MADAGASCAR

Well,

I could write hours and hours worth of e-mail but instead we have less than half of our normal time so I'll just have to explain everything and send pictures later. Basically Madagascar is great! It is super super different from La Reunion because it is so 100% third world country. Basically just picture Mexico and all the ideas of dirt roads, busy buses, and street side vendors and you've got a really acurate picture! I am loving the experience and starting to wonder if I can request spending the last part of my mission here. 

Sr Gardiner and I have discovered that almost no one speaks french though it is their official business language. But that means I am trying to pick up Malagasy phrases as fast as I can. I already got the basics of please, thank you, excuse me, how much, and I don't speak malagasy. Now I'm trying to learn all the rest. We are in the capital - Antananarivo and staying with four other sisters, including my old MTC companion Sister Teuira! 

We are doing splits with the two companionships. Sr Johnson is from America, actually Boise Idaho and she has been out for about 14 or so months. She also speaks french from taking it in highschool and BYU so that is super cool! Her companion is Sr Vanarisoa who is from Madagascar and understands french but only speaks Malagasy. They are both super nice. Then the other companionship is Sr Teuira from Tahiti who speaks French and Malagasy and Sr Guilamba who is from Mozambique and speaks English and Malagasy (and Portugues) and mostly understands French. You can imagine conversing around the dinner table is a little tricky. All the sisters can speak Malagasy to each other but then we Reunion missionaries don't understand. If we speak French mostly everyone can understand but then they have to reply in English or Malagasy. Tricky, tricky. But it's all part of the fun! We have already taught a couple of lessons over the course of Sunday and Monday. The living conditions are soo different but the people are so warm. Speaking of warm....it's actually FREEZING here!! They are just finishing their winter and heading into spring but it is super super cold. Sr Gardiner and I have been freezing our hinies off! I have worn my tights and a sweater everyday and can still be cold! I even broke out the mittens! At night we are sleeping with almost four blankets! It's definitely not Provo cold but after being on a tropical island for a year, my body has NO sort of immunity to the cold. I think it is in the high 40s or 50 here so it feels glacial.

I don't really know what else to write with the few minutes that are left so I will just have to send pictures because they say a thousand words. I love you all!

Love,

Sister Stewart

One Year Older and Hopefully Wiser Too

Well,

Like you mentioned, I am hitting my year mark this week. I know it is so crazy. I want to deny that the time has sped by fast because each day still can feel soo slow but unfortunately what they say is true. Your time on the mission does wiz by. While it does feel like I have been out here for a very long time, it is still hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I only have a third of my mission left. It's still a good amount of time though so you will hear lots of more stories and testimonies before my last day comes!

Alright so I don't have lots of time right now but I'll just give you a little update about the week! So this past week we were super lucky to have a zone conference with Elder Hamilton of the Seventy. It was super amazing. During his portion of the meeting he asked us to talk about some of our difficulties here on La Reunion doing missionary work. My hand shot right up. Finding people! It is so hard to find people! Know that vacation is over, everyone is working during the day and there is no one to find when we go porting or walk around downtown. You know what Elder Hamilton's secret was? Talk to Everyone. Yep, that was what he told us. We as missionaries need to talk to everyone. At first I thought that there must be more because that is the first rule as a missionary - talk to everyone but then I realized that we really could be doing a better job - that we SHOULD be doing a better job at talking to literally everyone. One of the missionaries who served for a short time in France said that at one point they used to keep track of how many people they talked/introduced themselves to in a week. One companionship was able to talk to 2,000 people a week! When they rode the bus they used to walk up and down the aisles talking to every single person on the bus. That is what it means to talk to everyone and that is what we need to be doing as missionaries! 

Sr Gardiner and I have really been trying to test it out and committ ourselves to talking with literallly every person who crosses our paths. It is really hard. And we have talked to some unpleasant people. But it feels good to know we are doing our best and already we have had some people interested - perhaps people that normally we would not have talked to! Really what I have been learning (especially from Sr Gardiner because she is a super example) is that talking to everyone is sort of a test of faith. God needs to know that He can trust us. That if He puts someone prepared in our path He can trust us to talk to them. If we won't talk to everyone then He can't trust us and so it would be wasted on us to put someone prepared in our path. It is a test of faith. We need to have faith that there ARE people out there who are prepared for us. And I'll be honest sometimes it's hard! Some of these people can be so stubborn and closed and ignorant of even their own beliefs! But they are children of God who have divine potential and we have to talk to each one of them so they can have the chance to change and understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

The biggest adventure of this week is that on Thursday we woke up to this big pile of water on the floor in our kitchen. It turned out there was a big leak underneath the sink. So we had to turn off our water at all times to minimize the leak. Unfortunately that makes taking a shower really difficult because if the water is on, then the puddle grows at a rapid rate in the kitchen and all our towels were already soaked. So luckily Friday they sent in a ward member to try and fix it. He worked on it for nearly 2 1/2 hours and then put in a temporary piece to limit the water flow. Meanwhile we hung out downstairs in the senior couple's apt because he is a man and we can't be in the house with him at the same time. Complicated. Luckily that mostly fixed the problem and then the Zone Leaders came by a couple of times to try and make the fix more permanent. It still hasn't exactly stopped leaking 100% but we can keep our water on so we are very happy!

In other random news. There is a man here who must be the Reunion Martin Short. He looks just like him. And he has the personallity of the Martin Short character from Arrested Development - very cooky and into young pretty girls. We have run into him way more times than we wanted to while walking the streets. 

I finally made those French beignets! They were delicious and Sr Gardiner said they were even better than the ones that her REAL french companion used to make.

We recieved the exciting news that we are GOING TO MADAGASCAR!!!! for four days next week! So that we can personally be at a leadership meeting instead of making a skype call! So we will get to see what it is like for real over there! We are incredibly stoked! So next week's email might be late or something because I'll be doing it over there! 

Well that's all folks! Love ya! 

Love,

Sister Stewart

some french words i don't understand -ky

Well,

Not a lot of new news for this week - sorry everyone! Life has just continued on for us missionaries on La Reunion. We had a couple of good lessons and it looks like one of our investigators has some great potential. His name is Phillipe and we had a second lesson with him this week where we even fixed a baptism date! We fixed it for all the way in October because - obviously he has a lot to learn and commitments to make - but we set it as a good goal to work towards. He came to church again this Sunday for the second time and it is super great because normally that is the hardest step!

We heard from Therese this week...but unfortunately it was bad news. She texted us and said thanks for worrying about her but that she has decided to stay in the Catholic church. We asked her if we could come by one last time but she never responded. We are pretty heartbroken because she was so ready and saw such a change in her life with the church and Book of Mormon but we still hold out hope. We hope that with time we will be able to see her again or maybe some of the members because she made some pretty close friends when she came to the branch. We will have to see.

Oh yeah, we did a LOT of contacting this week. Which normally means at least a few potentials for amis, but this week we didn't find so many people. We tried this new contacting message. Basically Sr Gardiner plays her violin and I sing hymns at big public places. We put up this sign that talks about the church and has some pictures from the new Bible videos (you know the super great ones) and the title says "Venez et Vous Verrez!"  which means "Come and See!" A good amount of people will compliment us on the singing or give us thumbs up but not too many have stopped and talked to us. Lots of people look at the sign though. We have mostly been singing in Centreville - which is literal in French meaning the center of town. It's this huge street where no cars can come down just lined with shops - basically the equivalent of a mall. And it was packed this week because all the kids went back to school this monday - today. So last minute shopping was being done to buy notebooks and backpacks and all that jazz. I am sure you are doing the same thing chez vous. So like I said - not tons of success.... But we are hoping at least to give people more exposure to our church and just get them to have contact and notice us the missionaries in a good way. Every one can point out the Temoin Jehovah's (Jehovah Witness) they are always on the street with a little stand and they port peoples houses too. Everyone recognizes them (for good or for worse...) but then when we meet people most of them have never even talked to a missionary OR a member before. We are the very first time they have even known of this church's existence on the island! So I hope our singing routine will at least change that - in a positive way.

Which, by the way, is crazy that some people (most people) have never heard of the church because there have been missionaries here for almost 40 years. And already in a year, between Sr Gardiner and I, we have practically knocked on every single door that is accessible in our part of the city. You think I am joking but I have been here for a year and most weeks we port or contact at least 12 hours...so you do the math. We drive around the city looking for new places and say "did that four months ago" , "did that when I first got here" So we have started re-doing things. It surprises me when people say that every time!

Alright well my time is up, have to go! Wish I had more interesting news!

Love you all! 

Sr. Stewart

A Very Happy Birthday

Family,

Well I will start with the number one question I recieved in my e-mails this week - yes! I did have a very very happy birthday! That morning I woke up and Sr Gardiner and our third (temporary) companion Sr Berchal wished me happy birthday and Sr Gardiner served me up an omelette! Which is a big deal because it was the first omelette she had ever made! That's some loving service for you. I hadn't got anyone's packages unfortunately but I figured that if I had to wait a couple more days or a week it wouldn't kill me - even though it was a little bit of a bummer. Then something surprising happened at district meeting. One of our zone leaders who was teaching the lesson wanted to do an object lesson where he blindfolded a missionary and had their companions direct them toward a suitcase. He chose 3 missionaries to do the object lesson and I was missionary number 3. After my companions had successfully directed me to the suitcase he told me I could open it for the lesson. I was incredibly delighted to see not one but BOTH of my packages!! So I got them the morning of my birthday! Just like back home :) 

So first I need to say a huge MERCI for the packages and everything inside them! I honestly couldn't have been happier! I LOVE the dress and the shoes! I wore them this Sunday for my talk! And I am currently wearing the clothes that grandpa and grandma sent. Also we have already dug into the soups I recieved :) My temporary french companion was shocked that Americans could make their soups taste so good. Most french soups taste just like the vegetable medley they offer...aka carrots. The candy is almost gone because it is so delicious so thank you for that. And I absolutely LOVED the movie Dad, thank you so much. Moving pictures are worth a billion words. Also I nearly cried from laughing so hard some of the clips were so funny. Namely Kiari rapping to grandpa, the little girls karaoke and others - it makes me so excited to see you guys in 6 months!! 

Enough about the best birthday of my life :) Good and bad news up next. Therese had a baptism interview and passed!! She also set a date for this Saturday! However she then sent a text Sunday morning saying she couldn't come to church or be baptized at this time even though she is ready. And she wants us to give her time. So we were fairly devastated by that. We think it has to do with her husband with whom she is separated right now. We are going to try and talk to her and work everything out because she is SOO incredibly ready and she knows SO much. This is the woman that is reading the Book of Mormon for the 4th time and had already stopped drinking coffee BEFORE we taught her the Word of Wisdom because she had heard about it from members. Anyway I am sure next week I will be writing about when her next date of baptism is :) 

Youssouf is still continuing to progress. Unfortunately he is taking a 3 or so week vacation to Maurice so we can't fix a baptism date just yet because we don't know when he will be back. But he is really ready so whenever he gets back he is just itching to get in the water. No really. He asks us constantly when the next baptism is and we always have to try and slow him down because he needs to understand all the teachings and recieve all the lessons and truly be converted. But it's great. I have never seen enthusiasm like that in all my time out here. I would take that anyday. 

So about our temporary companion. You might have heard me talk about Maurice or Mauritius once or twice. They are the same place. The first one is just the english pronounciation and the second is the french way. It is our neighboring island that is just booming with the gospel right now. Right now we only have 4 full time missionaries and a senior couple over there because the country won't allow any more than that number to have visas. Well speaking of visas, it is super difficult to get them for the country. Before the sisters went out, they waited for 5 months! Because Sister Packer went home this week (my trainer), they need to send another sister out to Mauritius and they all ready started the visa work but it's behind. So they had to bring her companion over, Sister Berchal who served on Reunion - St Paul - before she went to Mauritius. And now she is staying with us until someone can get a visa to go over. It's a little bit complicated. But it sufficeth me to say that she is staying with us and is super super awesome. Her family is from the island Guadeloupe in the middle of the carribean but she grew up mostly in France. 

This sunday I was asked to give a talk for our special "missionary sacrament meeting". I pulled most of my material from Elder Clay Christensen's new book "The Power of Everyday Missionaries" - which by the way I recommend that every one go out and read - seriously it is incredibly inspiring and gives us such a vision of what member missionaries SHOULD be! I felt fairly nervous, in part because I had had to mentally translate parts of the book into French to share in my talk. It went really well. I thought I didn't have too much to say and then I recieved a slip of paper from the president saying "Thank you for finishing up" and looked at the clock and realized I had talked us over the hour. And I was only the second speaker. Whoops. I was fairly embarrassed. But my companions assured me that nothing I said was superfluous and a few branch members made nice comments so I didn't die of embarrassement. 

Other than that, not tons of big news mostly we are just concerned about Therese. And all of our amis but a lot about Therese. I hope to have really good news about her next week. Thank you all for your love and support! I absolutely adored my birthday and a large part came from the love I felt even miles and miles away!

Love,

Sr Stewart

August has Arrived

Tout le monde,

 

Thank you for the birthday wishes!! This week was a good week. We actually taught a surprising amount of lessons. It seems like that continues to happen that we get to the end of the week and go "Wow, how did we teach so many people?" It isn't like we have endless and endless lists of people and yet things continue to progress bit by bit. The middle of the week was a little hard because two different people dropped us and one was another miracle family. Mostly it is just really really sad to see people not accept the gospel here - especially when they don't accept simply because they are too "stubborn" (in their own words) to ever leave their traditions. If only people could understand that it is so much more than tradition! The covenants we make with our Savior and Heavenly Father are the gateway to returning to live with them again! And it all hinges upon our obedience in this life. Every day and moment more on the mission I am realizing how much it is ALL about obedience. That is the great test of this life. Every commandement, every standard, every word from the prophet's mouth is to help us become better people...THROUGH obedience. 

We are still teaching some of our superstars. Youssouf came to church again! YAY! And might be having his baptismal interview THIS SATURDAY!! AHHH! So then he will be baptized next Saturday! So exciting! He is forming friendships with the members and coming to church consistently and we have taught him all of the lessons. We feel really good that he is ready but will continue to monitor his progress and his commitments really closely the next two weeks to make sure his is 100% ready and understanding of the HUGE life commitment he will be making from here on out! Like I said - the covenants we make mean everything! It looks like Therese might be baptised in the next couple of weeks as well and we are just over the moon about that. Never have I taught someone who was so humble, teachable and prepared. It is so inspiring!! Everytime we go over there she is making her way through a new church material trying to read all she can. Right now she is trying to read the whole conference Liahona in conjunction with the Book of Mormon. We also gave her a Liahona that was a special temple addition and she was so excited to have it, she was going to start reading it as soon as she finished her conference one! I have never taught an ami like her and it truly is the world's most meaningful experience to be a part of someone's journey to finding the gospel like that. In other happy news, an inactive with whom we have been working with for several months finally came back to church this week!! And she has not been to church in 10 or so years!! It is crazy that she has taken this huge step! We were so happy because it can be the largest hurdle to try and get someone to come even one sunday after years and years. 

Some of our amis are starting to really lag and not make progress which is sad. We want to work with them and help them find out for themselves but at the end of the day, you can only help them as much as they can help themselves. No matter how many times we visit people and teach them and testify with the spirit, they can't go anywhere if they themselves don't decide to read and pray and come to church. And right now we are hitting a stage where people "want to know" or "want to make committments" but they don't keep the commitments or promises they make. On the other hand, we have found a couple of people who are really ready and open to the idea of one true church or of one single path which is very rare to find out here on Reunion! We are extremely excited to keep working with them. We had a super fun Missionary Fireside this Friday where we created four different games Jeopardy, Bingo, Scavenger Hunt and Bean Bag Toss - with a Preach My Gospel twist! All of the games used Preach My Gospel for answers. Unfortunately, only 8 branch members showed up. We were a little disapointed. But we still had a fun night and are gearing up to do it another time. We really are trying to motivate the members to step up and be member missionaries and magnify their callings. Last week we had Branch Council and only the Primary President came besides the missionaries and the Branch President...we are really trying to think of ways that we missionaries can motivate, encourage, support the branch to turn it into a strong dynamic GROWING branch!

We went on a hike today - "Le Grand Etang" it was the one we did as a zone the first week I was here. The one that looked like Lost. Anyway it seriously felt like deja vu since we were there just a year ago and it doesn't feel like that much time! The Adams also went with us because they are in town to do interviews tomorrow. It makes me realize how quickly the time really is passing! Soon I will only have 6 months left and then I will practically be home! Yikes - it makes me pretty nervous to think about coming home! Thanks again for the love and support. I love you all and think about you back home!

Love,

Sr Stewart

Half Christmas

Zot,

So today we celebrated half Christmas with our District! It was so much fun! We met in the Senior Couple's apt and listened to Christmas music, exchanged white elephant gifts, made snowflakes, played games and ate a delicious meal together! It really was wonderful. And that is why the North District is the best district. 

In other news, our investigators are still going great. We had 3 come to church this past sunday which was huge! I haven't had that many investigators come in one week since the beginning of my mission (aka the glory days). We hope that two of them will be baptized in this upcoming August! They are both really ready but we are trying to really really make sure they are well prepared, they understand and especially are ready to make this life long commitment.

One of the biggest difficulties with the church right now on Reunion is that we have more less active members than active members for the whole island. People keep leaving but the number of people coming in is much smaller. And lots of strong members move to France or other countries (for work, stronger church) so the church is suffering a little bit right now. We are hoping that bringing in strong new converts can strengthen the current branch and maybe re-vive some of the longtime members. It gives me a lot a lot of appreciation for the strong support and organization that we have in America. Luckily we are able to benefit from all the years of pioneers and the beginning struggles. Here the church is still very much young and pioneers are happening everyday. The first members to ever live on Reunion are still in this branch. They are in their 70s but they are here and their young grandchildren are the only 3rd generation members for the whole island. 

This week we actually saw lots of surprise success. I say surprise because while we haven't changed a lot of our methods we are seeing a lot more interest than usual. This past week while porting we met 2 different families who were open to letting us come back and teach them. That NEVER happens. I have almost never taught a family here in my whole mission life! In addition we met with several people who turned out to truly be searching in their life and are now new amis. It truly is miraculous because this simply doesn't fall out of the sky like this in Reunion. Really I know they are blessings from the Lord. Now Sr Gardiner and I are just trying to figure out what we could possibly be doing to merit such blessings! We haven't found our answer but we are focusing on giving 100% of out hearts to this work and getting rid of all of our pride and being 100% perfectly obedient. Which is pushing us to be better missionaries because we might have been good before but I personally am trying to take extra efforts to make sure everything is as aligned with the Lord's will and my handbook as possible. Lately both of us have really felt that our time on a mission is quickly arriving near its end and that now is the time that we need to "sprint" the last leg of the race and give it all we got. We are living the dream right now being companions and sister training leaders and working in the sector that we "grew up" in when we first arrived. The Lord is blessing us abundantly and we are trying to live righteously for each blessing He wishes to bestow on us. And that's what it is like in real life too - that is, life after the mission. It all comes down to obedience. The Lord can only bless us and bestow us with knowledge and faith IF we live obediently to merit it for ourselves. Think about ways that you can be more obedient in your life. What are the little things that you still slack on or ignore. Most of us are trying to live in Zion but also own a summer home in Babylon. What is that one thing/movie/tv show/music/what not that you need to give up? Reflect on it, find it and give it up. The Lord can only turn us into celestial people if we are developing a celestial will that resembles His own. 

Love,

Sr Stewart

Happy Bastille Day

Zot,

So Bastille Day was this past Monday. Unfortunately, Sr Gardiner and I thought it was the 13th of July and not the 14th so we were surprised that everyone started celebrating the evening before the actual date. We originally had a lesson planned but when he didn't show up (to his own apt) we decided to walk around and contact people. We saw huge crowds moving their way in a direction and decided to follow them and then contact at whatever event was attracting all the crowds. Much to our surprise it was a huge festival and there were more people there than I have ever seen in one place in La Reunion. All celebrating the national day in France! There were tons and tons of people!! We tried contacting people unsuccessfully for a couple of hours and then as we were about to leave we saw a less active who told us there would be fireworks in half an hour. So we stuck around and saw one of the least traditional firwork shows I've ever seen. It was magnificently times but all the music was either current american pop music, old american jazz, or extremely over-dramatic classics like "Ride of the Valkeries" At one point they played a sound clip from Star Wars when Darth Vader urges the soldiers to search the ship for the rebels. Hahah. But not one single traditional french song. I didn't even hear any french song. No french anthem or anything. Apparently all the traditional things had been done in the morning with the army parade but we missed it. All we got was the super modern pyrotechnic but not patriotic show. 

Another fun event this week was Youth Conference! There was an island wide youth conference and we were invited to come and do a few activities with the youth about the Book of Mormon. After that we stuck around and helped the youth with little sketches about For The Strength Of Youth and ate typical creole food and sang some songs. It was the best! The youth here are so strong! They have to be because Reunion culture is definitely not conducive to the standards in FSY. I was really re-inspired again by the FSY and the standards the prophets have given us. I can see so much better now as a missionary WHY they are so important and HOW inspired they really are. We as missionaries have lots of very specific, very straightforward or strict rules. Why? Because we are set apart and trying to do everything we can to have the spirit with us 100% of the time. So if you want to have a life that is different and set apart from the world and feel the spirit even as an everyday person they one would have to have very specific "strict" standards to achieve that sort of life. 

Basically I am realizing more and more that missions are just direct metaphors for life. Everything that we do or happens in a mission directly relates to "real" life and teaches us what we should do and how we should follow the Lord's commandments after the mission is over. 

In other news: our ami Therese continues to progress amazingly. She has started picking up brochures on the table during church and then when we come over during the week she has already read them and highlighted the sections she loves. Wow. What a miracle! This week we taught her Law of Chastity and Word of Wisdom. Turns out a member mentioned to her a week ago that we don't drink coffee in the Church of Jesus Christ of LDS so she prayed that she wouldn't get headaches and just stopped like that. She had already stopped a week before we taught her and shared how her prayer had been answered and made it easy for her to stop drinking coffee. That is some incredible faith folks. She is so prepared and so humble. I feel like I learn a lot from her example about what it means to be teachable and humble.

We did exchanges this week for the first time since I've been "Sister Training Leader". It was fun. I was pretty nervous before-hand because I felt like I still am figuring out how to be a good missionary and how to get better so I didn't think I would have any tips or knowledge or suggestions to help or give on to the other sister. I was pleasantly surprised to find that while I have tons and tons and tons to still learn and perfect, my time on the mission has also given me a lot of experiences to draw from and I could share some of the things I've learned - even if I didn't feel like I had a lot of "training" to do or pass on, I still felt like the past year has really shaped me and taught me a lot.

Love,

Sr Stewart