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    

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