Elder Jake Roush's Madagascar Adventures: December 2, 2013

December 2, 2013

Well hello hello hello everybody,

Well i don't have too much time today cause we have a huge zone conference with our area president tomorrow and of course the office elders have to do a lot of set up. Anyways. First off.. CALEB IS GOING TO THAILAND!!! I called it... oh wait. ha :) anyways... so sick!!!! That's just as cool as madagascar! Maybe with less poop!! Anyways shout out to my best friend :) you did it! woop! party. Speaking of parties... thanksgiving was this week right? haha yeah.. they don't really celebrate it out here in Madagascar.. i don't know why? honestly! It was a pretty good day. I had to teach the lesson in district meeting and well i was severely unprepared.. hahah i spent the whole morning making my thanksgiving apple pie, yes it was a hit, yes ladies... i'll be home in a year and a half and yes i'll make you one.. it's fine...! But yeah so the lesson. went well! At the start i told the malagasy, tahitian and Canadian (aloi haha) in our district what thanksgiving was. gave a background, pilgrims, etc. Drew a picture of an Indian haha. After that i told them that thanksgiving was all about giving thanks and stuff like that so i had us make a list of the things we're grateful of! It was cool because well... it made me realize how many dang things i have to be grateful, like all of you beautiful people and your emails!!! Halfway through aloi had to leave to do something so i did half the lesson in malagasy... so that was neat i guess. The rest of the day we worked in the office and caught some times... I was a bit homesick but it's okay. We ended up having a feast! :) We made bbq chicken, lots and lots of mashed potatoes, green beans, biscuits and apple pie (those were me) We had a great time. We all got in our jeans to act like we were just sitting down for a family dinner, took a picture, then went at it.. and well... We got stuffed :) we all felt like throwing up after and it felt like thanksgiving finally. I am very grateful for the guys i live with. Anyways other than that it's been kind of a hard week... we did a lot of tracting and not much success. Friday i went on a split with elder evans our zone leader. I was leading our area for the first time... what did we do? Tracted for 2 1/2 hours in the rain with no success and taught 2 not great lessons.... It's fine. Sun always comes out... even if it's just for 20 minutes as a break from the rain... Nalyse has slowed down, we had some difficult lessons with him this week, which was hard.. he also had another 2 seizures at church yesterday... YEah... But we did have a cool find yesterday. We went to a guy we had contacted last week and when we got there his mom led us to his house. In his house was him, his wife, her mom and his brother who was.... WASTED. Haha. But crazy thing! the lady told us she knew who we were! She's a member! Sadly... very very cold (inactive) she prayed to jesus.... golly! anyways that was cool.. she got baptized in 2000 and hasn't been very active, but we found her and her husband. Another cool thing, during the lesson another 3 people came in and started listenign! Maybe we'll ahve 5 new investigators from that!!! We'll see! Okay. Two more thigns on a spiritual side. I tuaght about geneology for the first time yesterday and well... it made me realize how important geneology is! I really wish i would have been better about doing that before my mission because geneology is really the start of the work of salvation. If it wasn't for geneology, how could or ancestors in the spirit world, who didn't have the opportunity to hear about hte gospel have those blessings! It's important! So. I challenge you all to start doing geneology! Next thing. I read an awesome talk by elder bednar titled "converted to the lord." I don't have time to manazava but give it a read! that's your homewokr! Anyways i love you all and hope you all have a great week! peace, love, blessings!!

Elder Roush