Happy Mother's Day

We want to wish all of you mothers a Happy Mother's Day. The weather is starting to get cooler in the days 70's and evenings 50's. We haven't had any rain for a while and the air is getting bad again. We have both had colds and coughs this week. On Saturday Sister Cornelius taught English for the last time here. This has been a good experience to get to know the people better and to see their desire to learn another language. They hope to come to America thinking that they will have a better life, but they can't afford to do that. One of the students Nadia is very bright, she is working on getting her Masters and she speaks English very well. She asks a lot of questions about words and what they mean. I am turning the class over to the missionaries because I need some time to get things organized before we head home in six + weeks. We will be in Cedar on June 27 and we get to come to Utah with 8 younger missionaries who will also be heading home.

Picture 4515 is a poinsetta tree that is full of color this time of year. It is above our parking lot.

Picture 4542 is a group of Malagasy elders plus two others that are not Malagasy, Elder Ewell and Sister Da Costa. This was taken Conference weekend.

In closing we just want to say that our thoughts and prayers are with all of you and we hope you have a great week. Love Elder & Sister Cornelius

May 6, 2013

Last week there wasn't much out of the ordinary routine other than we got our tickets to come home. We will arrive in Cedar on June 27. We are happy and sad at the same time. We will be happy to see all of you and to be home in clean air. We will be happy to be able to wash and dry clothes at the same time while being able to cook in the oven. There's not enough power here to do that. We will be sad to leave all of our new friends and the missionaries that we have came to know so well. One of the Elders that went home in April said, "I hope you're enjoying Madagascar while you can because you will miss it so much. When I got home I felt like I had left my home and gone to a foreign country. "

We know it will be different from what we have become used too, but we also know that our time here is coming to an end. Our mission has changed us for the better and we are grateful for the experiences we have had. Yesterday in our fast & testimony meeting we heard many wonderful testimonies of how the gospel of Jesus Christ had changed peoples lives for the better and how happy they were to be members of the church. One sister bore her testimony of the importance of baptism, her son had been baptized the day before. We have found that the Malagasy people are very humble and excepting of the Gospel truths. They have wonderful testimonies.

 We will end with the following scripture describing Moroni Alma 48:13, "Yea, and he was a man who was firm in the faith of Christ, and he had sworn with an oath to defend his people, his rights, and his country, and his religion,even to the loss of his blood." In verse 15 it adds, "and this was their faith that by so doing God would prosper them in the land, or in other words, if they were faithful in keeping the commandments of god that he would prosper them in the land, yea warn them to flee, or to prepare for war, according to their danger." If more of us were like Moroni what a difference it would make in this world and in the world to come.

When you think your life is hard just be glad that you have a nice home that isn't flooded out like the one attached.

Love, Elder & Sister Cornelius

This week was a transfer week on Thursday. We had two missionaries leave here on Monday to leave from Reunion where they started their mission. Transfers are always busy with the missionaries coming and going from the office. We enjoy seeing the missionaries that have been serving in other towns that we haven't seen in a while. On Saturday Sister Cornelius taught the Relief Sociey about personal hygiene and how to make Chicken Noodle Soup. The sisters enjoyed the warm soup. Then on Sunday Sister Cornelius was asked to teach the Relief Society lesson when the teacher didn't show up. It was a good thing that the spirit had prompted her to read the lesson that morning. The lesson had to be inperupted so there wasn't much time to cover all of it. The lesson was from the November Conference talks on Faith so that is an easy topic to cover at a moments notice. I would have never imagined teaching over here because of the language barrier. We read Ether 12 about having faith. verse 4 is one of my favorites.

The picture below is what happens when people go through the trash and they don't pick it up every week. We see this everywhere. The next is the missionaries waiting for conference to start. We hope all of you have a great week and we send you our love.

Elder & Sister Cornelius