Week 4 - Obedience

This week feels like nothing has really happened, we've just been settling in to the schedule, which is a little bit funny, because we leave two weeks from Monday. Which is crazy. Yesterday was another new missionary Wednesday and we finally hosted some new missionaries. It was so much fun! Only one of the families got all teary, so it went pretty well. For the most part everyone has been excited to arrive.
Let's see, the rundown of this week... I got my basketball shoes, so I could play basketball a little bit, that was lots of fun. Elder Reich got his basketball shoes at the same time, but his are nicer, so I felt a little bit bad about myself until I kicked his butt. I mean, "I beat him", missionary language, right?

TRC went really well, it was a lot of fun to talk to and teach return missionaries from Madagascar. Speaking of Madagascar, we talked with our teachers and asked them what some of the worst fungus/infections they got were. It probably wasn't a great idea because now we know all about the worst stuff there. Even the normal stuff is pretty bad. They said to expect foot infections just about all the time, and other skin infections are really common, and parasites aren't at all uncommon either. In Madagascar the sewage runs in open trenches, so whenever it rains they flood and you walk through sewage a lot because it rains a lot.

Fast Sunday was great. The mission conference was very good, and then the Sunday night devotional was fantastic. Whenever Monday comes around I love getting back into language class. Then Tuesdays are always great. In the morning we have service and then gym after that and then nothing until lunch at 11:35, so it's a very relaxing morning. Then after dinner we have our Tuesday night devotional. This week Bruce C Hafen came and talked about temples. Mahafanaritra Izy (He's awesome).

Then yesterday we hosted, and today is P-day, I'm all caught up, but the most exciting thing happens later today: we get our travel itinerary! It could come tomorrow, but we're hoping it's today. I'll save up a little bit of email time and tell you about it later today if I get a chance.

The word of the week is fankatohavana, pronounced fahn-kah-twa-vahn-(a) and it means obedience.. One thing I've been studying this week is how we develop faith, testimonies, and knowledge. We have been teaching the commandments to most of my investigators and the only way that we can learn if a commandment is true is by living it and praying about it for a while. Then you'll be able to receive knowledge and see the blessings that come from obedience. If you want to know if the Book of Mormon is true you have to read it and pray about it. If you want to know if the word of wisdom is true (tenin'ny fahendrena) then you have to keep it and pray about it. If you want to know the gospel of Jesus Christ is true you have to live it and you have to keep all of the commandments, pray, read the scriptures, and obey leaders, and then you will receive the witness.

Tiako ianareo.
Elder Rasmussen