Elder Jake Roush's Madagascar Adventures

March 24, 2014

Romans, lovers, countrymen, and everyone else that's on this email list,

Well another week has passed in ever so hot, humid and rainy Tamatave.. Contrary to popular belief, it IS okay to ride through lake sized puddles in bikes as missionaires... beacuse in the words of Elder Rigby "once you're already wet, there's no use in staying dry." Wise words from the rookie. Haha we've had some pretty fun biking stories. The first comes from the torrential rain we've been experiencing out here in tamatave that hasn't stopped since saturday. So yes i've already gone through 3 pairs of pants in two days... It's fine i'm over it. So... Tamatave is very flat, but there are a bazillion potholes and the paths are like up and down waves... so there are puddles everywhere!!! So we just decided to be kids again and rally through the puddles.... super fun! Other than the fact that we were sopping wet and stuff, we had a great time. The other problem when it rains is that nobody wants to learn, go to church or do anything and especially let you in their house if you're tracting... so we just keep riding through puddles being little kids. Don't worry i've got some great videos i'll show you in 14 months. The other bike story is that i had my first bike crash... and it was nice and gnarly! We were going semi fast on the main road and i turned onto a sand path and well my bike flew out from under me.. landed on my shoulder, somersaulted, then landed perfectly on my feet... Don't even worry about it. Only a small scratch and it looked super cool according to elder rigby haha. I'll show some pics! Anyways this week once again we did a lot of tracting and finding... Sadly the tracting hasn't worked nearly as well as we would have liked so i've decided next week we're going to hit it hard with visiting members, active, less active, whoever. It's gonna get crazy with them spiritual thoughts! We're trying to make a good rep for the missionaries in this branch! We want them to like us so they give us people to teach!! So that is our goal! Other than that we had some cool experiences teaching. First off theirs a lady named Olivette that we teach. We were teaching the plan of salvation and at the end she said expressed how she wishes she could go to the celestial kingdom but it's way to hard.. I asked her why and she says "well it sounds like only perfect people can go there, and i'm not perfect." She went on talking about how when she has trials she has doubts about god and stuff like that,and she feels like she's always repenting and heavenly father probably gets mad and sick of it, and it's hard to be like Christ cause he was so perfect. When i heard this i couldn't help but laugh and just say... "yeah! we aren't perfect! but that's why we're here on earth! to doubt, gain testimony, repent, learn, grown and do all we can to one day become perfect like Christ!" I bore testimony that she can and will go to the celestial kingdom and live her heavenly father again as long as she lives the gospel everyday. After the lesson i couldn't but help just feel so happy and grateful for a loving father in heaven who left us here on earth to make us learn and grow. And yeah even though we doubt, sin and fall down HE STILL LOVES US...! And he's given us His son to help us along the way, the scriptures, and prayer and so many things... I left the lesson just full of gratitude for all those things! Church is true peeps. Next cool experience is where we found the next joseph smith... so yeah pretty dope. In PMG is says to find people go about doing good... well after having no luck tracting we helped a man and his son push their cart across town and started tracting around that area. Well we ended up at a huge house... so of course we hit it! hah a guy let us in.. his name is guyette, 30, no job, no wife, lives with his rich uncle but he told us how he doesn't go to church cause all the churches say their true, so he's confused... So he reads the bible and prays... Sound familiar? YES! JOE SMITH YALL!! We shared our message and then told asked if he knew where the true church was, would he want to go there... he said "obviously." so we challenged him to pray about it and gave him a BOM! Pretty sweet experience and really cool to see how doing good led us to a hopefully awesome investigator...! I love all of you guys and i want all you guys to know that Heavenly Father loves us too. Have a good week emailers.

Big hugs,

Elder Roush