Friday, June 14, 2013

Many member district and missionary zone conferences.

It has been two months since the last post. We have been traveling every week. We returned today from Reunion where we greeted two new sisters and two new elders and sent one elder off for home.
In the past two months we have had three member district conferences. In May the Reunion District conference was presided over by Elder Collin Bricknell of the Area Presidency. These conferences are just like stake conferences. On two of the district conference weekends we also had a day of zone conference with the missionaries on the Friday before. Last week in Tomatave with the two conferences I ended up speaking and teaching about twelve hours over the three days, mostly in French. With additional interviews it makes for a pretty exhausting schedule. We flew home for a day and back on the plane for the islands. Over three months we end up presenting zone conference about ten times in the different areas. Just as we finish the last one the new round of zone conferences begins.

In nine days we say good bye to ten missionaries in Madagascar and welcome fifteen new ones. This is a hectic and bitter sweet experience. We will miss the missionaries that we have come to love and respect over the past year. Yes, in a few days it is our anniversary. This last year has gone by very quickly, yet it seems as if we have been here a long time. 

The photos are of the Antsirabe District Conference where we had over 650 in attendance at the Sunday session. This district is working diligently to become our next stake. 


Here is the children's choir.



The next photo is from our young men/ young women/ YSA fireside we recently held in Tomatave. We asked them who was preparing to serve a mission and almost all of them raised their hands. Currently we have over 100 full time missionaries serving from Madagascar in various places in the world. There are many more who are planning on going. This represents the real future of the church here. 




The following photos are of the countryside outside of Antananarivo taken during an inspection visit of one of the clean water projects overseen by our humanitarian senior couple missionaries.




Even though the temperatures were chilly, most of these school children were without shoes.



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