Hey, once again it is the Easter Season here in Madagascar and per usual there were no open cybers, wohoo! So toda
Hey, once again it is the Easter Season here in Madagascar and per usual there were no open cybers, wohoo! So today (sorry the letter randomly sent itself) we get to write to all of you.
Elder Evans and I have been going hard at our area this past week and we have been seeing some great success;
One of our families called Faly, Alice, Sarika, and Michael have been doing great. I went and visited them this past Friday on a split with Elder Lingani from South Africa and taught this great family about the Book of Mormon. One of the parts that I love teaching about the Book of Mormon is how simple it is to know if the message that we are sharing is true. We tell everyone to not trust us but to in fact trust God for if this book is truly from Him then he will let us know amin'ny maha zanakan'Andrimanitra antsika (in what makes us Gods children). Always it is just a joy for me to see peoples lives change and brighten, especially, through reading and studying that great volume of scripture. So far I have been seeing that in Faly and Alice's family, I see more love and care than I have ever seen before and that is due to them living the gospel, it is great to see.
Also this past week happens to have been transfer week and.... I will be staying another transfer in 67! I will be getting an elder named Elder Reynolds and he seems to be a great person, I got to see him a tiny bit yesterday. Elder Evans though will be leaving and going to the glorious land of Tamatave to work with my son, Elder Tshuma. I am way excited for Elder Evans, he is going to love working right on the beach and enjoying the sights and sounds of Tamatave.
I think that is all that I have time to write about right now, the week was great and I will try to get more detail next week! Have a great one everybody!
Elder Nelson
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Monday, March 21, 2016
Ok ok, here it is, The Big letter... We also had baptisms!
Hey everyone! Sorry about not getting a big letter out last week, we got very busy and I just did not have time to do it, but this weeks is great and must come out as we had four baptisms this past week!!!
So Monday we had a great day just walking around with Elders Price, Lungani, Taninter, and Maluleka looking at/ buying souvenirs and getting ice cream. That evening we visited and had a great time with an amazing family named Faly, Micheal, Sarika, and Alice. They didn't have much time that evening so we just shared a small little lesson on the importance of a living prophet and then connecting that to the Joseph Smith pamphlet (which they have all read) and learning more about the living prophet right now. We then invited them to the baptism on Saturday and Faly said that at the very least he would be coming.
One of the other families that we are teaching that is doing pretty well named Gino, Razafimahatratra, with Gino's wife Katy. We stopped by them , just planning on talking to them about coming to church but it turned into a discussion about praying about the Book of Mormon as apparently they have not been praying about the message at all even though they have been reading the book regularly. really it was just amazing to see how hard it is sometimes for people to accept to do even the small things, Razafimahatratra took some talking and promises to finally help him accept the invitation to pray.
It just astounded me on how hard it is for us as people to really accept/ do the very small and basic things. Occasionally when I am in a bad mood or a bad day I know that if I just say a quick prayer and it will all go away. But there is always a little resistence to not do so, almost a reluctance to not give myself over to someone else, yet I know it is what I should do. So I completally understand what Razafimahatratra was feeling, I could see the struggle on his face, it is hard sometimes to really allow ourselves to change and ask God for actual guidance
Finally we had BAPTISMS!!!!! It was a great service, Elder Evans baptised Holy and Jocelyn while I had the great honor of baptising Zoe and Vola. Everyone was so happy with the service and we got invited to lunch the next day after church. Then as soon as the service ended the skies of Madagascar opened up and it just rained and rained and rained all the day long, hense the video and pictures of flooding.
I think that is about it guys, thank you all for reading and your emails, hope you all have a great week!
Elder Nelson
So Monday we had a great day just walking around with Elders Price, Lungani, Taninter, and Maluleka looking at/ buying souvenirs and getting ice cream. That evening we visited and had a great time with an amazing family named Faly, Micheal, Sarika, and Alice. They didn't have much time that evening so we just shared a small little lesson on the importance of a living prophet and then connecting that to the Joseph Smith pamphlet (which they have all read) and learning more about the living prophet right now. We then invited them to the baptism on Saturday and Faly said that at the very least he would be coming.
One of the other families that we are teaching that is doing pretty well named Gino, Razafimahatratra, with Gino's wife Katy. We stopped by them , just planning on talking to them about coming to church but it turned into a discussion about praying about the Book of Mormon as apparently they have not been praying about the message at all even though they have been reading the book regularly. really it was just amazing to see how hard it is sometimes for people to accept to do even the small things, Razafimahatratra took some talking and promises to finally help him accept the invitation to pray.
It just astounded me on how hard it is for us as people to really accept/ do the very small and basic things. Occasionally when I am in a bad mood or a bad day I know that if I just say a quick prayer and it will all go away. But there is always a little resistence to not do so, almost a reluctance to not give myself over to someone else, yet I know it is what I should do. So I completally understand what Razafimahatratra was feeling, I could see the struggle on his face, it is hard sometimes to really allow ourselves to change and ask God for actual guidance
Finally we had BAPTISMS!!!!! It was a great service, Elder Evans baptised Holy and Jocelyn while I had the great honor of baptising Zoe and Vola. Everyone was so happy with the service and we got invited to lunch the next day after church. Then as soon as the service ended the skies of Madagascar opened up and it just rained and rained and rained all the day long, hense the video and pictures of flooding.
I think that is about it guys, thank you all for reading and your emails, hope you all have a great week!
Elder Nelson
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Zone Conference with Elder Hamilton
Hey everyone!
So I am just going to apologize right now but this letter if going to have to be shorter that usual as we had a zone conference yesterday which was our Pday so I need to keep things short.
One super fun thing that happened this week is that Elder Anderson came down from Mahajanga to attend the Zone Meeting with us past Monday. So all of them came down on Wednesday and did splits with us on Thursday. Elder Anderson came to work with me and Elder Evans (obviously) as we have both been companions with him. We all work together for most of the day up until Elder Evans had to go to a meeting for zone leader stuff so it was just me and Elder Anderson for the rest of the day and it was great! It had been almost a full year since I had worked/ taught with Elder Anderson and it was so fun to talk and catch up with him. The last time that we taught was with this new family that we had tracted into at night named Liliana and Mamy. We were only there for about 15 minutes as it was late and they still had stuff to do but the short lesson that we shared with them, which was focused on families and of its importance to God, was just full of the spirit.
The rest of the week was great, we had ended it our day on Sunday with teaching Liliana and Mamy again (we had set up a return appointment) and had another great time with them and their family. As we were almost home, maybe 3min from the house, we found this older man and boy pushing a dead taxi up the road. We aske them "do you need help?" which was quickly responded by a a quick yes. So Elder Evans and I got behind the taxi and just started pushing and boy we were going fas, we yell "where are we going? "
Second email:
So I was giong to finish the story but the email decided to send itself so pretty much we got the taxi to where it needed to go, it was a great end to the week.
One thing about our conference with Elder Hamilton is that as missionaries give commitments they are to also promise those investigators blessings, I will prob ably talk more about that next week but the conference was very very good.
Have a good week everyone!
Elder Nelson
So I am just going to apologize right now but this letter if going to have to be shorter that usual as we had a zone conference yesterday which was our Pday so I need to keep things short.
One super fun thing that happened this week is that Elder Anderson came down from Mahajanga to attend the Zone Meeting with us past Monday. So all of them came down on Wednesday and did splits with us on Thursday. Elder Anderson came to work with me and Elder Evans (obviously) as we have both been companions with him. We all work together for most of the day up until Elder Evans had to go to a meeting for zone leader stuff so it was just me and Elder Anderson for the rest of the day and it was great! It had been almost a full year since I had worked/ taught with Elder Anderson and it was so fun to talk and catch up with him. The last time that we taught was with this new family that we had tracted into at night named Liliana and Mamy. We were only there for about 15 minutes as it was late and they still had stuff to do but the short lesson that we shared with them, which was focused on families and of its importance to God, was just full of the spirit.
The rest of the week was great, we had ended it our day on Sunday with teaching Liliana and Mamy again (we had set up a return appointment) and had another great time with them and their family. As we were almost home, maybe 3min from the house, we found this older man and boy pushing a dead taxi up the road. We aske them "do you need help?" which was quickly responded by a a quick yes. So Elder Evans and I got behind the taxi and just started pushing and boy we were going fas, we yell "where are we going? "
Second email:
So I was giong to finish the story but the email decided to send itself so pretty much we got the taxi to where it needed to go, it was a great end to the week.
One thing about our conference with Elder Hamilton is that as missionaries give commitments they are to also promise those investigators blessings, I will prob ably talk more about that next week but the conference was very very good.
Have a good week everyone!
Elder Nelson
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