Mission to Madagascar!: 8/28/14

Manahoana Anareo!!

This week has been such an amazing week! it's definitely been challenging but effective in my learning. The first few days lasted an ETERNITY!!! Ugh, I wanted to die. It was insane! I got to the MTC on Wednesday, went to the office to check in, got my name tag and books, went straight to Malagasy class! Just like that! We then got a ton of malagasy to study and felt overwhelmed within the first hour of me getting there! Oh my gosh its been crazy!

I really like my teachers though. There names are Brother Sell, Brother Aldous, and Brother Bingham. I met my companion when I walked in. His name is Elder Tiu. Super cool guy. He's soo funny! He's from California! We got along from the start and havn't had any problems yet! The second day just seemed longer. We had breakfast, class for 3 hours, had lunch, class for 3 more hours, dinner, class for 4 more hours. Haha lots of class. It seems like their concept is to push us to our limits, then push it farther so we work harder and we're working every minute. My goodness! I was exhausted.

That night, our branch president came into our room and gave us a little orientation then interviewed all 12 of us afterwards. Then he invites me back into another room and asks me to be the district leader. At the time, I really wanted to say no but I accepted. Haha I was thinking, I'm exhausted with enough on my plate, I'd just be giving myself more work. I also felt like elders in the district were a little intimidated that I got that. they didn't know me and I became their leader.

I ran into one of my good friends at the MTC, Tanner Braden, and he gave me the best tips for being district leader. He told me it is one of the best ways to serve your district. So I lead by example. I didn't turn into one of those grumpy, bossy leaders who told everyone what to do and no one liked. I pretty much became their servant. Not even a week into being district leader, I had elders coming up to me saying how good of a job I was doing and how grateful they were that I was district leader. One elder told me "whenever I would get off focus, I would see what Elder Mack was doing, and you were always studying so I did that too, thank you." I'm grateful for the assignment now. At first, the other elders thought I was insane and so did I. But, I'm glad I am district leader now.

This week we got to hear from a member of the 70. His name is James Martino. He gave such a great talk about setting goals and following by the spirit. One of my favorite things he said was that you need to forget yourself and go to work, be exactly obedient, and open your mouth and it shall be filled. The last one was soo important this week because 2 days into the MTC, we are already teaching investigators in our language... It was soo hard! But that was what they were trying to teach us was to go by the spirit and not by notes that you write down.

Soo starting Monday we had an hour where we were able to have gym time. It's soo nice having that once a day to cool down and relieve stress. We have a lot of options to choose from - soccer, basketball, volleyball, etc. Monday we played soccer and there were so many people playing its ridiculous but guess what? I scored 2 goals!!! for the other team..... haha I suck at soccer. I would try to defend and two people kicked the soccer ball at me and bounced off me into our goal. Haha.

Well the language is going great. I can now bear my testimony and pray in my language. Like to say I know the church is true, you say, "Fantatra fa marina fiangonani Jesoa Kristy ho an'ny olomasini andro farany"! Soo much fun but hard! I'm getting better everyday! Well that's it for this week!

Veluma!
Elder Mack