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