February 24, 2014

Monday, February 24, 2014 7:28 AM

Salama emailers,

 

Well as you can tell from the subject, we had a pretty good week, in which we met our weekly goals, but also realized we've already met most of the goals we made for this transfer.. And we still got a week left. It's been a good past 5 weeks. Anyways... Not sure where to start haha, there's always a billion things to say and you never know what to put in. We had some good, weird and some disappointing experiences... fa izay ny mision! Anyways, our guy Setra is still going pretty dang good, have still been having some really cool lessons with him, though he didn't come to church yesterday. So we'll see what happens there. On the weird side of things we taught Muslims this week! You know it went surprisingly well, one of them were very accepting, and it was a fun learning experience. Though it is pretty hard to share the message of the restoration of the gospel of JESUS CHRIST... when they don't really believe in him as the savior haha. But i enjoyed it! on the spiritual side we visited some less actives and i decided to share Hebrews 10:35-37 with them... it went super well and it ended up becoming a mini testimony meeting.. and one of them even came to church hahah who woulda thought?! On the disappointing side Andry will not be getting baptized next week. I went on a split with our ZL to do the interview and he ended up deciding he needed to learn longer and be baptized in april. Bit discouraging since I don't know if i'll be here in april but we'll see. Sorry i'm in a bit of a hurry hahah on the fun side this morning we went to the croc farm. Saw some crocs, petted some lemurs. had a good time. That's all i have time for this week, and we'll see where i end up next week. I love all of you guys! And so does our Heavenly Father... i've felt his love a couple of times this week and well.. it's been good :) Have a good week emailers.

 

14 ties, still not too much!

Don't mess with me and ma new Malabry

 

 

 

 

I love my mission!

Office swaggy

I still love the clouds

Croc Farm

We made our English class PB& J's

I promise we work too!

Too Nasty

Loves with hugs and kisses,

Elder Roush

February 17, 2014

February 17, 2014

 

Bonjour daholo!

How are all of you doing on this fine monday afternoon, morning, sunday night? Still not too sure haha. Soo. On Saturday we were walking around and we passed by the Adventist church and we heard the lady preacher doing her thang and then we hear her say "Hallelujah!" then the crowd says it too, "hallelujah," crowd... "hallelujah" crowd... THen she says... "izay." Which means just like... yeah. hahaha so pretty much it was hallelujah! hallelujah! hallelujah! Yeah.. Hahah pretty funny. Anyways this past week was pretty good, we got a pretty good amount of lessons this week, which was surprising because we spent ALOT of time doing office work... A little (lot) more than we woulda liked... even did some this morning! on p day! haha but it's fine... i'm over it! So. on tuesday we had a district leader council with president, which was super good. President is a pretty dang good, smart, and dang spiritual guy. I definitely learned a lot about how to be a better missionary and leader... Even though the only people i'm techincally leading are the ap's... so that doesn't really make much of a difference ahah. No worries. Maybe one day i'll just be a senior comp to a comp that isn't as mature as cartmill haha. He's a stud. I'm not much of a senior comp to him! It's really fun. So this week we had a quiet week teaching, just cause like i said, we spent a lot of time doing office work for the couples (especially the financial missionary.) dang auditors.. who woulda thought i'd have to worry about that stuff on a mission! Hahaha. But our investigators are going well. Setra, the guy from last week I told yall about is such a stud!! We went back on Thursday to teach him and he was already on 1 nep 12... and he had started on tuesday... haha he's such a smart dude.. even more impressive cause he was doing it in french... A member that lives by him gave him a french triple combination... ahha members give the weirdest things to people sometimes! No worries though. But it's fun cause he loves reading the book of mormon. Thursday the whole time we just answered his questions about hte book of mormon. Questions ranging from "Do you think nephi knew he was a prophet when he was writing," to "what does the river mean in lehi's dream, and pretty much what does it all mean," and other sick questions like that. Then he like had a heart to heart with us and told us he had been praying but he hadn't gotten an answer so he asked us to teach him about prayer again. Such a stud of a guy! haha then on saturday we were teaching him again, we teach him in his eppiserrie. And we were stopped like 4 times by people buying stuff and then he told a couple people he was out of stuff... then he was like... "i have a question. is it a sin if i lie and tell people i'm out of a certain thing, but i'm really not, i just want to focus on learning with you guys..." hahahah!! we were like.. uh yeah that's a sin but... we love you hahahha. Other than that Andry and lalatina are going well.. Andry is such an awesome guy, and he's super ready to be baptized on March 1st!! We taught about modern day prophets and we asked if he would follow and sustain presidnet monson as a prophet and he said yes and then testified that he would because he knew that the prophet was a man of God and could guide him.. He's so sick! haha and we think he has a sipa kely!! (girlfriend) we ran into him a couple times one day and he had a girl with him just walking around, and then she was there for the lesson too hahah. He's such a funny guy. He said "she's my.. friend." classic. Lalatina is going good, she opened up to us and told us she wasn't ready to be baptized because she wanted to completely finish her divorce before she was baptized... I thought that took a lot of courage to say, cause the member she lives with was pushing her pretty hard. So things are good!! Also we're teaching a 10 year old named Medien, his parent live out in a province named Diego and he lives with his uncle who's a member. And he's the smartest 10 year old ever. already knows everything. I think him and max would get along well.. haha but... Yeah in other news i had a misison baby this week! 9 MONTHS ON THE MISSION! How crazy is that? It didn't even hit me but yeah! I'll hit my 1 year in two transfers. Surprisingly it really has gone by so fast. Crazy how time goes.. Super slow, but like super fast. Anywyas I hope all of you had a happy valentines day, elder cartmill and i made a cake and got a bit sad and stuff... hope yall like the picture!! Haha anyways i can't really think of anything else to tell you. And sorry... Nothing too spiritual hahah. But.. Umm. GO CALEB!!!! WOOO!!! MTC! So... Remember. I love and Jesus loves you. Have a good week emailers.

selfies...the real life of office elders!

Happy Valentines Day and stuff

grandkid of a less active member

Nice view of Betongolo

She is the CUTEST little Miya!

These kids helped us tract...they are our new crew!

 

February 10. 2014

February 10, 2014

Manao ohoana daholo! vaovao?

So Elder Cartmill and I have been coming up with a quote from our experiences every week.... so this week. Swag loatra!!! Haha we were teaching Stephanie (RC) and her fam and we were talking about Justin Bieber... well her older sister said she didn't like him... I asked why? She said swag loatra!! Or, too much swag!! hahah super funny! I hope one day i have swag loatra :) So this was a pretty darn good week too. We taught 26 times, and the crazy thing is that I feel like we totally coulda taught more. The area is going really good and i really hope we can keep it going like this. Cartmill and I have been working hard, and having a good time. So I'm enjoying it!! So... We had a pretty sick experience I wanna tell y'all about. So during planning we had gotten a call from a member that said a friend of his wanted to learn... the member is like 60 so we were expecting some old grandpa... Anyways we go and it's a man named Setra, who owns an episserie (little shop on the side of the street), my guess is he's like 30ish.... i guess the member gave him a teachings of the prophet lorenzo snow book in french and well... he's already read it all and wanted to learn more!! So we gave him a first pamphlet and told him we'd come back that night... Well we came back, he had alrea   dy read the pamphlet (unheard of here) and we had just like the perfect first.... sooo sick! When we first got there it was raining pretty hard and when it rains here it's really hard to teach because a lot of people have tin roofs... Well Setra's episserie had a tin roof too and we couldn't hear a thing... Well i said the prayer and I asked Heavenly Father to stop the rain.. It didn't stop immediately but it slowly went down till at the end of the lesson it wasn't raining at all.... what?! haha anyways it was just like the perfect lesson cause he had already ready the pamphlet and had some knowledge about it and so he answered everything perfectly, didn't need much clarification and accepted a lot. He agreed he was a bit skeptical about the message but he's excited to pray. He told us he read about prayer in the pamphlet and read the pray to the father in the name of the son... he said with all the different kinds of prayer he read that and he felt that it was right... yes! And... He was STOKED to get a BoM, he already had questions about it before so we gave him a pamphlet about jospeh smith and the BoM. We came back yesterday taught a quick lesson about it last night, he was rushed but it was good.. Seems like an awesome guy. I'm super stoked for him. And... He's an FLF ahah. yes. sick. Other than that it was just a normal week. We had 3 people with bap dates for the 22nd but we've skimmed it to one, Lalatina. She's going well and is excited to get dunked. She's a great chick!! (can i call her that?) hahah and she wins the award for the cutest kid. We moved Andry's back a week cause we felt like we're going too fast... But he's super ready and a stud. I'm excited for him. Transfers are in 3 weeks and it feels like they're super close, even though they're not.. i'm just worried i wont be here to see people progress. I'm really liking betongolo and the office and wouldn't mind to stay until april (next transfer if i stay this one.) But we'll see, it's still far away!! oh also last night we were a bit far from our next time and busses weren't going anymore so we tried to hitchike and a dude let us in! I guess he's already learned from missionaries and stuff... but doens't anymore cause he does international trading (super rich dude) but super duper cool!! He was just gonna take us up a hill (big hill) but he took us all the way cause he wanted us to speak english to his two daughters in the car... SUPER COOL DUDE!!! Haha when we tried to give him funny he was like "oh no no no no no!! This is out of love! I don't need money." Just a good guy and a fun time. haha. Oh also I kinda went a bit crazy with kid pictures this week, but I can't help it.. THey're the best! I gotta take one home haha. Anyways i love you all... Just a shout out to Caleb... GOOD LUCK AT YOUR FAREWELL... i love you:) and everyone else!! Smile, be happy, and well... Have a good week emailers.

 

Biso,

 

Elder Roush

February 3. 2014

February 3, 2014

 

Salama daholo!

So sorry again about last week, i had no time to email, but it's okay cause it was a boring week hahah.  FA!  This week was super good for shizzle haha.  But anyways... So the subject.  Elder Cartmill and I had a good week full of pretty funny adventures as we were walking around ol Betongolo talking to people... Cause pretty much we've been just super duper good preach my gospel missionaries and have been talking to everyone!  And when you do that you have some pretty funny stories!! Anyways so we're walking along the path, and we see some cute little kids, probably like 5 years old.  So as always we got up to them and talk to them and give them a dona (knuckles) ahah.  So we get there and one of the kids looks at me and accusingly asks in a scared voice "DID YOU KILL MY FRIEND?!"  So... Of course i told him "ummm. yes." hahahah. and then he freaks!!!  I don't think i've ever seen a kid more scared hahah i'm pretty sure he thought i was going to eat him haah he was so scared he hid behind his buddy who was laughing his but offf. So I try to make amends and give him a dona!  So he stops for 2 seconds, gives me a dona and continues to scream bloody murder.  Malagasy kids are THE BEST!!!  Hahha but man we had some fun adventures.  We taught a really good amount of times this week but we've really been trying to make good use of our time so we contact a lot also.  Well we went into this one little small neighborhood and well pretty much everybody there was comorian (form the comoros islands, north of mada) so they were all super muslim, really funny and spoke no english or malagasy... But pointed us to a malagasy neighbor! So we knock on a door and a girl with very flasy gold flip flops answers the door, we forget her name so we call her goldy toes ahahhaha.  Well she was super cool and agreed to a return time then she brought us close and said "everybody here... is comorian!!" and i said, "is that okay? are they nice?" and ahha she brings me super close, and says "THEY'RE ADULTERERS!!! THAT'S NOT OKAY WITH JESUS IS IT?!" Hahah i tried my hardest not to laugh and said uhhh yeah.... no it's not! Hahah super funny! Then on saturday with some new family we found there was the cutest little bebe (grandma) we taught, she loved us so much she tried giving us money... that was definitely a first ahhaa! We said honey, our work is FREE!  And the Lord is our sipa kely!  Okay well as i said we have been doing a lot of contacting this week.  WEll Elder Cartmill and I had made a goal during weekly planning to find 7 FLF's (father led families) by the end of the transfer, so we prayed a lot to get help and went to work... Well I am happy to report we found 3 THIS WEEK!!!  How sweet is that.  Granted, all have them have only been taught once, but I'm excited hahah.  We've been getting a lot of little answers to prayers like that. Speakign of which, yesterday at sacrament meeting.  We had a big answer to prayer and had one of our new investigators come to church, with her kids!  Sadly her husband couldn't, but we'll take it!  And 2 less actives that we've been working on came...!! and one of them, Fr Kamero got up and bore his testimony, about us the missionaries! And the blessing we gave him... Super sweet.  The spirit was definitely prevalent in that sacrament meeting yesterday.  I love hearing the simple but powerful testimonies of the malgasy people.  They're such faithful people and it always strengthens my faith to see theirs!!  Anyways so last thing.. Last week i quickly wrote about boneface, the dude that studied to be a priest for a while.  Well.. .We taught the bom and tried to extend a bap date... and he accepted!  As long as he gets his answer to his prayer... So it's up to him and the Lord.. I'm stoked.  We have some sweet baptisms comign up in february. Andry, the sick 18 year old that should be getting baptized on the 22nd yesterday was talking to our Dmp (ward mission leader) about missions and he turned and asked me... does the prophet really go over your mission call and sign it?! and i was like.. yup!! and he said... man.. i wnat to go... do you think i should pray about going on a mission... i was just like... uhhh... 1st thing. i love you. 2nd this. yes. for sure do that hahahahah.  But speaking of missions Aina, thought we call him Max our DmP got his mission call to NEW HAMPSHIRE!! how sick is that??!! I'm stoked cause not many malagasies go to america, even cooler cause his aunt, which is more like his sister cause she's 5 years older and they live together also got her mission call to temple square! Super cool!!  Anyways. Things are going good, i'm happy, and jesus loves you all.  HAve a good week emailers. 

 

Be fitiavana,

Elder Roush