Hey everyone! Not a whole lot of time this week, but I'll try and tell you about my week. It was a pretty great week, and we did a lot of good work out here. We found a whole ton of new investigators and we are excited where a lot of them can go this next upcoming week.
First off, the politics here in Madagascar aren't good, but still decently stable. The leaders of the government don't do a whole lot, and there is a lot of corruption, bribes, and the like. The Malagasy people like to complain to us about how much the government stinks here in Madagascar, but we can't talk a whole lot about that so we usually try to change the subject fairly quickly, though some people go on a long tirade about the government, and we just kind of have to sit there and listen. Ah well. Language practice, right?
Secondly: about one of our investigators or lessons that we had. That would probably be a lesson that we had with our newer investigators Hery and Anta. In the lesson, we were going to cover the Book of Mormon, but some neighbors came in and crashed the lesson, wanting to do nothing more than Bible bash. I'll admit I was a bit upset with the rude interruption of the lesson that would have been great. But, the reason I choose this lesson to talk about is that it actually turned out great. See, the spirit of contention and argument that the neighbors brought in served as a perfect contrast for the real Spirit of truth and power which we later brought into the lesson by refusing to Bible bash with them and simply bear testimony of the truthfulness of the Restoration and of how they all can know for themselves as well, through diligent prayer and the Spirit bearing witness to them of the truthfulness of what we taught. Because that's exactly what we did, and the room just went dead silent, and the Spirit was so strong. I know that they felt it, and felt that what we said was true. And from that point on, there was not a word from the neighbors, but we finished the lesson, Hery and Anta accepted a baptismal invitation, and then we left. And honestly, on the way to our next appointment, I was absolutely giddy with the power of the Spirit we had felt in that lesson. I know that what we bore witness of was true.
Third: the most memorable part of the week. That would either be a split I went on with Elder Tambula from Uganda last Tuesday, which was memorable just because it was a good split and had a lot of good learning/teaching experiences. So, most memorable experience was either that or the Zone Meeting we had this last Thursday. It was great that we were able to focus solely upon honing and improving the work we already are doing in the zone rather than teaching another lesson on obedience to try to help disobedient missionaries straighten their ways. So that was way great, as we focused on teaching effectively and focusing on the goal, rather than just teaching for the heck of it (which, believe it or not, is possible here in Madagascar). So that was also memorable.
