August 10, 2015

This week has been full. I'm doing well. I love Madagascar. I feel a special affinity for this place. It's hard. I can't say that I always like it, but I love it. One difficult thing for our ward this week was the passing of a pioneer. The wife of one of the high counselors passed away unexpectedly on Monday afternoon after a massive heart attack. It was really sad. She and her husband have been members for years and have done a lot to build the church here. She actually bore her testimony on Sunday and taught Relief Society. The family was sad, but mostly they were very thankful that only a few months before they had gone to the temple. Her husband kept saying that he felt they needed to go. She passed away just four months later. Her husband was very thankful for the temple. It made me think about how blessed we are that we don't have to sacrifice six months worth of all expenses above food and housing (the usual temple sacrifice) to go to the temple. The Lord places pioneers in places like Madagascar. I just want to learn to be like them and to bring that back with me. I always find it interesting that the Lord sends such great people to the church here. Smart, skilled people who have lots of potential, and they are willing to sacrifice wealth, time, and prestige to build the church. To be a stake president or bishop here is essentially a full time job. We (our family and those similarly situated) only get to go to the temple because others before us made the difficult sacrifices, thinking about our day and wanting their children to have the blessings of the gospel. They paid their tithing, sacrificed their time, and dedicated everything for God. I would like to dedicate, but most importantly consecrate, more.

A cool thing that happened this week was Mormona manome tanana - Mormon helping hands. It was really cool. We had 50 people show from just our ward, which was especially insane because people in Madagascar don't really have a concept of charity and service. Anyway, we built an incinerator (in this  case it was a cement garbage can with pipes at the bottom for water to run out), a chalk board, and cleaned a school. It was a very good experience. Also mixing concrete with a shovel is hard. Also carrying 50 lbs of bricks, sand, etc was tough. They were going to carry something like 350 bricks and 200 lbs two miles, but the senior missionary couple offered to let the members use their truck so that made it a whole lot easier - ha ha.

I'm doing well and hope everyone there is too. Please say hello to everyone for me.

Elder Ahlstrom