This week was awesome. Sooo many spiritual experiences with people. I was feeling the love for everyone we taught and I had to thank Heavenly Father after every lesson for letting me be a part of those people’s lives. Thanksgiving was a great day. We made a FAT meal and between 8 of us we still had leftovers. Stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, gravy, rolls, two roasts, and chocolate chip cookies for dessert. It literally was the best meal I have eaten during my mission. Sister Adams, Sister Donnelly, and Sister Cornelius all couldn't compete with that meal, sorry ladies. Lots of stuff happened this week but I just don't have time to tell you because the office is crazy and everyone is looking over my shoulder reading my emails, and asking me stupid questions and well... I'm just going to call it a quits right now before I snap and do something that Jesus wouldn't do. Thank you so much for the pictures. Holy cow there are so many little kids. We are going to play hard when Uncle Jeff gets home. I love you all and I'll write a better email next week. Sorry again :(  Have a great week everyone! 

 

Love Jeff

 

Hey everyone,

Good week. We were able to teach over 20 lessons again due to few meetings which was nice :) We have three complete families that are making progress and the non-member father of a family has quit smoking and drinking coffee and has a bap date for December 29th. The work is going well! Elder Abney baptized Aubin on Saturday from my last area and we were able to stop by and see the baptism before we drove out to the airport. Now their family is set for eternity. He'll be a Melchizedek priesthood holder in a year, which is nice. The summer season has begun and the rain has come along with it. It pours haha. Yesterday was pretty bad but luckily everyone we stopped by was home and let us in. On Sunday we also had stake conference and I got to see all the people from Ankadindramamy and Betongolo. The people from Ankadindramamy were blown away because I could actually talk to them. It was a real confidence boost. During the two hours of brain melting stake conference talks in Malagasy I didn't really pay attention but rather made funny faces at all the little kids around us. I had about 20 little girlfriends by the time it was over haha. I hope president doesn't read this stuff. So it is shmelting hot every morning and then a monsoon comes and floods the land in the evening. Either way I'm uncomfortable all day everyday ha. Saturday afternoon we were leaving an appointment and had to drive up a pretty steep hill. On the way up the hill the car started to struggle and ending up dying so we started to roll back down the hill. The road was pretty narrow and well,we backed right into a wall. Tree was driving :) He's been upset about it all weekend and probably is going to be mad when he finds out that I'm telling you all this. There is literally nothing else exciting that is going on so I had to spice up this email with that story. I think he'll understand. He was so mad I didn't even crack any jokes. So life is good and In our transfer meeting this morning we had to take into account that my group would be going home in May sooo that was weird and not fun. But it happens. Well friends, I'll talk to y'all later. Have a fantastic week and think about me whenever you take a nap because I'm sleepy all the time. Mhmm, ok, gros bisous, je vous aime! Oh wait, I turned 21 on Thursday! Thanks for all the emails and pictures, the children are just precious. All the computers in this cyber crashed and then miraculously turned back on and I didn't lose what I had written because we gathered everyone together in the building and we knelt and prayed. Not haha sorry So that oughta do it!

Elder Barclay

What a week! It felt like it was about one day long. President Adams was in South Africa all week so Tree and I were full time missionaries again! We taught 29 lessons. We did WORK. A lot of the people are really solid too. Joseph is an older guy probably in his late 40's and is a math teacher. We taught him for the first time on Thursday. He was really quiet and would sit and reflect for about 2 minutes after every question we asked him. Then he would give us a 2 minute long answer which would go right over my head because he was using some fancy vocabulary. Luckily Tree got it all ha. The lesson was way long but way good. We didn't have a Book of Mormon on us so he walked with us back to our car to get one and when we handed it to him he looked at it and said thanks. Then he walked away slowly looking at the book. It was a cool thing to see. It is a powerful experience when you give someone a Book of Mormon that is going to really read it . You can almost see into their future and picture them learning, getting baptized, and being an active member. We have been teaching a other young guy named Zoo. He is our age and works as a guardian for the house right next to our apartment. The thing that is cool about teaching him is that he is young and has that open minded ready to experiment attitude and so he is really interested in everything we say and he asks questions so he can really understand. It was the same experience giving him a Book of Mormon as it was with Joseph. Their lives could change so much. I'll tell you about one other family and then talk about funny stuff. We contacted a man named Etienne on the street one day and set up a time with him for Friday. When we went to his house we met his wife and kids and their little family was awesome. They have 3 little boys. John Kevin, John Kennedy, and Narovana haha. The oldest boy looks younger than his little brother because he has had some sickness from the time he was born and he was just hiding behind his mom the entire lesson. They were so humble, but also very strong and had no sense of "our life is hard". We didn't teach them much but just told them about what we do and what our purpose is and then shared a spiritual thought with them. I wanted to hug the kids so bad! This entire week was just one sobering experience after another. So the work is going great. As for other news... My stomach has been very upset with me. I don't know what I ate but my goodness... I have some funny stories about that haha. Last night was weird as well. I was cooking up some food and went to scratch the flea bites a little and when I pulled my shirt up I had huge hives all over me. I had one the size of a pancake on my right thigh and they were yellow/orange. It was way freaky haha they spread way quick and were everywhere. It wasn't too bad though, I just took some Benadryl and went to bed. This morning I only had 5 or 6 on my stomach and sides. I don't know what the heck it was but it was weird. We've had a Malagasy elder with us the last couple of days and while we were out working we found a ton of huge spiders and Malagasies aren't scared of them at all so he just went up and grabbed one off it's web and was playing with it. He acted like he was going to throw it at me and I said, "Don't." haha. Man those things are freaky! I'm going to muster up the courage one day to play with one and I'll take pictures of it on my face or something haha you guys will love it. Well have a great week :)

Love Jeffrey   

 

Woohoo!

 

Another week has blown by. So not a ton of interesting things happened this week. On Friday we had a Zone Leader council which means another fat meal provided by Sister Adams. Delicious :) We talked about how we could make Christmas more meaningful this year and we will be doing some pretty awesome service activities and really looking to bless people's lives. The spirit was very strong throughout the entire meeting and everyone is pumped for Christmas. So earlier during the week a lot of our time was spent in meetings with president and preparing the Z.L. council. Some really great news is that Tree and I continue to get YACKED out of our minds every morning at the gym. We have been going 100 MPH all day everyday and by 8 at night during our last lesson whoever is not talking is asleep or dosing off. Elder Tregeagle has literally fallen asleep during every single one of my prayers during daily planning haha. Yesterday at church we finally got a ward mission leader! He was a missionary here about 6 months ago and he is a stud. We had a meeting after church and he gathered up about 10 guys and assigned them all days to work with us. There are 2 companionships in our area as of last transfer. The ward has always struggled but it doesn't seem like that will be the case for long. The other 2 elders working here with us are studs and way fun to live with. Anjanahary is going to blow up, mark my words. I translated for our buddy Jewls again during elders quorum and once I get warmed up  I do pretty well. The only problem is that I have no idea what the teacher is saying in Malagasy so I teach my own lesson on whatever the topic is haha. Jewls loves it and smacks his fist into his hand which means "marina izany" which literally means "true that" haha. Halloween was cool. Not. We celebrated by eating a couple pieces of candy corn before we went to bed. We have doing a lot of tracting in a very wealthy area near the church and we gut SHUT DOWN. Most of them are actually French or German or Indian and don't speak Malagasy so the French has been coming in handy. We have gotten into a couple of huge houses and we have some appointments set up. It takes me back to Reunion. Speaking of which, a family Chong-Mook and I taught is finally getting baptized! The parents are getting married and then they'll be set for baptism. Super sick family that would feed us theee most deeelicious food. So that's just wonderful :) That's it for me. Have a good week everyone.

 

Elder Barclay