Another Week Another Pastor

Well it was a pretty quiet week this week. No more bus problems which is good. We went to Amjoma yesterday for church and it was awesome. They have their own investigator class and it has about 8 people in it who we're going to try to baptize on January 14th! They're all way cool people and it's awesome to see what a big impact that member missionary work can have. Get to it everyone. 

But yeah bus ride home everything turned out well. No Gendarmie or drunk people so maybe the curse has been broken. We'll see though cause on Friday we're going to a city called Fianarantsoa for Christmas cause me and Elder Olsen don't wanna spend it alone haha. But Fianarantsoa (means good learning in Malagasy) is about a 4 hour bus ride from Ambositra (means land of castration in Malagasy)... 

No crazy stories this week, but we had some way cool lessons. First; we were tracting earlier this week and we ran into a lady who's husband wasn't home so we set a time for sunday to meet with them. We showed up and met the husband and he's seriously soooo prepared for the gospel. His name is Justa. The first thing I always do is ask them what ny famerenanan amin'ny laoniny means (the restoration). Most people just say something is broken then it is fixed, but this guy went on for like 15 minutes about how the gospel of Jesus Christ has become so lost and scattered and how there needs to be a church who has the same structure as Christ's church. Well bud, we've got some news for you. 

So we started sharing the importance of the gospel and then we got to the Joseph Smith story and it made so much sense to him. After we explained that to him he told us his religious background and how he's been to so many different churches but he doens't feel that any of them are true cause they've all just been established by people based on their own interpretations of the Bible, or they're just made by people who are looking for money. The second part is actually super common here in Madagascar. He told us a story of how a pastor came to his house once and legit said that he was teacing the gospel just to make money (that's a good way to convert people). After the lesson he just said he was coming to our church. We didn't even ask him or tell him anything about it but he said that he's been looking for the true church for so long and he wants to compare ours to the others. 

Another fun investigator story is that while we were tracting we ran into another Pastor!!!! This guy is part of the Shine church that was started here in Madagascar. So now we're teaching 3 pastors of 3 different faiths!! I like to daydream that we'll convert them and then their whole congregation. So if my dreams come true then we'll have about 300 new members coming up!! I doubt that any of them will progress though, but it is interesting to realize how simple and pure our gospel is.

That's it for this week! Love you all!

Love, 

Elder St. John