January 9, 2012

hey family! how are yall doin!? how is the new year treating you? tell me everything! hahahah life here has been good. its been a cold depressing week here as we havent seen the sun for a week now and its been raining on and off and the temperature has been like 15°C which is freezing! haha. but we have done a lot of teaching and some finding and the work has been progressing better now which is awesome! i may be transfered in the next 2 weeks but most likely elder wilson will be transfered before me so that will be good for him to get a change. we no for sure that one of us will be transfered. so thats exciting. lets tell you about my week. last monday we went into the office and hung out for a bit. a pretty slow day all around there as it was p day. then tuesday we worked in ambohibo and got soaked because it rained all day. and it was freezing cold that day. i swear i could see my breath ;) hahaha then wednesday we went to ambohimanarina. got a couple new investigators. they are friends of our recent convert louise who is so freakin awesome. already doin missionary work and shes been a member for like a month. love her. then we went home and played settlers of ketan! robyn and bevan! just s you know we play that quite a bit here and i rock. i win alot so you better watch out when i get back! hahaha then thursday was another ambohiboa day. we got doged all day. so we decided to go check out new areas in our area and he found this like forest think and played whith spiders and chamilians and had fun with some frogs and stuff. it was a good day. and we found a new investigator there as well! they were way cool. they just let us straight into the door and wanted to learn. i had never expirienced that on my mission. we didnt tell them who we were, they didnt know who we were. they just knew we were religious and said come in. it was crazy haha. then friday we were in ambohimanarina again. good day of teaching there. some of our investigators are loosing interest wich is no fun but thats the way life gos in ambohimarina. then saturday me and elder landon went to ankazobe!!!!! hahaha i love going to ankazobe. the group presidents family is awesome. and they have a new baby i will send you pictures of. her name is isreal and she is way cute. tiny little thing but cute. the whole family is awesome. all of our investigators there couldnt learn saturday cause its harvest time for the rice so we god dogged again on saturday. ended up hiking up to this waterfall and taking some pictures and running into a young man from tana visiting his girlfriend there and now some of the other missionaries. had a good conversation with him and told him where the church was and stuff. he said he would check it out! :) then sunday we went to church and headed back home. on the bus ride home a malagasy man fell asleep on my shoulder..... hahahahah and he was out! i didnt wake him up till we stopped cause i didnt want to be mean but i had to slap him just to get him awake! like i mean this guy was koncked right out droolin everywhere! hahaha ive got pictures i will send you. and that brings us to today. our plan is to go into the office and then go get my guitar fixed cause a sting already broke..... i wasnt impressed. lol. so yesterday was a special day! it was my moms birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i wont tell you yall how old she is but i will say that in about a year she is gunna be 50.......... or somethin like that. hahahahahaha how exciting is that!! so mom i love you! i hope eyour birthday was mafinaritra! (wonderful) and that you got to sit back and relax and enjoy your sunday. you may be 49 but your still young and energetic at heart! haha. i love the lord my god and all that he does for me . i love how he blesses me even though i am so quick to sin and trangress. he loves us all and has mercy on us if we stive to love him and keep his comandments. you look at all the rules the isrealites had way back when and in the end the way god sumorizes it is "love me and keep my comandments. that is all i ask" sounds easy. and it can be if we put our priorities in the right place. till next week. be fitiavana mandrakizay. Elder Riley Bates - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Madagascar