So Far Gone

Well I got the news this week that I'd be heading out of Ambositra. Kind of sad but it's all good cause we get to do 8 baptisms on Saturday in Amjoma. I'm gonna miss this place, but it'll be so nice to finally be done with training and stuff. We've been training Elder Bassett here cause me and Elder Olsen are leaving so we're training Elder Bassett on the area. 

Not much has been going on here everything is going pretty good. Party never stops here so everyone is still a little tipsy, but it's starting to settle down a little. Nothing new really.  We've dropped a ton of investigators who just weren't progressing well, so we're starting to tract again. Hopefully there'll be more to talk about next week. 

Love you all.

New Year Boozinn

Well new year new me. Not much happened this week and the electric company here is going to shut down the power soon so I have to keep it short. First off everyone here is DRUNK. Apparently all they do here for new years is drink so the work never goes here during new years. We went and tried to teach lessons and everyone was drunk so we just went to a members and had dinner haha.

We taught a lesson yesterday that was really awesome. It was to a guy named Justa. To start off he invited a friend to come learn with us so score. Then while we were teaching he kept sharing really cool insights. The first one is the story of a philsopher who was trying to figure out our relationship to the kingdom of God. He was on the beach walking and he ran into a little kid who was digging a hole and he asked him what he was doing. The little kid said that he was trying to fit the ocean into the hole. The philospher relates that to the kingdom of God. All of us are trying to dig a hole and fit the entire kingdom of God into it. It was awesome cause after he shared that we just told him that no one will be able to fit the whole ocean into a hole. But what we can do is help make your hole bigger and help you understand more of who God really is. It was a way cool lesson and he was super stoked to learn more. He's the guard of a prison and he invited us to go teach the inmates there. 

Anyways that's about it for this week. 

Love you all and Happy New Years

Happy Easter

Hey guys so it isn't gonna be a long one this week cause I've already talked with my family and all of that. But everything is going well out here. 

Christmas was awesome we had a little party and after church on sunday we went to a member's house for lunch and ate some rabbit. It was good but we have an extra rabbit, so it's kind of just jumping around our house, no one's got the guts to kill it. 

Anyways nothing much happened this week, so Merry Christmas everyone!

Love, 
Elder St John

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

Another Week - Another Bus Problem

Well just another average week in Mada. I started out in Tana and went on splits with a missionary named Elder Boer on Tuesday. On Wednesday we started on our way back to Ambositra. First off we had to wait for like 2 hours at the bus stop because the busses won't leave until they have the whole bus full. After that we were just going on our way when all of the sudden a huge semi truck is just driving in the middle of the road swerving around. Our bus driver makes a quick manuever and we have to fly to the side of the road where there's a 10 foot cliff into small river. We were litterally less that a foot from falling into the river. #savedbyangels. We hit some major turbulance and everyone in the bus got thrown around. Me and Elder Olsen were sitting shotgun (yes they fit 2 people in every seat and their busses are just like big minivans so not much room) so we got to see everything going down. The semi truck driver was smiling like way big as he was coming for us which was creepy. After we stopped the bus this one guy in our car who got kindof hurt jumped out and ran over to the semi pulled him out of the truck and beat the crap out of him haha. Well of course we had to wait about and hour until the gendarmie (police) could make it to us A.K.A. it took them an hour to walk like 5 miles. Then they conducted a little investigation where they drew some lines on the road with rocks and stuff. They came to the conclusion that the semi driver was drunk out of his mind. So at this point it has already been about 2 hours and it's not looking like we're gonna get out of there anytime soon. The cops need to take the drunk driver to a city called Antsirabe, but they don't have a car to take him in, and they won't let him go with us cause they think we'll kill him. So we just waited... while we were waiting the AP's drove by and looked and saw two white people dressed up on the side of the road. They stopped and gave us a ride to Antsirabe that night. Then the next day we got a ride to Ambositra with a mission driver. So I think I'm done taking busses for a while. I'm just gonna walk or something... 

That's my only fun story this week, but the lessons are going along pretty well. We're teaching two pastors right now. One of them is FJKM (Christ's church on Madagascar) and the other one is a 7th day Adventist... Seriously these guys are nuts man. Logan talks a little about them in his letter, but seriously no matter what you talk about these guys will try to bible bash you. But it's funny cause this guy is actually starting to progress haha. He's just starting to realize that our docterine is true and that two eighteen year old kids have more answers to life than he even though he's been a pastor for 40 years. It's most likely he won't progress any more, but me and elder Olsen have big dreams of converting him then baptizing his whole congregation. So yeah I guess the spiritual message this week is just about how simple and easy to understand the doctorine of our gospel is. It has been amamzing to how true and plain the teachings of the plan of salvation and other doctorine in our gospel are. There are 8 year old kids who have a better understanding of our where we're from, what we're doing here, and where we're going than people who've been studying for 50 years. The gospel of Jesus Christ is simple and pure. It's not hard to understand, but it can be very hard to find this truth. Missionary work is so amazing cause we're able to bring an amazing amount of truth and light to these people's lives who have been searching their whole lives. I love this gospel and I know that it is true. It is plain and it is clear, it shows us the path to eternal life. Not only eternal life, but eternal joy. Don't take for granted the knowledge that you have. Most of you reading this already know and understand the gospel so please remember how amazing and wonderful the truths that we have are. Love you all.

Love

Elder St John

The Army Stole Our Bus

So I'm in Antananarivo right now cause I have to do some Visa stuff, so I'm just painting the setting for this right now. 

This week was pretty normal... I'll start off by telling you all a quick tale of our journey home from Amjoma yesterday. So we went to Amjoma for church yesterday and it was awesome cause they pretty much do all of their own mission work. They have like 10 people who are all about ready for baptism. We just have to teach them a few more times and fill in the gaps of what the members haven't taught. But we had to take a bus home cause we don't have a car. 

First off Amjoma is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere so we had to wait for about 1 1/2 hours to catch a bus. Then after we caught our bus we drove for about 5 miles and then the police stopped us so that they could check our paperwork. Turns out the bus driver didn't have the right paperwork. But in reality no one here has the right paperwork and the only problem was that we had a military guy in our bus and the cops have a beef with the military for some reason. So when the cop saw that military guy he wouldn't accept the bus driver's bribe (everyone bribes the cops here). So the police stole the bus driver's keys and made us wait for like another hour in the middle of nowhere. THANK GOODNESS THERE WAS A HOLY PERSON WITH US!!! There was a nun in the bus with us and she schmoozed the police to let us take the bus to a small town called Ivato where another bus would come and get us then they could arrest the bus driver and stuff. 

So we all loaded up and got on our way to Ivato. When we got to Ivato we had to wait like another 45 minutes for the other bus to come and get us. Turns out the only bus that they had was half the size of the other bus. So we fit 18 people into a tiny car that can probably usually fit six. It was so stuffed that they couldn't shut the trunk and Elder Olsen had to pretty much hang on for dear life out of the back. The people in the bus were wayyy funny though. They were all cracking jokes about having two white guys in a bus with them and all of that classic immature Malagasy stuff. It was really funny cause no one was mad at the bus driver... everyone was mad at the Gendarmie (the "police") for not accepting the bribe. It's such a culture change here cause in America everyone would be angry at the bus driver for not having the paperwork, but here everyone gets mad at the army for not accepting a bribe. 

Other than that it was a normal week. Another funny thing  happened though that'll help you guys realize how different the culture here is. We were at a lesson with a less active family and they were asking about pets and this one lady asked us what we fed our animals... How the heck am I supposed to explain to a lady who probably makes less than 1000000 Ariary (like 350 bucks) a year, that we BUY SPECIAL FOOD FOR OUR DOGS. Like it was such a crazy concept in her mind that Americans have different food just for dogs. She seriously couldn't understand that. It was a huge eye opener. 

So yeah way good week. All the people here call me Joana Panao Batiza (John the Baptist) So I mean they're not really wrong as long as they let me baptize them. But yeah, Christmas music is sounding through the streets. Mostly Mariah Carrey and Penatonix... 

The lessons are coming along well. Nothing new really to report. People here learn slow so it takes a while to get people to progress. I just gotta have patience and move at their speed. It has been really awesome these last few weeks to see the amazing light and joy that this gospel can bring into people's lives. Even people with basically nothing are able to still have everything. They are able to have the knowledge of eternal life and eternal happiness. God doesn't look at them and judge them based on the amount of money that they make, but he judges them with a perfect and merciful judgement based on the character of their heart. It's like the story of the widow's mite. Their world may say Ataovy betsaka (give a lot). The Lord just says give all you can and then the kingdom of heaven will be yours. So you can apply that to money or you can apply that to things of a more spiritual nature. Even if you don't feel like you have a lot to contribute to the lord's work, even if you see others contributing huge amounts of "gold" to the lord's work. Know that God doesn't ask for a lot, he only asks for what we can do. So keep that in mind. Don't compare your contribution to others. Just do all you can.

Love you all,

   Elder St. John  

P.S. Sorry for not having a lot of pictures. The computers here are all corrupt and will steal your pictures so I have to wait until I can back them up on a USB or something.

Lazy Eyes Everywhere

Well let me paint a picture for you all... The beatufiul landscape of Madagascar, rice patties everywhere, cows grazing in the middle of the streets, free range chickens wandering in and out of houses, and FREAKING LAZY EYES EVERYWHERE. Litterally I've tried to go a day here without seeing someone with a lazy eye and it's impossible cause I think half the popoulation here has one. There are a few things that you can't go a day without seeing here. First is someone with a lazy eye, second is a woman just exposing herself to the world, and third is someone wearing a shirt with a really inappropriate or funny saying that makes no sense. Madagascar is pretty much the DI dumping ground of the world here so every once and a while you'll see a guy walking down the street in a BYU shirt or a shirt that just has the F word written all over it. Anyways that's my Madagascar cultural lesson for the week.

Life's going pretty good here in Ambositra. We finally got a water heater, the only problem is that it doesn't work... The electricity in our house ins't strong enough to support it so they're replacing the wiring in our house sometime this week. So yeah, still cold showers and hand washed clothes... I freakin love it though cause I'll like never have the opportunity to feel closer to the people of Madagascar. I bet 99 percent of the people here have never even heard of a water heater haha. But yeah the house is solid. We don't sleep with mosquito nets or anything cause it's not the mosquitos you need to worry about. The bed bugs and flees are getting more daring... The Malagasies are starting to make fun of me cause none of them get bit, so they think it's way funny that I'm covered in bites. They say it's cause I still have sweet American blood.

The work is coming along alright here. We got two baptismal dates this week, but here it's really easy to get baptismal dates. The hard thing is actually getting them to baptism. The culture here is that no one wants to offend you so they'll accept everything you say and act really excited and then the next time you teach them and ask them if they read the Book of Mormon or something they hardly ever will have. But it is really easy to tell the difference between diligent and not diligent investigators really quick. The only problem is finding the diligent ones. People like talking to white people here and they act really interested in our teachings so we have to keep coming back to them, but they don't want to get baptized which is such a bummer cause they're just wasting our time. It's never a waste of time though cause we're inviting people to come closer to Christ which is what this is all about. It's good practice for the first lessons though. I can understand and teach the first couple lessons no problem but the second we start talking about the plan of salvation I just get so lost haha. People here are either passive or extremely passionate about their religion. Really the only ones who are "passionate" are the 7th day Adventists and the Jehovah Witnesses. Most of the time they're not even passionate about their religion. They're just passionate about trying to make us look stupid. They're always trying to Bible bash us which is way funny. We never really bash back, but we do politely share scriptures that own them, and then invite them to study the scriptures and ask God.

Anyways that's about it for this week. Love you and miss you all!

Elder St John

I FINALLY WON AT CHESS

Well to start things off, this week I'll update all of you on my warfare witht he fleas. I found one and killed it but that's about it. It seems like it may have scared them off cause I haven't been getting bit quite so much, but I'm keeping my eyes peeled. I think they're scheeming something big cause this may just be the calm before the storm. I won't let my guard down and I will come at them with redoubled efforts. Wish me luck.

Anyways other than that it was a pretty uneventful week. It rained alot which is fun cause everyone here is terrified of the rain and all start runing for cover the second that they feel rain. Elder Olsen and I play chess alot before we go to bed and I finally won this week. Apparently I'm terrible at chess or something cause he's not even good.

Since everyone keeps begging me, I guess I'll talk a little about the food. Its rice... literally all we eat is rice out here with some beans or a mystery meat. I haven't eaten anything gross yet, but I really don't know what I've eaten haha. You just go with it and don't ask.

The work is coming along. It's been 4 weeks and we still haven't taught anything other than restoration and Book of Mormon haha. I've got high hopes for this week though. The people here are really nice and accepting, it is just impossible for us to get them to keep commitments so we have to keep reviewing lessons and all of that. I'm getting pretty good at tracting though haha.  Anyways that's about if for this week. 

Love you and miss you all.

I Have Fleas

Well to start things off I'm gonna write about some bugs cause I know that's what you all wanna hear. The bugs here are insane. I probably have about 1000 flea bites, no joke. There's no getting rid of them, you've just gotta endure the pain. I always thought fleas and bedbugs were a myth. The people who say that the most real monsters are inside of your head have apparently never been harrassed by bed bugs/fleas cause those things make a grown man wanna cry. 

Another fun fact about Madagascar is that apparently there is such a thing as flying spiders. I was just sitting there at the top of this mountain after a hike we went on this morning and I was watching a spider and all of the sudden it started floating straight up.  No Joke. Like it didnt have a web, nothing. It just started floating straight up. I asked the ward members we were with what just happened and at first they told me it was dead and going to heaven, but then they told me that it's just a normal spider here and apparently they can fly haha so that's pretty cool. 

Those aren't even the worst spiders though. There are ones that are, probably as big as my hand, everywhere. They don't bite which is cool they're just freaky as heck and not the good kind of freaky either. Except there is one spider that lives right outside of our apartment and if you tap his web he starts shaking his butt really fast so as of now he's the only good freaky spider that I know. When we leave we tap his web and sing the wiggle song by Jason Dueruelo or whatever and man that spider gets FREAKY. Well that's enough about bugs for this week stay tuned for more cool bug facts.

Well on to the important stuff... All the weird stuff that happened this week!!! First thing first is that drunk people here love white people and since we're the only white people here most of the time we're like a magnet. So this week this guy that was wayyy too far gone came up and kissed my and my companion so that's new. 

We also met this guy who claims to be 125 years old. I thought that was impossible, but the members say that it's not really uncommon. Apparently there's some guy who's 200 who lives in a village like 45 minutes outside of Ambositra so they said they'd take us there one day. I don't belive them at all cause nobody here has proof of when they were born really so you've just gotta go by word. I wanna beleive though so I'll just go with it.

The actual work though is going along slow still. We have a lot of investagators, but only two are progressing and one of them is moving. The other one lives with a member family so at least we've got one who's stuck haha. Finding people is pretty easy here. We can tract for an hour and teach three first lessons and get return dates.  The hard thing is actually getting them to show up to their return dates. They also never keep commitments and never wanna come to church either so that's frustrating, but it is easy to weed out the weak from the strong pretty quick. We went to another branch that is in our zone on Sunday in the city of Amjomakana (Amzoma for short/white people). Its a city that is way tiny and pretty much as ambonyboitra (farmland) as it gets. It was way cool though cause everyone there was ready to learn about the gospel. It was funny though cause the branch president was teaching some false doctrine   The first councelor straigtened it out at the end though so that's all good. Anyways that's it for this week! Love you all and miss you!

Love, 

Elder St John

Naked People Everywhere

Hayden at Church in Ambositra

Hey everybody! Things are going great here! The area is still way tough and I still have no idea what I'm doing but I'm getting used to it! 

I'm gonna give you guys a little bit more detail of my area cause I didn't write much last week, but my area is called Ambositra. There haven't been missionaries here in like a year and a half so we're pretty much starting from scratch. Every once in awhile we will run into someone who was taking the lessons before they closed it, but not very often. 

The house is pretty nice. It doesnt have hot water so what I do is boil a pot of water and pretty much give myself a warm spongebath cause I'm too big of a baby to handle a cold shower. I bet all of you think that I'm probably dying of heat over here but you're WRONG! It's soooo cold haha. I wake up every morning and have to like force myself to get rid of the blanket. We also didn't have a working phone until yesterday so they literally just droped us off here without hot water, no phone, and no washing machines. We have to wash all of our clothes by hand because the washing machine doesn't work. 

But yeah, it's a pretty nice house, probably one of the nicest in the city. A majority of the people here live in pretty much a 10 square foot cement room in a complex of like 20 other houses. Some people have nicer houses but that's pretty much average. 

Ambositra is a pretty cool city. It is famous for its wood working so I'm gonna get some pretty cool souveniers. It is also a huge farming town so there's a lot of people who are farmers here.  But most people just sell stuff on the side of the road or are carpenters here. The people are all really nice here. A lot of times you just knock on a door and hear "mondroso" which means come in, so that is pretty awesome. What isn't awesome is how often you get a return appointment and they aren't there. Pretty much 50 percent of the time they're not going to be there which is really dissapointing. It also feels like I have been tracting for the last 500,000 years. I've taught the first lesson 29 times this week and we've only taught about the Book of Mormon twice haha. I'm way good at the first lesson though haha.

Something else that is funny is that they've got a huge problem with modesty here haha. Like we'll be sitting in a lesson with an investigator and they'll just start breastfeeding without batting an eye. The first ten times I saw it I was a little taken back but by now I'm pretty used to it. One time we were trackting and this lady answers the door with half her chest hanging out and she didn't even realize it for like 5 minutes haha. But yeah that's just Madagascar for ya. 

Me and Elder Olsen are getting along way well and the work is coming along. We're finally starting to get a little bit of a program so we don't have to keep tracting all day every day, but still we've got a long way to go haha. The members here are awesome. They gave us a list of like fifteen referrals so that'll keep us busy for awhile. They're way excited to have missionaries here again which is soo cool.

But Yeah that's about it for this week. I love you all and miss you a ton!