Madagascar Update!

Dear Family,

This week was great. You might have heard by now of the earthquake over here in Madagascar, but everything is ok, no one got hurt. I am actually far away from it so we really didn't even feel it. Other than that things are good here. We have some great investigators that we are just working on getting married so that they can get baptized here coming up. 

This week was a big success for us. I actually spent a couple of days on splits, so I was outside of my area a little bit. I went with Elder Shoemaker and Elder Chounlamany, and it was a great couple of days. It is allways good to get back to my area when that is all done though. We have a bunch of super cool families who come to church every week but we are just working on getting them all married first. One of the things that we have been struggling with a little bit is finding cool new people. We tract a lot and always get in to find lessons and families and people let us in all of the time, but it has been difficult to find people who have been truly prepared for the gospel. We will keep working right along all the same and see where everything goes. One of my favorite people is Christian. He is around 23 years old and he just showed up to church one day with one of his good friends. He has been learning for a few weeks now and comes to church every week and is just a way cool guy. Things are going great.

So this week in my study on faith I moved on to Father Adam, and I looked in to how Heavenly Father helped him to develop faith. Adam is a pretty cool guy, I wish that we had a little bit of information about him. One the things that I notice comes from the Book of Moses (great book). Adam falls and is cast out of the garden. I read through it, and nowhere in the fall does it say anything about The Atonement or the Savior or anything like that. What I gathered was that when Adam fell, he thought he was done. He didn't know that he was going to be able to make it back. That must have been a pretty dreary time for him. Then, the

 Lord commands him to start making sacrifices. Adam doesn't really know why, he just does it anyways. Then an angel comes and says "Dude, why are you doing these sacrifices" (not a direct quote, I paraphrased that). Adam looks at him for a second and then answers him "Ya know, I don't really know" (also paraphrased). The angel then goes on to explain that it is symbolic of the Savior and His Great and Atoning Sacrifice. This is the way that Heavenly Father teaches all of us. He gives us hands on experiences so that when the explanation finally comes it is much more clear to us. The angel could have just come down in a pillar of light and told Adam that there would be an Atonement, and Adam might have understood it, but it took on a whole new meaning to him because he had experienced it himself. In Matthew 5:48 we are commanded to be perfect like our Father in Heaven. More than anyone else, He knows what we need to do and to learn in order for us to become perfect like him, and he guides us in our lives to places and people that will teach us these things. Sometimes this is a hard way to learn. That is where faith comes in. Faith is trusting that, as D&C 1 says, all of these things will be for our benifit, and having the humility to allow The Lord to change us each in to what he needs us to be. I know he has a plan for each of us. Love you all so much,

Elder Jensen

Scripture of the week: Moses 5:6-10

BAPTISMS!!!

Dear everybody,

Have I ever told you how much I love my job? It is the greatest. This week was awesome. President Foote and the assistants were here all week which was great. We were able to do interviews, go on splits, and finished it all off with 22 baptisms as a zone on Saturday!! All in all, just a great week.

Hopefully you all remember Frederic and Eleanore. They were the family I talked about right when I got here to Tamatave, and they are just awesome. Anyways, they got baptized on Saturday, which was just about the greatest thing ever. Also Clovis and Jaqueline came to church again yesterday! We are sending the information over to the missionaries in Toliear (A long ways away) so that they can get all of the paperwork for us and then send it up with transfers next week. That way they can get married and eventually baptized! Life is great.

So this week I decided to start a very long and in depth study on the fourth article of faith. In case you aren't familiar with that one, it's the one that starts out "We believe". If you didn't get that joke, you should probably go read the articles of faith again. Anyways, I started out by studying about faith, which I am still going on right now. I have decided that there are many levels of faith, starting with simply having a desire to believe and going all the way up to having a perfect knowledge. I spent about three days studying on a having a desire to believe. I think that my favorite example of this came from the wife of King Lamoni. This takes place just after Lamoni's encounter with Ammon. He has prayed and then fell to the earth as though dead. A few days go by and everyone thinks he is dead. Everyone except for his wife, who is clinging to this hope that he is still alive. She goes to Ammon and asks for advice. Ammon tells her that on the next day, he will rise. Now this is a woman with absolutely no spiritual knowledge, but she believes him. She doesn't know HOW he will rise, or WHY he will rise, but that doesn't matter. All she knew was THAT he would rise. And that is faith. The Lord has all knowledge, and all of our knowledge comes through him. If there is something we don't understand yet, maybe we weren't supposed to. Many people question Joseph Smith's vision because they can't explain it. Some even go as far as to question the existance of our Heavenly Father, simply because they can't explain it. Well, maybe we weren't meant to. If we could explain every little detail of the gospel we wouldn't need faith any more. Christ suffered and died for us. We can't really explain how or why it happened, and we don't need to. All we need to know is that it happened. THAT he lived, THAT he died for us, and THAT he is risen and lives still. Love you all so much. That paragraph made sense in my head, hopefully I wrote it down right and it makes sense to you. 

Elder Jensen

Scripture of the week: 2 Corrinthians 5:7

 Here in Madagascar even the cats eat rice

 That spider is about 4 inches across and the white thing is the egg sack. He just eyed me down a whole lesson.

Frederik and Eleanore 

Happy New Year

Dear everybody,

Sorry I missed you last week but I skyped with most of you anyways. Merry late Christmas and happy late new years. It has been a great couple of weeks out here in Tamatave for sure.

Life is just awesome.

So this week was great. We had a solid week teaching some way awesome people. I actually didn't spend much time in my own area just due to the fact that we had a lot of baptismal interviews to be done in preparation for Jan. 7. It should be a great baptism for the whole zone. New Years was great. We taught some awesome families. I think one of my favorites still is Clovesil and Jacqueline and their 3 kids. They are amazing. They have been learning from the missionaries for quite a while. The kids come to church every week and are basically just members. The parents are also great but have been really hesitant in leaving their old church. Anyways, on christmas they finally came!! All together as a family!! It made me way happy. They came again this week, and I think they are finally ready. The only problem left is that they are not yet legally married. Also, everything they need to get married is a week long trip in a bus all the way across the country. No big deal right? Yeah, we're still working on figuring that one out. 

So I have been thinking a lot the last couple of days about a conversation that I had with President Foote a couple of weeks ago about culture. You see, the culture here in madagascar is pretty diferent from the culture over there in utah. Thing is, our old Utah culture is very different from anywhere else in the world, even anywhere in the states. That's because what The Lord says is ok and what The World says is ok are 2 very diferent things. President Foote explained it like this. He first drew a straight line on a piece of paper. This is The Lord's culture. It never changes. Ever. He then drew another line very close to the first that was parallel to it for a little bit and then slowly veered away, making a big gap. This line represents the world's culture.
Fifty years ago it was fairly close. Now it has become pretty far apart, and it just keeps getting farther and farther. It's hard to be a latter day saint, people think we're wierd. To be honest they're right. We are weird because the things we do aren't the things that society says are "cool". As time goes on we're going to keep getting weirder and weirder. It's not that we are changing, it is that the world's views are getting farther away from The Lord's. As the gap gets bigger, it's going to keep getting harder and harder to be a Latter Day Saint. The only true and lasting happiness comes from doing things The Lord's way. Hold to the rod folks. I know the church is true, and I am so very grateful that I was able to be raised the way I was and to know things that I know. Love you all,

Elder Jensen

Scripture of the Week: Isaiah 55: 6-9

It's HOT!

Dear family,
It has been another awesome week out here in Madagascar. We had some awesome moments with some way cool investigators and things just went great. It's summer right now, so it is pretty hot here. By that, I mean it is really, really hot here. I come home every day and can seriously ring the water out of my shirts. It's nuts!! That being said, I love Tamatave.
So we have some great investigators out here. Some of my favorites are Clovesel and Jaqueline, plus their three kids whose names have slipped my mind at the moment. They are way cool people. They have been learning from the missionaries for about 6 months and are super smart. Last week we went in and talked about repentance was. For them, it just meant confession. I don't think I could count on all of my fingers and toes all of the times that I have heard that. We talked about how much more repentance is than just that. It is a change of lifestyle, and even more than that it is a change of heart. As we repent we come closer to the savior and the way he lived. Christ told His apostles in the Americas that they should be even as he is. That's the goal. It is also a long ways off, but that's ok because as we repent we come closer to that ultimate goal of returning to live with Him. Also one other funny story, we had dinner last night with some way awesome members (beans and pig fat over rice, my favorite) and they gave us a referral for the man's sister who lived next door. We went straight over and taught them. The funny part is that their kid's name is John Cena. Anyways we got a kick out of that one. I have also met a kid here named Joseph Smith. Good times.

So this week I did a little bit of a study on the Christmas spirit because I absolutely love Christmas time. I read the Christmas story in Luke 2, which was great as always. I love the words of the angel to the shepherds. "Behold, I bring good tidings of great joy. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, which is Christ the Lord." Such a simple statement, and yet it is hard to understand the real gravity of it. The entire history of the world until that point were building up to this one great event. The prophets spoke of it, the psalmist sang of it, and all of mankind looked forward to this one moment. They found Him, The Son of God, asleep in his mothers arms. That is the greatest gift ever given.

Love you all so much, Merry Christmas,

Elder Jensen

TAMATAVEEEE

Dear Everybody,

Life is still great here in Madagascar. I absolutely love Tamatave. It is the second biggest city in Mada, about 200,000 people. It is way out on the farthest west coast of the island. We speak a dialect here called Betsimisaraka. It's not quite as bad as the dialects from Fort D, but it's a bit different for sure. There are 5 branches out here, and we are currently working towards making it in to a stake, which requires 6 very strong branches. Hoping that sometime this year we can get it done. Anyways, on to other news.

My area here is called Mangarivotra, which means blue breeze. Or mango breeze. I'm not really sure, you say it the same either way. The branch is great, the area is awesome, and things are just going fantastic. I would say that my favorite people right now are Frederick and Eleanore. They have been learning from the missionaries for 9 months now but the problem, as allways, is that they weren't married. So anyways, they surprized us on tuesday with their marriage certificate!!! They are getting baptized!! Currently we are planning on the 7th of January. Another cool thing! Elder Leo and I were out tracting when we walked into this little yard. There was a little girl pumping water out of the ground so we went and talked to her. Her parents weren't home which normally throws up red lights, but she was struggling way hard with the water pump. I felt bad so I took over and started pumping water. About 2 minutes later the little girl's sister Judy walked in. It turns out that Judy is a very less active member. She got baptized here in tamatave but moved to Tana for a while and when she came back just stopped going to church. She is now married and has a little kid, and she was way excited to see us. We set up a time to come and teach her husband, Alain, and left. Alain turned out to be a stud and the lesson went great so we are very excited to see where this one goes.

So this week I spent a little bit of time reading in Alma, when I came across something that I hadn't noticed before. It is in Alma 20, where Alma and King Lamoni are travelling to Middoni to free Aaron and his brethren from prison. This is just shortly after King Lamoni's conversion itself, but that's a different story. On the road to Middoni, they bump in to King Lamoni's father, who is King over all of the Lamanites. Well, Lamoni's father wasn't necessarily too happy to see his son travelling with a Nephite. To be honest, he was furious. He (king of all the lamanites) commanded King Lamoni to kill Ammon and go back to the land of Ishmael. Now in Malagasy, there are 2 ways to say "go back." There is miverina, which is to return, and mihemotra, which is kind of like to digress or fall back. Anyways, I wasn't sure which would be better to use. I started thinking about what it would mean for Lamoni to go back to the land of Ishmael. It would be like going back to his old life. It would mean forsaking Ammon and the whole new belief that he had found. Rather than returning to his old life, Lamoni defies the king and his father, knowing full well that his father will try to kill him for it. When you are trully converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ, you realize that there really is no going back to the life you had before. It's just not appealing any more. To be honest, the thought of losing the joy of the gospel is downright scary. I think that Peter said it best in John chapter 16. Many of Christ's followers were leaving him, and he looked to the 12 and asked "Will ye also go away?" Peter answered him "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God." Once a person comes to this realization, there is no going back. King Lamoni would rather die than go back. This is the type of conversion that we are looking for, in both investigators and in ourselves. Love you all so much,

Elder Jensen

Scripture of the week: Alma 20:15

Transfers!!!

Dear family,

Today has been kind of crazy just because of transfers and a bunch of stuff I have had to do and all, so I really have almost no time left. That means I am probably going to have to kind of send a short email this time. I'll just kind of explain what's going on and write a much better email next week.

 

So I don't know if anybody remembers, but I have been out here in Toamasina (tamatave) for about a week and a half now just doing splits and cool things like that. Anyways, the transfer ended just yesterday. That means that my companion Elder Walker is going home in 2 days and I am in need of something new to do. Since I was already out here in Toamasina, they have just decided to leave me here. My new companion is Elder Leo, who is from American Samoa. He's a way cool guy. Anyways, we are here now and I am once again living on the beach. This time though I can't quite see it from my house. Anyways, I am way beyond stoked to be out here and the work here in Tamatave just seems to be blowing up for the moment, so we are looking forward to great things to come. Because of all of the things going on with transfers, we have been pretty busy today. I now have one hour to finish up emails, do some shopping, and also get dressed and out to work, so I'm going to have to sign off for now. Love you all tons, the church is true,

Elder Jensen

Scripture of the week: Matt. 5:48

 

Elder Jensen's 20th Birthday

 

 

District Conference in TAMATAVE

Dear Family,

So this week has been kind of all over the place. I have been in 3 cities, done about 5 splits, and basically just ran everywhere all the time. So here's the story.

It all started on Tuesday. We got up in Antsirabe and did studies as normal. Then at about noon we loaded up in a car with the Pascaud's (a mission couple from france) and headed for Tana. That meant 4 1/2 hours of only French with a little bit of Italian mixed in. I thought I was going to die. Did I mention it was a little French car? Not very comfortable to sleep in. On the bright side though, I did get to brush up on my French!! I am still not very good at French... It was an interesting ride to say the least. When we got to the office my man Jules was there!! Jules is a member here in Tana who is deaf. He has developed his own version of sign language but, is trying very hard to learn ASL so that he can go to the temple. He skypes from the office to the ASL missionaries in Salt Lake, and they teach him ASL, but we translate it for him and help out when we can, so I have picked up a lot from him and help when I can. So that was a blast as always.

Wednesday we had a split and I was with Elder Allen, who has been here for about 2 months. I love working with young missionaries.

Thursday we had a split and I went with Elder Tainter, who is a baller. We had a way awesome day.
We were supposed to leave Thursday morning for Tamatave, but due to complications with flights, we ended up having to pick up Elder Mdletshe, the area seventy, from the airport at around 4 in the afternoon on Friday, at which point we started making our way to Tamatave. It's about a seven hour drive through the jungle, but it was way cool to just have that much time to talk to a Seventy about the work and the church and really just life in general. We stopped for the night and finally made it to Tamatave on Saturday about 30 minutes before Elder Mdletshe had to speak in District Conference. Most of Saturday was spent translating conference for President Foote, who met us in Tamatave, and Elder Mdletshe. Translating is a lot of fun but also kind of stressful. A lot of things don't really translate super well in to Malagasy, so we just kind of have to explain things as we go.

Sunday was great!!! It was another morning full of translating and talking with members and just all those sorts of things. We finished the day on a split with Elders Monson and Chounlamany. Elder Monson is about 4 months in to country right now and is training Elder Chounlamany, who is just over a month in country. It was a great day. I took Elder Monson and we hit the program and also found a couple of way awesome families to teach. It was just a great day all around.

So studies were a little weird this week but I am going to talk about a conversation that we had with Elder Mdletshe on the way to conference about the sacrament, and it kind of changed my perspective a little. As we all know, we are commanded to take the sacrament. It is indeed a commandment from God. By taking it we renew our covenants with him and are able to become clean. That makes it in to a continuous cleansing process. It is the only ordinance that we are able to repeat over and over again, and yet it is a saving ordinance. Without it, we can’t be cleansed from sin. That is why we are commanded to take it. If we decide that we won't go to church for a week or that we aren't worthy to take the sacrament, then we are placing other things ahead of the savior's atonement. It's like saying to the Messiah "Thanks for all you did for me, ya know suffering and dying and all, but I really need to work right now. Maybe next week." That's really direct and hard and all, but it's true. We need the sacrament. It becomes our job at that point to prepare throughout the week in any way that we can to be able to take the sacrament come sunday. Love you all so much, that's all I got this week,

Love,

Elder Jensen

Scripture of the week: Moroni 4:3 and 5:2