Elder Jake Roush's Madagascar Adventures: December 9, 2013

December 9, 2013

Hello my little kittens,

So I'm having a really hard time remembering what happened this week cause i don't have my planner. It got slayed in the rain last night.. Hahah last night we got caught in a total torrential rain storm.. After 5 minutes it was up to our ankles. Gotta love mada!! The rain was so crazy last night that the AP's car got flooded all the way to the seats!!! Luckily we didn't tratra too bad, we went home early because i've been quite sick this week. On Saturday we were in the middle of the lesson and i had like a 45 minute coughing attack. We called Sister SHupe the nurse, went and got x rays... Double bronchitis. So that's fun :) got my x ray as a cool souvenir. hahaha. So I like haven't had a voice for a week so that's been exciting. Also in other exciting news it was transfers last night! It was a pretty big transfer again and once again i've been affected! Elder Aloi is going to Tamatave and i'm getting Elder Quigley from Pocatello, Idaho who goes home in 6 WEEKS! So yeah I will be killing a missionary! That'll be weird for sure, but I'm excited because... The Betongolo sisters was closed down so we get their area! They teach alot alot alot alot, because well.. they're sisters and they're reaping all the fruits of the office elders before Betongolo split. so i get to inherit it back! I'm a bit nervous to be honest because i dont know where any of their investigators live and it's gonna be a lot of work to merge our program and theirs but i'm excited. I really hope Elder Quigley and I can do some work here in Betongolo before he goes home and I can start to get the hang of this area and all that good stuff. On Tuesday we had our big zone conference with Elder Renlund (the area president.) We've been preparing for this conference for like the past 2 months so it was nice to have it done but it was a really good conference. They really talked about good ways to teach and Elder Renlund brought up something I really like. Every question of the gospel can be answered by one thing. and "the short answer is back in 1820 there was a young man named Joseph Smith who was searching for the truth." Elder Renlund related that to many different gospel related questions and it is sooo true. Everything we do is because of the prophet joseph, so this week and in the next couple weeks i really want to learn more and strengthen my testimony about him. SHould be fun. :) We did a lot of driving people back and forth from the airport and beign peoples chauffeurs this week cause everybody was coming and going for the zone conference. I didn't even get to "sleep in" and wake up at 6:30 until thursday! On Wednesday we got some sick tracting in. We found 3 hopefully Father Led families and one i'm stoked about. We first talked to the wife and she said we could come back this week but she said to go talk to her husband cause he used to pray at our church. We went and talked to him in their garage (they were very rich) and he saw us and got excited! he started talking to us in french and we in malagasy haha. He told us he's a colonel jeandarme (like the police-military mix) and when he was stationed in France he learned from the missionaries. He was about to get baptized but then he got hurt and had to come back to mada. He asked us if we had any more "livre de mormon" but no... all WE HAD was malagasy :) when he saw "ny bokin'i Mormona" teny gasy he was so excited and told us he would read it and we could come back on thursday. I'm stoked because he wants his family to learn too. So we will see! I really hope it turns into something big. Another thing. We finally met up with Andry! He was supposed to be baptized last week but his grandma forbade him. He made contact with us and we taught him a spiritual thought wednesday. We taught about how he needs to stay strong and stuff. I can't remember the first scripture i shared but then i was prompted to share the scripure about the ammonites that died because they wouldn't take up arms. It was cool cause i said he might need to take some spiritual blows from his family and bebe but as long as he stays strong to his desire to still be baptized he can eventually reach his goal. We're shooting for January or February. I told him every day he needs to make a goal for what he's gonna do TODAY to get closer to going into baptisms. With stephanie our other investigator with a bap date we pushed it back a week just cause i didn't want to rush her, and heck she's 11... girls got time! Anyways I think that's it for the week. It's been a pretty good week but i'm really excited for future. Not essentially (dang aloi is rubbing off on me.. that's his favorite word) this week cause we're gonna get SLAYED by transfers and taking everyone around but for the future in general. My spiritual thought for y'all today is Helaman 5:50 and 6:3... member missionary work in the Book of Mormon. gettin it. Boom diggity. I love all of you. Keep smiling and remember. Atleast your not as soaking wet as me. Stay sweet y'all.

Amim-pitiavana,

Elder Roush

p.s. mom the pig picture is especially for you :)