Elder Jake Roush's Madagascar Adventures: January 13, 2014

January 13, 2014

Dear family, friends, loved ones, and people of the world,

Hahah yeah I TOTALLY farted in front of an investigator!!! Hahaha just too funny i couldn't help bringing it voalohany!! We had just finished a great lesson with a new investigator Setohy. We taught like outside his apartment building so he was sitting on stairs and we were on the ground the whole lesson so the whole time i was like moving my legs around to get into a comfortable position... finally at the end of the lesson i move to get up and BOOM!!! Totally let her rip hahaha. So yeah. That happened. I'm over it. Life goes on :) Hahahah. Okay so today was a great week!! We taught 25 lessons this week, which was the most i have taught here in Betongolo and a pretty dang good week for this area.. We were stoked. But some news... There was another emergency transfer because we had a sick missionary have to go home, so i am now in a tri-panionship until transfers... which are on sunday. Our new comp is Elder Solofoarimanana, or as we call him Baina-be! Which translates into Big Dude. So he's elder dude. And he's freaking sick. I lived with him at the start of this transfer but he left a bit into the transfer. But now he's back with us till Sunday, and surprisingly it's a lot of fun. He's really good at english and he's helping me a lot with my malagasy... Believe it or not.. I kind of miss having a malagasy comp!! Man i took it so for granted when i was getting trained by rakotonjanahary, who's probably one of the coolest malagasies in the mission.. You learn things!! But Baina is soo sick cause he is a LEGEND teaching... He knows a billion scriptures and just teaches things sooo cleary it strengthens your testimony just listening to him. And we've been putting him to good use with some sick new families. We've been blessed with 2 really cool father led families, which is something we really focus on here in Mada... Just because there's a lack of priesthood holders... Women are a lot more opening to listening to us strapping young men haha so there's a lot more women members hahaha. But one of the families is Andry and Helena, the people we found by following the arrow on the side of the wall. We taught them for the second time yesterday and we taught the restoration. It was great. He told us he wants to believe that this joseph smith guy was a prophet cause it makes a lot of sense with this apostasy thing haha. Super cool thing too is that he told us, pointing to his wife and sisters "they were never really talkative or interested in religion and now you guys come and they're asking questions!" It was pretty cool, Elder Baina really did help a lot though with making it THAT much more clearer. But i'm stoked to see where they go. The other family is Mamy soa and Fara. Fara is the wife and she called to us earlier in the week saying she wanted to learn, i guess a member gave here a BiM and a gospel principles book sometime and she wants to learn more about it. So we taught her twice this week, cause her husband, mamy soa, wasn't there once. So we taught the whole first and it went great. It made sense and they really seemed to accept it and want to learn more, so that's awesome. Also a funny thing, after we taught the whole family, which is like 6 PEOPLE!! Right after the prayer a very harlot-ish beyonce song came on... then Brittany Spears hahah. Poor Satan... he's trying too hard... Silly guy hahah. But the Lord really blessed us this week just with awesome lessons. We had a lot of really good lessons where things just were so clear to investigators and the spirit was testifying to them. Super cool. Another cool little thing is i was able to strengthen my testimony a bit about the priesthood, we gave two blessings last week and both of the men we gave blessings to told us they were better the next day... pretty cool to see. Even though i just did the anointing, pretty cool to feel like i'm doing something! One of the guys we gave a blessing to is Mo, a part member family guy. He's the dad and his family are members. His problem is alcohol and ciggarettes. We taught him a lesson 2 weeks ago about the word of wisdom, cause he asked and he's been doing sooo well since!!! As of yesterday he's off, and he's progressing well. He's got a bap date for February and he seems stoked to get baptized, yesterday he even asked us to go over the bap questions with him! We've taught temples and he wants to go there too... Super cool. I'm praying he keeps going, i guess a couple times he's gotten close to getting dunked and then just before relapses. Maybe this time we'll be the ones to get him. It's been a dang good week and i've been really trying to focus on the small little feeling and promptings of the spirit. I've learned that most of the time the spirit isn't in your face or just an overwhelming feeling, and realizing that has really helped me be happier and more confident. New year and it's starting well, i'm feeling blessed for sure. :) Hopefully this week goes well too! It's Quigley's last full week as a missionary, which is super weird... and we got a big transfer coming up.. So we'll see how things turn out. Hope you guys liked all the pictures! Got some pictures of egging Elder MArsh on his 21st birthday.. classic fomba in Mada.. eggs and flour on your head for happy birthday! The new room set up, and my new malabary! Pretty good looking eh? :) Played some soccer today and feeling pretty roasted, but good. Hope you all have a good week! Remember Jesus loves you!! 1 nep 10:19... cool scripture i read in my malagasy reading. super cool teny gasy. Love you all! Be happy.

Hugs and kisses (in a missionary appropriate way),

Elder Roush