Mission to Madagascar!: 4/27/15 - Transfers, Conference & More Missionaries!

Hey y'all! Hiala aminny tamatave i zanavavako.... TSY METY!!!

So, this week was transfer week and I found out that my daughter is leaving me already!! Noooo! Yah, Elder Gariki is going to freaking Tamatave! So not fair! He is going to see the beach. :p haha Nah nah I'm excited for him. I had such a fun time serving with him. He knew how to spread the aloha to those he served. I will be getting a new companion on Wednesday. His name is Elder Mumford. I don't really know anything about him yet except that he is from Utah... It seems like almost all of us are from Utah! My first two comps were from Orem, then Gariki was Tahitian, then back to Utah. I think I heard Elder Mumford is from Draper?

Another cool thing to report is that we had General Conference this past weekend! Woot woot! It was way good! I loved hearing all the wonderful talks from our leaders of the church. One of my favorites has to be from Elder Anderson. He talked about hearing the music of the gospel. Incredible talk. In applying that to missionary work it reminds me that you can preach to people all you want, you can place all the doctrine in front of them KANEFA (but) if they don't learn to listen with the spirit then they won't hear the message and progress. They could learn all the steps in the dance but they need to hear the music to make the performance superb! I love it. Elder Holland gave an amazing talk as well! Elder Coleman (haha) was so funny. In his GC notes for Elder Holland he wrote, "Wow. Just read this talk." haha! Holland never disappoints! We all fall short of the glory of God, but Christ rescues us. He suffered the atonement because he loves us. I know that is true. We should be using his everlasting atonement everyday so that we may be able to get over the cliff to eternal life. Dang, the talks were incredible. President Eyring also gave an amazing talk about fasting. I love general conference.

WORD OF THE WEEK! I didn't forget. :p So the word is, "Fihoana be." This means, "General conference." The direct translation is, "Big gathering." Pretty cool. So the verb of 'fihoana' is 'mihoana' which means 'to meet' as in 'to meet up with someone.' 'Be' makes it a 'big' meeting. Cool right!? Yah. Malagasy rocks!

This week was a way good week. This is the last week for a couple of our elders serving here. Elder Fox and Christiansen go home this week. Their missions are done. Crazy. Every companionship in Antsirabe is changing. Crazy. We did a few splits this week with other elders. I got to go on a split with Elder Nohaingoinaina on Wednesday which was rocking. Then me and Elder Thompson went on a split on Friday. Went way well.

The members are all doing well. They were all super excited for general conference. After conference we went to work and that was all the members were talking about. It was amazing. They loved talking about the talks. Investigator wise things are going great as well! We have one family who is so close to baptism but they have a problem. The wife is actually legally married to someone else so she needs to get a divorce and then get legally married again to be able to get baptized. They go to church every week and understand everything super well. It is great teaching them. They live in Morarano which is a little far from Saradroa where the church is but they still walk every Sunday to get there. For them it's probably about an hour and a half walk. Insane! Our young men's president and his family walk two and a half hours to get to church every week! The members are incredible. One of their sons helps us every week when we go there to teach. He is working on his papers right now for a mission! So awesome! The people here are incredible. Oh my gosh, so we just found out from the young men's president that there is another investigator that's been coming every week to church and has been wanting to learn from the missionaries so he could get baptized! He walks 18 km to get to church every week! This Friday we are going to find their house and teach them! I am super excited! The work is going well! I love it here in Andranomanelatra!

I was super excited to hear about everyone getting their mission calls in our ward! Tell McKay, Tyler, Bryson, Jessica, and Riley congrats from me. And Tana has her papers in? That's crazy. I call Tonga! haha Send Aida back to the islands!

Y'all have a great week! Bisou!
-Elder Mack