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| Elder Tainter with his mission dad Elder Mack and mission mom Elder Tshuma |
Salama Daholo!! Tratra ny toana vaovao!!
WHAT THE ISH??? My one full year away from America is done... Lety e!! Next year I'll see the land of the brave again. Yikes. Christmas was wonderful! We had a christmas party with the missionaries here in Tana and it was a blast! The senior couples made us all pancakes and eggs. It was soo good! After breakfast we had a wonderful Christmas devotional. Then we had some fun activities. We finished off the party by watching The Christmas Story. You know, the one where the kid gets his tongue stuck to the pole. Haha fail! At around 5:00pm my time I SKYPED DA OHANA!!!! You guys all look great! :) It was wonderful and soo special. I promise I'm not too trunky now. I recovered quickly. Haha! Ish... :p I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas. This past week was great!
-All of our soirees were great! Thursday I made two batches of brownies and somehow I ended up not eating any of them. :/ Dang it.
-Zone leader splits last Thursday was way fun!! Elder Yeagley is a baller! He gave me a lot of good tips and we talked a lot about faith and helping our investigators have enough faith to do anything. We taught Faly and his family and they have a new problem. They are guardians for a house and they have to work on Sunday. They are poor and finding the faith to quit the job and find another is hard. They don't realize the blessings they will receive if they do that. A lot of the members who put trust in God and pay a full and honest tithe have been blessed immensely. Faith is the first principle in the gospel. Believing and faith are two different things. One requires work, that's faith. Faith starts off small but grows after trials.
- When we Skyped my father talked to me about promptings of the spirit. It can be hard to recognize if something is a prompting sometimes. It can be hard to differentiate between a thought or prompting. I thought a lot about the spirit and experiences that I have had using the spirit. I went home that night and a thought/prompting came to my head which told me to go upstairs and give the people that live there a Christmas carol. So I told Tambula and he was like, "Are you serious?" Haha! I took him upstairs, knocked, and got into the house. I brought my guitar and we sang Silent Night. They loved it and the spirit was strong. Even though we didn't know them we kind of all became great friends. Come to find out they were getting married the next day and they insisted that we come. Also, apparently the wife has learned from missionaries before. We have a soiree with her next week and hopefully we can help them feel the spirit like they did Christmas night.
-We had a great soiree with Christof and Niry. They gave us a referral that night for Niry's brother. We met them and they are a wonderful and happy family. They have three kids I believe. The wife actually came to the baptism. Bruno is the son who came to the baptism and he is one of my favorites. Haha! He came to church on Sunday. He said he wants to get baptized just like his cousin Faniry. Christof received the Aaronic priesthood on Sunday too! Woo hoo!
-We had a ward Christmas party on Saturday after the wedding. It was soo much fun. The members had a lot of fun and we had some investigators come as well! One of the investigators was actually Lemanana's daughter who just had a baby. We stopped teaching them a while ago because they weren't progressing but it was cool to see her come to the church! Christof and Niry brought her.
-Yesterday we had a great lesson with Valery. With the new year coming we decided to talk about goals with him! I gave them pictures of the temple and of Jesus Christ. In talking about goals, we asked them to make temporal goals and also spiritual goals that can help them come closer to Christ in helping them get to the temple. We gave them each a piece of paper and we all wrote about 5 goals. Nadia had goals like go to church every Sunday, and start saving up for the temple. Valery's goals were wonderful. He wrote down stop drinking, stop chewing tobacco, finish the Book of Mormon, and get baptized. How great right? :) We explained to them that the best way to accomplish your goals is if you add the Lord into it. Ask god for help and strength often to accomplish the goals you have.
Well this Thursday we have a soiree with the office elders at one of their members homes! Way stoked! Happy New Year everyone! I love you all! Bisous bisous!
-Elder Mack
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| Merry Christmas from the Madagascar Antananarivo Mission. These are the elders, sisters, and couples with President & Sister Foote. Elder Mack is on the last row, third from the left. |
"Joy to the World" shared by Sister Foote
"Silent Night" shared by Sister Foote
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