Duncan in the Oceannnnn

Well I'll start off by saying this week was ballin'. 

First off I SAW A LEMUR. We went to a nature reserve down here and when we got there we walk into this big open field with a few trees. Then the guide that we are with just yells MAKI (which is a type of lemur in malagasy) and we see like 20 lemurs start booking it out of the forest cause they know they're about to get hooked up with some good bananas. The guy just gives us some bananas and we start feeding the lemurs and petting them. They're seriously the coolest animals in the world.  

After that the rest of the week was pretty normal. We taught a bunch of good lessons. We've got some way cool investagators and stuff. But the coolest part of this week was that we got to do baptisms in the OCEAN. Me and Lebereko had 2 baptisms to do this week and there were some other people too, but the font wouldn't fill up so we went to the next best thing, the ocean. The people we baptized's names are Jacques Tsony and Alfonine Lalao. They're married and have a daughter who is married to a member. They're way cool people. The guy is way smart and has already read like the whole Gospel Principals book. Another couple should've gotten baptized, but they are getting married on Wednesday so they'll be getting baptized in 2 weeks. I get to go to a wedding so that's pretty chill too. 

But yeah way cool week. Love you and miss you all.

Still Don't Know What's Going on Here

LEMUR PARK LAST WEEK WAS A BUST. Didn't have lemurs... We went there and turns out that we were at the wrong park. We're going to the good one today so hopefully that works out. I STILL haven't seen a lemur and I've been here for 4 months. I'm gonna lose my mind. Anyways I'll take some pics. 

This week was pretty normal. We had a way good day at church with some good investigators in attendance. The people down here are awesome and way accepting of missionaries. 

Nothing really big to report on. We should have a few baptisms this week which'll be awesome. Sorry about the short letter I'll try to send a longer one next week with some pics.

SICK

Well to kick things off I've been sick litterally all week. Yesterday was the first day that I was able to get back to work. Apparently I got like a stomache infection or something. Anyways it's all better now so don't worry. 

Well apparently the Internet got cut in the whole country of Madagascar for the major Internet provider which is Telma. Fort Dauphin mostly uses Orange though so it's all chill.  Don't worry, we still have Internet. 

This week the branches were split down here so we now have three branches which is super cool. Seeing the growth of the Church is amazing. We had a district conference yesterday with about 350 people that came. It's pretty crazy that in a small city like Fort D there's able to be such a big group of such strong saints. 

Other than that, just another uneventful week. Sorry about that but I'm not sick anymore so hopefully things'll pick up again. 

Love you all.

It's Hot

Well I made it to my new area on Tuesday. It felt weird getting on a plane haha. The airport was the most first world place I've seen in 4 months. My new companion's name is Elder Lebereko. He's from South Africa. There's a little bit of a culture difference, but it's all good. 

Fort Dauphin is super pretty, but super hot. The work goes wayyy well here though. Last year they had 106 baptisms in this small city of probably 15,000 people (no one here knows how many people there are anywhere cause they haven't had a cencus ever). There are six missionaries and two branches, but next week they're splitting one of the branches here.  

I've been pretty sick the last few days just cause of Madagascar food. So I haven't really been able to teach that much here, but the people seem awesome. Shout out to Chris for getting a baptism. Sorry for the short letter this week. Next week I'll have more stories to share, but this week I spent most of it at home. SORRY! 

Love you all

FREAKING EARTH SHOOK MAN IT WAS NUTS

Well to kick things off this week WE HAD A EARTHQUAKE. It was pretty nuts cause it happened at 1:00 in the morning and woke us up. It was like shaking our beds and stuff so that was pretty intense. A few members' houses got a little cracked but that's everything that happened in Ambositra. A few people died like 100 km outside of Ambositra so that's pretty sketchy. It was way sad. Everyone was freaking out cause like no one has ever felt an earthquake before. 

I also wanna tell you all a story of a black market painting transaction that went down. We were sitting in a restaurant and we see this cool picture so we ask how much it is and the lady says 400000 AR which is like 120 American bucks. We said we'd pay 100000 for it. She went and asked the owner and the owner said it was a no go. Like five minutes later the lady comes and waves us into a back room where she says she'll sell it to us for 10000. She tells us to meet her at the church at 3:00 and we say we can't but we'll meet her there at 7:00. She then says we can't tell anyone about it. Well we get to the church at 7:00 and she's like trying to climb over the wall to see if anyone's in there and she starts coming towards us. We give her the money and she gives us the picture. She says that the owner's son grabbed the painting off the wall and gave it to her so the owner doesn't know. She then says "Don't tell anyone or I'm gonna go to jail." Well she took the money and started booking it down the road. That's my black market painting story. 

Anyways we had seven baptisms in Anjoma this week so that was way cool. It was way cool cause they don't have a baptismal font so we had to do the baptisms in a river. It was a 8 KM or 5 mile hike up to the river so it took us about an hour. It was SOOO cool. 

Right now I'm in Tana for transfers. I'm going to a city called Fort Dauphin. If you wanna see heaven on earth look it up online. Seriously it's the coolest place in Madagascar you can go and everyone wants to go. My new companion's name is Elder Lebereko. He's from South Africa. I still haven't met him yet cause I'm catching a plane tomorrow at 12:00. 

Anyways that's it for this week. 

Love you all

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