Well first things first. On Friday we had a zone conference for the missionaries with President Adams. It was amazing. He talked about the Abrahamic Covenant and how it is important to us and how it relates to the Book of Mormon. Pretty intense stuff. He talked a lot about the scattering and gathering of the lost tribes of Israel, and how almost all the prophecies about it speak of a restoration of all things that needs to happen before the second coming and the gathering of Israel. Interesting side note, doing some follow up study I came across a quote by James E Talmage from October 1916 that said as follows "There are people alive now, yea, in this audience, that will live to read the records of the lost ten tribes." So there are a few possible explanations of that. 1 there was a newborn baby in the audience and it is coming up real quick. 2 he was talking about the ressurection. 3 John the Beloved or at least one of the Three Nephites were there. 4 He was just speculating and it's not true. I hope it is the first one. President Adams also told us about marking scriptures. He talked about building scripture chains, and writing in cross references in the margins when we find scriptures that relate. He uses "take off" scriptures that he shoots all the other ones back to and then out again. So like at Alma 41:3 he has a billion cross references written in about being judged by works. Pretty intense. Then he has notebooks in files at his house with all the markings so if he loses his scriptures he still has them. Now of course he has an iPad and all the stuff is saved to the cloud so he can just do that. So I am going to be wanting one of those when I get home. I'll probably just buy one for school and get a keyboard for it. Or who knows, maybe I will win the lottery and just buy everything. Everything. But since I never buy lottery tickets I wouldn't count on that one.
Then we had District conference, like stake conference but for smaller places. Did you know that the church in Tamatave is about the same size, people wise, as the the early church in Nauvoo? Pretty cool comparison. Elder van Reenan of the 70 was here though and spoke to us. Not in the missionary conference but in the district conference. He also called President Adams two hours before the conference and said he wanted the missionaries to sing Brightly Beams our Fathers Mercy at the conference. So we skipped lunch and learned that one. He also wanted it translated to Malagasy, so we did that too. We sang it in English though. It sounded pretty good.
Elder Van Reenan spoke on Sunday too and one thing I really liked was he said "Having hate in your heart is like drinking poison every day and hoping the other person will die". Pretty deep stuff.
The messenger bag is good, if Wyatt can use a backpack then he should but the messenger bag we have is solid. It's at least rain resistant, the inside hasn't even felt wet yet.
As far as the bikes go, they are all bad. It's just because nobody takes care of them and then we get them and they are already bad so we don't feel like we should have to pay to fix them and it just gets worse and worse over time. I would rather just bring my own bike. But not all the areas use bikes so they don't have us do that. It's whatever. The houses are all a mess too, but ours is pretty bad. Partially because there are six of us in it and partially because nobody cleans up after themselves. It's whatever. The records are the same way, nobody keeps them updated. I am not satisfied with mediocrity so I have to bring everything up to standard all the time. It's all good. Preparation for life and good work ethic training. Free time is limited so it's good to learn how to set priorities too.
Let's see. What else. Found a mouse in our house the other day. It won't eat the poison we have though so we are trying to figure out how to kill it. So that's fun.
1) When you teach about working toward a common goal do you use the yoke together analogy that we hear all the time in the church?
I haven't yet, it's hard to explain. In Antsirabe we did because they use them all the time. Not here though, I haven't even seen a cow. No rice fields or fields of any kind yet. Pretty sad.
2) Tell me about singing and music in the branch that you are in now. Do you have an organ the auto plays the hymns? Is there one Sister who can really sing that carries the rest of the congregation along?
We just have a keyboard and a couple members that can play pretty well. So they play the hymns and the director does her best to carry everyone.
3) Are you back to solid again?
Malagasy is coming right along, I am still not as good as I was but my comp helps me a lot.
4) Are you eating egg sandwiches for breakfast? Have you ever seen bacon over there?
No bacon, I have egg sandwiches most days.
5)Top 5 bible (Old Testament) heroes and why?
Let's see here.
1. Moses, because well, he is Moses. Pretty big deal. And he was translated. So that is important.
2. Abraham. Promised the greatest legacy of all time and he was willing to sacrifice his only hope of that being fulfilled on an altar at the Lord's will. Not to mention how he must have felt about human sacrifice having been saved from it himself.
3. Joseph. So much faith, to always trust in the Lord and to be able to forgive his brothers after they straight tried to kill him.
4. Enoch. Having to lead gives me a pretty decent amount of respect for the guy who was able to lead his entire city to a point where every single person was worthy of being translated.
5. Samuel probably. prophet at like 13 years old, took over the reins from a prophet who had messed up pretty bad. Fixed it.
David would be up here but his whole final chapter is one of failure. He had a lot going for him too, just wasted it away on a girl. I feel for him, but I have a hard time making him a hero. He did a ton of good though. Same story with Solomon.
It's raining today.
Thanks for the love.
Love you a ton,
Elder Galbreath
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