April 1, 2012

This week we worked in the office and didn't do much in the way of different things, just the same normal office stuff. Not much happening here.  The baptisms here are running at about 100 per month. President Donnelly hopes to have 6 new branches open before he leaves in July. One set of missionaries taught 73 lessons in one week, setting a new record for the mission. There is about 385 investigators right now, so the work is going forward.The goal is to baptise more fathers so the families can prepare to go to the temple. We have a new couple the Rakotovao's who started their Family History mission on Thursday. They were serving in Johannesburg at the Temple for a year and now they will be helping people prepare family names to be taken to the temple. They are also going to teach indexing to wards. They are very humble people who sold most of their belongings to serve a mission in Johannesburg. They speak English, so we can communicate with them. We have made friends with a lady who sits across from the mission home with her baby, and gets food from the trash cans. We gave her a bag of rice and now she waves at us and smiles. We are going to give her a Malagasy Book of Mormon and another bag of rice to help her feed herself and her baby. The spirit told us to help her, so we are trying. Next Saturday we are taking a train ride to the Lemur Park so we will have some pictures to post then. We will return on Sunday. Conference isn't broadcast here until April 14 & 15. We are going to print some of the talks when they are put online. We have learned to appreciate what we have been given in Cedar City, our home, our freedoms, our friends and family. Living in another country and culture helps you appreciate all that you have been given. Be grateful for what you have. Just as a humorous note, we are trying to recognize and learn 6 different languages here, Malagasy, French, UK English, Irish English, Malagasy English, and Scottish English. Everyone here has to try to figure out our Southern Utah English. Well that's all for this week, hope your week is going well and we love all of you and miss you. Elder & Sister Cornelius