My new companion is named Elder Cassel (pronounced 'Castle') and he is way legit. He most recently worked in Antsirabe, and before that was to be found in La Reunion; the all French-speaking island off the cost of Madagascar. He's one of the lucky few Reunion elders that has gotten to come over and experience the most incredible mission in the entire world. From the past few days that we've been together it seems as though he's quite grateful. Who knows how long we'll end up being together? Maybe a month; or maybe he'll put me in my mission grave. We shall see...
So I got the fabulous package this past week, and I was impressed as always. The candy and corn nuts was savory, the letters were sweet, but the beef jerky had a little bit more kick than I was prepared for. For a couple of days the beef jerky was in my backpack before I took it out, and during those few days I was sure to hand out little samples of pure spicy pain to a few of those I talked to. The Malagasys thought the joke was pretty good.
This past Friday we were feverishly looking for new investigators, going from door to door and contacting those on the path. After an hour or so we had gotten pretty discouraged with the whole tracting thing, so we decided to go and recontact a family that Elder Nash and I had taught about a month and a half ago. Nash and I had tried to return to them many a time, but they were never in. Anyways, we gave it one last go to see if just maybe they'd be there. Finally, the entire family was there and even a bunch of the neighbors. They chided us for not coming back, and we in turn chided them for not being home ever -- all in the spirit of joking of course ;). We started the time and decided to not teach them a first lesson, but to instead teach about keeping the Sabbath Day holy. The message of the restored doctrine concerning this principle and the new information about a 'new and ever-lasting covenant' resounded well with all of them, and it just so happened to turn out that they were totally not on board with any of the Saturday Sabbath, things. So the lesson went great and everyone was really excited; they were passionate about what we were saying. I felt the Spirit prompting me to give the invitation, so I invited all of them to church. This may seem like a pretty "duh, of course you would do that" move, but you have to realize that they all go to their church every single day, and the last time we tried to invite them to church they turned us down flat.
The first guy to say anything, Selesten, said that there was no way he could come to our church because he had responsibilities to fulfill at his own. When he started saying that stuff, I got pretty discouraged pretty quick, especially considering the fact that he is the self-stylized leader of the neighborhood. But, after he had said his peace everyone else in the entire room told us that they were coming for sure the next Sunday - because they had already signed up for some kind of meeting thing on the coming Sunday - and we even were able to get a brand new family into the teaching pool afterwards which was a direct result of the previous appointment.
So, that was awesome :D.
Yesterday at church I had to go and teach the primary kids about the temple. It was cool. I've been somewhat sickly of late. It's yucky. I think that I finally nailed
down what was making me feel so crumby, and it just so happened to be our Malagasy version of Ramen Noodles. Sadly, this is the tastiest and cheapest food for us missionaries to consume so I'm not happy to be giving it up. Oh well. It is what it is.
That's really pretty much all I have for right now. I love you guys and am praying for ya.
Elder Cryer
On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 4:04 PM,
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