Last week was super lame. We were busy with Toyota and the two new cars all tuesday and wednesday and then friday. I hate doing that garbage. The cars are sooooo sick. They have touch screen nav systems and are brand spankin new. That was my first time driving a brand new car off the lot. It was cool ha. Too bad they aren't for us. We handed one over to the soeurs on friday morning after we taught them how to drive. Yowza that was rough but they got the hang of it and the cars might make it for a few years. I get the chills just thinkin about all that. Teaching someone to drive can be a very frustrating task. I think I did well though. The soeurs still like me at least and don't think I'm a total jerk. Other than that whole mess of insurance policies, registration stuff, and whatever else we had to do, the work was slow. We weren't able to see many of our ami's. Most of our appointmnts fell through and it was the worst because we finally were able to arrange for members to come with us. Onja is still doing well and we will fix a date for her baptism tomorrow night. Another investigator from St. Denis that the soeurs taught is getting baptized on the 12th of May. We were super good buds when I was there. His name is Boris and he is from Madagascar. He asked me to baptize him so that will be sick. On thursday I went down to La Possession to go on a split with Elder Long (district leader) and it was good. I wanted to tell him to change everything he was doing but I remembered that I was exactly like him 6 months ago. He is a top notch missionary and has that greeny attitude of, I'm here to teach you the gospel and baptize you and if you don't accept my testimony, not my problem. However, after so much rejection a missionary starts to change and tries to spend more time with people and get to know them and then present the gospel to them as their friend. I wish I would have figured that out earlier. I was just out to get the job done and find those that were ready and blow off those that didn't accept what I had to say. The work is a lot more fulfilling when I am able to bless someones life and uplift them instead of placing an offer before them and saying do or die. It would be nice to be a perfect missionary ha. I feel like I'm figuring this out a bit, and by that I mean that I'm figuring out how to rely completely on the Lord and try to do what he wants instead of what I think would be good. But thats super hard... and I'm tired all the time ha so... I do my best. Well thankfully no missionaries have finished their missions lately. I don't want to see the airport until it's me getting on that plane. For my year mark I decided to treat myself :) T and I decided to drive to the other side of the island and fix the sisters car. On the way there we stopped and held a baptismal interview in Port and filled out the accident report for the St. Paul car. Yay haha I had a blast. Really though, I do enjoy being able to see everyone. It seems like it is just one thing after another. Once we get all the visa stuff done, every car breaks down, then that gets taken care of and the sisters electricity goes out, and then the plumbing in Ports apartment breaks and on and on and on...

Today we were able to actually clean our apartment and it's nice now.

I have found that cleaning relieves my stress better than anything else. Dad is asking himself, "Then why didn't you do it more?" Well, I wasn't stressed before my mission haha. Well thats enough rambling. I will come up with a plan for the mothers day call and tell you next week. Let me know what you guys will being so we can coordinate! Have a good one friends. Na trouve!

Love Jeff

Hey friends, sorry for last week. There just isn't enough time in the day. The week before last was a trial. The spirit that I had burning constantly in my heart left me and I kind of hit a wall. It was tough.

However the Lord did teach me a very valuable lesson about faith. It's a decision. When those tough moments come and we lose the motivation and desire to go forward we have to decide to have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and see it all through until the good comes back again.

For some reason I thought that having faith would produce a peachy parade for me as I went through life but that doesn't quite fall in line with the fact that we are all natural men and are in a fallen state. I had a coach in high school who had the phrase, "If there is no struggle then there is no progress" tattooed on his forearms. A very true and correct principle, too bad he decided to engrave it into the precious temple that Heavenly Father so graciously gave to him.

Just when I think I get stuff figured out the Lord humbles the dickens out of me and puts me in my place haha. When will I learn! Well for work news, Onja was not baptized on the 21st. However we were able to refix another date for the end of May. She just needs a little more time to prepare and realize how special her baptism will be. We had one of the mot powerful lessons of my mission with her. We watched the Restoration video and just testified at the end. We all lost it ha.

Man I love her! We have been able to find some other investigators and we had many more powerful lessons and we are starting to really get this area going finally. It is rather tough because the branch is not in good shape. Everyone is super prideful and everyone is constantly offended and I don't want my friends that I teach to come and be treated badly. It's tough but we are going to make all these members work with us and feel the same spirit we feel during our lessons and we'll see if that changes their hearts. I had an old woman try to love me. That was exciting :) She grabbed my hand and pulled me into her house and tried to kiss me. When I refused she started bawling and things got real weird. Once again I was flattered by the attempt but I just couldn't give her what she wanted. Yum. This thursday will be my year mark. I don't know what to think about it so I have decided not to think about it. Life is super good. I was day-dreaming a bit the other day and I realized that I didn't know who won the super bowl or the final four or anything really concerning sports. Crazy ha I was more surprised by the fact that I couldn't care less either. Now i'm a bit torn by the decision of wether or not I will watch football on sundays. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it right? Well my dear friends, I gotta go. I love you. Take it easy.

Jeff

Salut,

This is going to be a short one because I'm going to send tons of pics. The week was alright, well actually it was super awesome but Satan threw a lot of other stuff at us as well and that made it tough to see how awesome the week really was. So we got to actually work quite a bit this week in our own area. We found a small family that is pretty golden and super chill. We were in the street talking to a kid when this guy in short shorts and a knee brace comes up and joined in on the conversation. He left and then about an hour later while we were still working on that street he came back and he told us to come to his house. So we walked home with the guy and we got to his house, had some coca, taught him & his parents the restoration, book of Mormon, & prayer and they invited us over for dinner next Saturday. Yeah! We taught Onja twice last week and the first time was super good but the second time was a bit rough. The second time we taught chastity, tithing, and word of wisdom. Bam! In your face Onja welcome to Mormon living! Just kidding she already knew about tithing and the word of wisdom but chastity was... nice... I usually have no problem laying down the law and saying whatever I need to say but this time it just wasn't smooth like J. Charles Barclay usually is. She has member friends (women) and she is going to talk to them about it. All is well for the baptism on April 21st (B-day present for ya pops) We taught quite a few other strange people and had some sweet success. My favorite new friend of ours is named Quasimodo :) holy macrole he is unique, I'll keep you posted on that one if it goes anywhere. Yeah that's about it for cool stuff, sorry this is short but we are going on a sweet hike today and it is going to take some time so we're trimming up our email time. I'm alive and well. Thanks for the emails, I probably won't write you back, sorry but I just don't got the time fellas! I'll see what I can do. Merci bien à zot!

Love Jeff

Sup ladies... and gents,

My head is going to explode. Stress stress stress :) I don't know what causes it but it sure is a bummer. Well to start with the worst part of my week I'll tell you all about handing my area over to two wonderful sisters. We took a day and went around to all of our progressing ami's houses and introduced the soeurs and taught together. A lot of those ami's were super bummed that we were leaving. They looked at me like, "You're just going to split on me like that?" It ripped my heart out. All those people were having their lives flipped upside down and changed and they trusted in us so much and then we had to say, "Yeah... we don't work here anymore. See ya never!" the lessons with the soeurs were rough... Things just didn't match up with the investigators. Yikes well that is all over with. Now Elder Temarohirani and I are whitewashing St. Marie. At church on Sunday we taught the gospel principles class and afterwards Elder T said, "There is something bad about this place." Haha yep you got that right buddy. Everyone is at eachother's throat in this branch and the tension is through the roof. So we fixed a bunch of rendezvous with members and we'll see if we can restore the peace. Our plan is to give everyone a spiritual punch in the face and see if that will make everyone happy again. By that I mean just to bring an insane amount of the spirit into everyone's home and be positive and happy. We are pretty much starting from scratch here. There are currently 0 investigators. Yay :) haha it's kind of nice though, I like having a fresh start in a new place. Oh we have a baptism in St. Denis on the 14th which will be awesome as well. Her name is Onja if I haven't already told you. It will be super sick. The lesson we had with her last Tuesday was amazing. We taught the plan of salvation and yada yada yada... super strong spirit and Shazam! Be baptized my Malagasy friend! She accepted the commitment and we all just couldn't stop smiling. She was like, "I can't wait." Hallelujah! Man it was awesome, I mean jeez louis I can't even stop smiling right now as we speak. The love is just too much to handle sometimes. The other miracle happened our first day in St. Marie while we were knocking doors and we met this family. 8 children. Word? We had a nice little chat and they invited us back next week. Please pray for that to follow through. Lots is going on and I'm sorry I never send pictures. I'm still working on organizing all my pics so that I can put them on my jump drive to send home. I have way too many photos. Yeah... that's about it for me, I love you all! Have a great week :) à plus

Jeff