on the way and we end up cutting an hour or two out of our administrative stuff... ha... Whoops :) Well for exciting news, Friday morning Elder Chong-Mook and I will be hopping on a plane and flying over to Madagascar for a leadership conference. I don't know who will be there or what, but it must be a pretty big deal if they are pulling us out of Reunion and another elder out of Mauritius for it. We stay until Sunday night and we will get to go on splits and work while we are over there as well. I'm excited to have my eyes opened to how life is in a developing country. Mada apparently doesn't even qualify to be a third world country, just developing. I'm also interested to see what the work is like there. I'm excited, that's for sure. Well as far as the week went, nothing too special happened. We are starting to teach all the time and we always have fixed rendezvous, the struggle now is getting people to progress and come to church. It's one thing to get into people's houses and then an entirely different challenge to guide and shape the meeting so that they feel the spirit and accept the doctrine. Sometimes people just don't get it, sometimes people are so wrapped up in tradition that the spirit can't penetrate the barrier, sometimes people just want to bash, and sometimes people are overcome by the spirit and can't deny it but then later forget or the fire goes out. Oh yeah, and sometimes people's lives' are turned upside down and they are baptized :) So many possibilities which makes this work so amazing and challenging. Can't get enough. Missionaries are dumb haha I'm super tired of dealing with unnecessary problems. I sound like quite a complainer don't I? I try to vent when I write in my journal but that doesn't quite cut it. Well hmmm... I'll take a look in my planner now and try to remember what interesting things happened this last week. Oh my HHWORD! I forgot about our lesson with this part-member family. The Madin Family!!! So the Mom is excommunicated and lives with her boyfriend (should be husband) and two kids. Brian and Julee are the kids and they are 17 and 20. The parents come to church every week and we teach them every week. The problem though is that they are super sensitive so when the last missionaries taught them and tried to push them a bit, they stopped having lessons and quit coming to church. Sooo we've taught them 4 times I think? Just spiritual thoughts/F.H.E.'s. We get bolder and bolder every time and this last week the lesson was just with the parents. They need to get married first off and then they will be prime for baptism. We talked to the husband about why he comes to church and studies the scrips and practically why he is 100% practicing but not a member. He is scared to get married. Well after our intense less he committed to pray to know if they should get married. That my friends was HUGE progress. They are super solid members, but they aren't members ha. It's ridiculous! They know and do everything a faithful member knows and does. That was the coolest thing that happened last week. The week before we were in the streets of Moufia and this lady came up to us and attacked us. Verbally attacked us, forgive me if i have already told this story. She was like, "Who are you guys!? What church are you from!? What are you doing here!?" Yowza lady take it easy ha. We answered her questions and then she calmed down a bit and started to ask more questions. We answered again, and then started too ask her some questions. She got really calm then and started listening to what we had to say. At the end of the conversation she asked if we could pass by her house because she could feel something in her chest. I love it when the Holy Ghost brings it all home. It lets me know I'm doing my job ha. We taught her and it was sweet and she's still interested and is planning on coming to church. We taught 10 sit down lessons last week and they all were solid and we now have 10 progressing investigators. If the rest of the new people that we taught for the first time last week follow through, we could tack on 5 or 6 more progressing investigators and fix oodles of bap dates. We just have to be 100% obedient and not blow it! It's so hard haha! Every single little thing you do and every little thought you have affects this work and It is just a never ending battle. It's so crazy I can't even begin to explain it. I love it though. I'm creeping up on the year mark now and at times I think, "Nice I still got another year of this stuff," and other times I think, "Yikes, a year is already over? Better step it up." well yep, thats about it for me this week. Hope all that blabberin' made sense and you enjoy it :) à plus.

Jeff        

Hi everyone :)

I feel like SCREAMING! Yikes, well we had a zone conference with President Donnelly and Elder Soares from the first quorum of the 70. Holy moly it was perfect. We didn't necessarily get reamed but just told to be more diligent and everything Elder Soares said was exactly what I wanted to say to everyone here. It was rad. But I also feel like an absolute failure and I don't like that too much. It's hard because I have a pit in my stomach all the time now instead of just most of the time ha. I can't seem to feel like I do enough ever. I don't know why but I just feel that way. I don't mind it too much though because it makes me work harder and do more. I wish everything could just be happy and peaceful all the time haha I guess if it was like that then life wouldn't be life. Enough of that. The time goes by so fast that I can't remember what has happened. Well after the conference on Saturday there was a fireside for the entire island where Pres and Sister Donnelly and Elder and Sister Soares spoke. Sister Soares and Sister Donnelly don't speak french though... so I got asked to stand up there with them and translate there talks. They decided to let me know as the meeting was starting so that was cool too. My HHWORD, it was tough. They were reading scriptures and just saying whatever and I was praying for the gift of tongues the entire time. It worked out though so no worries. I was awfully sweaty afterwards ha. Now I'll just give all the names of our top priority ami's to fill you in on the work and stuff. Emanuel, Daisy, Jean-Louis, Jean-Paul, Nicole, Ann Gaelle, and Jean-Freddy. There are others but we see these people pretty consistently. We had a sweet lesson with Emanuel on Friday about why we are on the earth. He really grasps the logic of the gospel and our lessons even though he smokes 7 billion doobies and drinks rum like a pirate. We only teach him when he's sober and awake and the spirit is strong. He really knows we want to help him and he said something about coming to church before we even mentioned it. He's the man. After we helped him paint he really changed and it seems like his heart was really softened. I never would have thought that we could have even taught this guy about prayer, but he reads the B.O.M. and understands what we say. We had an awesome lesson with Daisy as well last week. We taught here  about the plan of salvation and stuff and she was pretty taken back by all of it. It's really surprising to find these educated people that have raised families and lived their lives without having the slightest clue about how the whole plan works. She had lots of questions and we had every answer. I love it when that happens :) The spirit was super strong there too. She is coming along little by little as well. Jean-Louis! hahaha Do you remember my second week in the field when I told you all that Elder Bize, Elder Flint, and I fixed a bap date with this little creole guy and I was the one who extended the invitation? Well He's back in the line up now. We were going through the area book one night during the riots and I called him and he was reading the B.O.M. as I called. MIRACLE. We went and taught him on Thursday and it was solid. He wasn't as slow as I remember him being. He was grasping things and answering questions and he just ate it up. We knelt and prayed at the end and i didn't specify that we only say amen at the end of the prayer, so he kept saying amen after every sentence during the prayer haha great guy :) Jean-Paul... Super huge (obese) and lives with his mom in a tiny apartment. He's 30 and Pentecostal and is all about speaking in tongues and that garbage. We taught him the restoration and he was trying to act like it was impossible that all that happened but we put him in his place and the spirit confirmed it. I love nothing more than when people try to say dumb and incorrect stuff and we teach a principle and testify and the spirit is so strong that they have to put their heads down and look away. After that happens they realize that what they were saying was crazy and they start to listen to us. Without the spirit all this would just be a debate and we would accomplish nothing. I think you already know Nicole a bit. He has a bap date for March 17th but that's not going to happen. He is going to take some time. Last time we  were at his house we talked about baptism AGAIN and he still thinks that he just needs to get baptized and then everything will be perfect. Wife, kids, house, money, job, NO Nicole that's not how it works. He can't wrap his mind around the idea of enduring to the end ha. Curse you catholic church! People think, "Yeah hey, I am baptized, oh wait that wasn't enough? Alright baptize me again and we'll be good right?" NO. I just realized that I have catholic friends who read this... Sorry hehe :) read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. Moving on! Ann Gaelle, 20 year old single mother, you already know why she lets us teach her ;) nothing happening there really it's still in the developing stages (her investigation of the church). Yucky. Finally Jean-Freddy. He's the brother of an in-active girl that we ran into one day knocking doors. He is 22 and has met tons of missionaries before. He is on his computer 24/7 with his two cyber girlfriends who live in Spain and Madagascar. He likes our lessons though but he we'll be kicked to the curb if he doesn't progress soon. Come to church homie! Yikes my time is almost up. The riots are done. My favorite little city "Chaudron" is destroyed. Yep uhh Mom I got your letter and I'm doing great :) have a good one

Jeff