March 25, 2013

hahahaha i am sure lyndi will laugh when you tell her this but her letter was longer than yours yet again.... sorry. but yours was still incredibly impressive!! and i am so appreciative for all the time you put into writing me in such great detail.

sorry you didnt get my letter till later last wek!! my schedual changes acording to what we need to do so i didnt email till the afternoon last week. but i am writing this so that it should get to you by about 1 over there hahah. sorry about last week. we went to the lemur park way early so that we could feed them and so we dodnt get to email later.

30 cm is a ton of snow to get in one dump!! and i am sure your hard just droped as soon as you saw that. but it never stops amazing me the blessings of the lord. just reading about all the things that happened to you during a 24 hour period or so and still getting all the work done and making it to regine the day after is sooo amazing. davis is s stud for going to help you. how tall is that kid now 7 foot!!?? those long arms and legs of his wpimd push the snow nicely i am sure. and how great of emily to go help you as well though she did tell me it was reluctently hahahaha. and then the pinched nerve was even worse i am sure. emily wrote me this week and told me i shouldnt take over the business. i take that as a sign that she didnt like it on friday lol. but funnilly enough all the snow and things going wrong do not even begin to give me cold feet. it just gets me excited to go out and experience it myself. to learn from it all. i can think of nothing else i would want to do more in my life than work outdoors along side with you. so dont worry. i am pretty tapak-hevitra. 

that is so incredible that you got a call from a young man in peru!!! i can imagine how good that felt for you! i hope i can have that as well. to have those you stived with and loved for so long remember you and make effort to contact you is a great blessing from the lord.i know that i can recieve the same blessings if i am dilligent and endure to the end just as you have strived to do your whole life.

just chillin at lyndis huh??? hahah you talk with emily to much huh dad. pickin up the slang lol. i am truely jelous that you are just chillen at yackity lyndis. though she wasnt so talkative this week..... ya your letter was much longer than hers... haha im funny right. but she did make it a point that she did it on purpose so that you could win once.... and you might cry when i tell you this next part. but the computer i am on is refusing to let me send pictures..... im sorrY. youll have to wait till next week. but i am truely jealous of your free time to go and cisit all of the family! though you definatly deserve it i wish i was with yall! haha even with screamin kids in the car for 6 hours. i dont even think the people here have heard of a car seat. those who do have cars just let the kids run around and hold the little babies in their arms and nurse them the whole time so that they do not cry.

church sounded very enjoyable. the lesson on improveing ourselfs every day sounds great. we had a combine relief society priesthood thing and a couple missionaries came and taught about temple work. it was a great lesson and many many gained from it. all of our investigators that were there were so excited to go to the temple its a wonderful thing.the temple truely is sooo important. andi hope that all can one day convienietly benifit from a temple. we are almost there. just gotta gett into the very corners.

ya s oabout the rat.... i am not sure if i was the source of its death or not but all i know is i was contacting a man on the sidewalk and we sat down to talk to him and i leaned into the gras sand got up and the malagasy helping us was all like. whats that on your arm??? and i was like, i dont know. and then he pointed at the dead rat in the grass and the puzzle pieced itself together. i went and bought a waterbottle and washed my arm and then thourouly washed with hand sanitizer. you seem to think that we arent very sanitary here. the country may not be sanitary.... but we try to be. and i have been very healthy throughout my mission sickness wise. the last thing i want is a serious desease that will affect me for the rest of my life. and i ma glad that your hand has cleared up!.

so my week has been very very good. again full of gods blessings. it is hard to have a bad week when you really start lookin and watching. we have had mpre less active members come back to church and investigartors are progressing toward baptism. we have 2 people getting baptised on saturday. gabriel and rose. you ahve seen them in my pictures. the are desirees kids. desire is very dilligent but his wifes family has denied him marrying her because they are already finished the malagasy way. but that was another blessing we have seen. we talked to the family and have been teaching them and they really really like the lessons and because of that i feel like desirees baptism will be coming shortly wich fill my heart with such joy. we have also been teachinga man named jerry who has really been putting me through the ringer hahaha. he is a 20 year old very educated man and prays with the jehovahs witnesses. he is semmingly very curious about his chuch and i have had incredible desire to help him find the fullness of truth. i fell desire for all those i teach but for some reason my soul has been vexed as i have struggled to teach jerry. this week we talked to him about how our spirits do not die when our bodies die wich is exactly opposite of what he has learned. but he went through the bible and malagasy is a great language but it doesnt have many descriptive words.for example. soul and spirit are one ward in malagasy. but in french and english and hebrew they are 2 very different words. and jerry likes to read in french so we explained how the scriptures he showed us were about the sould dieing. wich is your body and spirit combined. and then we told him that we agree that our sould dies at death and awaits the reserection. it seemed to really gett him thinking and i am so incredibly greatful for god that he prepared me throughout the week for that. we also got a call from one of our old recent converts. because our area was very big it got spil and half of it went to the sisters. so a member who lives in a fairly remote area of the sisters area called us saying her brother in law was very sick and needed to be tended to. so we called the sisters and headed out there. the man said he had a pain in his abdamin that would climb up into his chest and make him cough and shake uncontrolably. it was aparent that something was causing this man great pain. his name was modeste. so we taough about faith and athority and offered to give hima blessing if he had faith enough to be healed. he humbly said that he had the faith and we continued with the blessing. the power of god is an incredible gift given to us and can bless those if we are worthy. there were many in the house and i was so greatful for the spirit as we gave him a blessing because here there are so many horribly wrong ideas about casting out devils that there is always bound to be something wrong or weird happen. but this time there was nothing but the feeling of the spirit. and modeste was healed. straight after the blessing the pain left him. that will stand as a testimony to many and will bring many unto this gospel. god knows his sheep. and they are counted everyone. i love this work with all my heart and though i long to be home i know that i have more to do here to bless the lives of these people wich i lvoe so much. i pray you will be sage and find so much joy in your vacation this week. i dont know if i will ever beable to show the gratitude i feel towards you and mom for all you have done for me. know that i am doing my best here and walking along side the angels of god.


be fitiavana mandrakizay

elder bates