Thursday, October 13, 2011

Diseased & Healed

I did have a good week, I suppose, if you don't count the fact that I got Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease. That was downright terrible. Waking up in the middle of the night to swollen fingers and toes, having the most horrible urges to just scratch, it feels like acidic worms are crawling through your flesh. It was awful, and I'm so grateful that it's rapidly on the decline.

On Saturday night I got a blessing from my mission-mates. I just tried to focus on the fact that I have faith to be healed, and because I had faith I would go out to church the next day and even go work, knowing that God would free me from the virus. So, the next day, I went to church with puffed up hands and itchy feet. Fortunately enough though, by the evening my hands had mostly deflated and my feet were a non-issue. And now I'm healed! Woohoo!

We weren't able to go out to Ambovombe this week, so I am emailing on Monday at the regular time. We were all set to head out to the strange, mythical city of Atandroy-central, but President Donnelly called us yesterday and told us that he had received two promptings that we should not go out to Ambovombe after all. There probably was going to be some kid-nappers waiting for us vazahas on the roads. But ya know what, after hearing more about this place I'm quite ok with us not going out there. The word on the street is that though this city has tons of cool souvenirs and interesting things to look at, the people are pretty much savages and will kill you for nothing. Apparently they carry around swords and some of them have even crafted their own home-made guns. Eeek! Thanks, but no thanks.

The work here is going well, though we've been down-trodden by getting people married and random French prophets coming in and wowing everyone with some cheap tricks. One entire group of our investigators pretty much dropped themselves because they say that since the French prophet turned out to not be true, then obviously there is no such thing as a true prophet and they're just going to go on back to the Protestant church. One of our best and brightest investigators has been slowly digressing ever since he found out that he actually has to be married to his wife in order to be baptized. This has all been a head ache for Elder Rasoloniaina and I, but amongst it all there are still those wonderful people that are about to enter into the waters of baptism.

One of them is actually going to get baptized this Saturday. He is the son of a member, who got baptized only a few months ago, and has only been learning for about a month or so. We had thought that he had been learning for much longer than that, as he had been at the first time I'd ever taught his family. When we reviewed all the lessons for him before his baptismal interview, he received the information and responded as if he had already been learning for months and months before. We, according to Elder Peaden who was here before me, he had never learned anything before. Crazy, right?! I've seen it before, and I'm sure I'll see it again; the Lord prepares people in subtle and unusual ways. From what I understand, he passed the baptismal interview with flying colors. A literal testament to his spiritual preparedness.

Love you guys.


Elder Cryer

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