Selman

Well everybody, another week has come and gone, and I am still here doing the exact same thing. Teaching the gospel!! I wouldn't have it any other way. Things are still going great here in Mada. We are looking forward to having one baptism on Saturday. It's a kid named Selman and he is great. He is 20 years old and about to finish high school. Here you stay in high school until you can pass this huge test called the Bac. There are people who take it at 15 and people who take it at 25, it's all just about how hard you work. Anyways Selman is about the hardest person on the planet to understand. He speaks only the hardest dialect of malagasy (it is basically a whole new language) with a lot of slang mixed in and a really thick accent. On top of that, he likes french so he mixes in a lot of that too. The first time I met him I didn't catch a word he said, but it has gotten a lot better. We tell him he doesn't speak teny gasy, but teny Selman (selman's language). Anyways he's great, already comes to institute every week and things like that. He really really wants to serve a mission and is planning on leaving next year at some point. Actually his whole family is planning on getting baptized but his parents aren't officially married yet so we're still waiting on that. His sisters decided to wait and get baptized with their parents next month. I figure hopefully Selman will have the Aaronic priesthood by then and he will be able to baptize them. Mahala and Alvine have hit a small road block and we had to push back the baptism until May, and hopefully they will get baptized with Selman's family. Other than that, things are going great here. It is just so great seeing people change their lives. Last week we taught a family about the Sabath day, and the wife got mad at me because I just don't understand. Things are diferent here and so they have to work on sundays or they won't have enough money. She said that we aren't the same, and that things are harder here. So we had a very very spiritual talk about how she's right, we're not the same. But we are all God's children and this is a commandment from him for all of us. It went way great. This week we went back to teach about the word of wisdom and I was a little nervous that she would get all defensive again. She accepted it right away though, she's going to quit coffee and even quit selling it! So things are going great here. Love you all!

Elder Jensen

April 11, 2016- Conference in a Broom Closet

Dear Everybody,

Hope you are all doing well. This week was kind of boring for us. Last P-day after we emailed we went to the beach. Then we ended up getting sucked into a game of beach soccer against a bunch of punk Malagasy kids. We won of course, go team vazaha!! We didn't have a way great week after that though and then we watched conference Saturday and Sunday so we didn't get a lot of work in those days. Conference was great though. We had a ton of great investigators that showed up! We have a baptism this weekend for a way cool guy named Weekends. He's a way cool guy, hopefully we can get him on a mission soon, he is only about 20 years old. That's one thing we have here in Fort D, our young single adults rock. We have a couple RMs and a couple of them just getting ready to go out so there are great things in store here the next couple of years!! Love you all so much!!

Elder Jensen

April 20, 2016- Baptisms

Hey everybody!!

How's life back home? Things are still going great here in Mada. The week started out really well! We taught some really great times. Then friday we got a bomb dropped on us. Elder Coleman has an ingrown toenail, and isn't allowed to work for a week. We've been just doing half day splits and rotating with the other missionaries here in Fort D just so that our area doesn't completely die at once. It makes it really hard to decide who to teach because we only have time for 3 or 4 lessons a day, so we have to just focus completely on investigators that are close to baptism, which makes for a frantic couple of hours every day. I would say my favorite investigators here right now are Mahala and Alvine. They are a younger couple, about 30 years old, and they should be getting baptized on April 30. They also have 2 little girls and one other child that died when he was really little. We focus a lot on eternal families and it's been great to just see them come to realize that they can see their little boy again some day. They are such a happy family now and it's just a blast every time we visit. Actually, Mahala has worked the last couple of sundays, so I brought up that he should probably come to church. At that point his wife chewed him out pretty good! Not really they were both laughing about it they were'nt really fighting, but she definitely got her point across because first thing sunday morning he came walking into church with his family and she looked just as happy as can be! Also Weekends got baptized this weekend!! See what I did there? Even missionaries make jokes. It was a way awesome experience. there were actually about 13 people who got baptized between the two branches here. Also, fun fact, I am now working in the branch of the church that is farthest away from church headquarters in Salt Lake. There is literally not a single branch farther away. We are a 3 to 4 day bus ride from any church built buildings. It's just a great place to be. Love you all so much,

Elder Jensen

 

Feeling Lazy- April 8, 2016

Hey everybody I'm feeling kind of lazy and also out of time so this one is going to be short. Sorry about that but I'll add some pictures to make up for it. This week was way great! We had a bap. interview a couple of days ago and will be having a baptism next weekend! And get this, his name is Weekends. It's actually pronounced Wiquinze but that's way hard to spell and it's pronounced the same. We also have a bunch more families that are ready they just are saving up money to get married. Hopefully they can be baptized at the end of the month. Funny story from the week, we had our handy man come over to fix the sink. He ended up taking about five days on it. Every day he just comes up with something new that is wrong. It's actually way funny I think he broke most of the stuff and made a major mess but we got'er cleaned up.

Love you all so much!

Elder Jensen

End Transfer 4- March 28, 2016

Dear Everybody,

This week was way great, but it went so fast. Tuesday I was on a split because we still had 3 missionaries working in our area and one of the Elders that I live with recently got his appendix taken out, so I helped out his comp. Then after that got stuck on babysitting duty. Basically he can't really go super far yet so we just hung out at the house and that was my Wednesday and Thursday schedule. It was fun but kinda boring. Especially where I just got to this awesome new area I've just really, really wanted to get out and work. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we finally got out to work and it was great. Our area is going great. It is right out in the peninsula so we can see the ocean most of the time. We have a lot of baptisms coming up so that is way exciting of course. Easter was great here. Haha Malagasies go hard on Easter. Basically they just look for any excuse to throw a party actually. There was this huge crowd of people walking through the streets and the front one was carrying a big cross and they were singing hymns and carrying candles and it was a little bit scary I'm not going to lie. It killed our program just because literally everyone was out partying. We had a really poopy day yesterday just because no one was home but it's ok! The people we did teach were great. I actually will try to include some pictures this week. Love you all so much,

Elder Jensen